| abstract | - This refers to a period of motorsport before the widespread use of computers in the sport, when looking for an 11 year old Escort meant seeking a Ford automobile and not a Google search query that would get you a ride in the back of a paddy wagon. Parallel parked right in the middle of this era was the 1969 24 Hours of Le Mans. Won by Jacky Ickx and Jackie Oliver in a Ford GT40, the 37th running of the 24 hour event saw the final use of the traditional start where the drivers would run to their cars on the grid. Even with this display of visible physical exertion by the drivers, many in the general public contend that motorsport is not actually a sport. Sitting down for hours at a time merely makes a driver a glorified office worker, they say. But what if they are late with their work? An office worker can cry about the weather, his sickly babies or cataloguing his bestiality collection. A racing driver has none of those liberties. A thought of a thought of hesitating and he is gone from this world. For fucking real. Ten of the 43 drivers who participated in the 1969 Formula One season would die in accidents. If you were any good at maths in school, you would realise those are quite literally worse odds than a game of Russian roulette. All the drivers had to break the bank was a gear stick, steering wheel and an absolutely massive pair between their legs. Those controlled a inconceivably large engine, strapped to a few wheels, as it fired along a thin strip of road at about three kilometres below light speed. After tap dancing on the bonnet of death's patrol car, the driver would tear off his goggles, wipe the grime off his brow and accept questions from the nubile French university students drawn to the countryside by the scream of vapor being rammed through sixty million valves. If one of the students remarked "I bet you're hard on tyres," he would just smirk and say "I bet it fucking doesn't, love!" before the pair departed to his caravan at lap record pace.
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