What year and what was your age when you first became interested in Formula 1?

After going to the F1 here in the early 90's. Been following it ever since (much more so in the last 3 years).

 

In my early years, 6-12 years of age, I suppose - I'd make stats & charts during the Indy 500 (Same for any World Series or Super Bowl Game). One year, we were on the road returning from a beach visit (3 hrs. in the car), so we missed the race, but my friends made me aware of this really cool guy named Jackie Stewart who knew how to race & after saw him the next year - I too became a diehard fan.

This Monaco thing was different - I decided to just leave the papers & pencils I had all lined up alone - this meant I didn't keep stats & watched Jackie Stewart "and" the '69 Monaco on Wide World of Sports. I don't think I even blinked the entire time. Well, maybe. But I do know he won & in my own way, so did I - and to be sure, my friends who also thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. I was sorely disappointed when he retired a few years later, but relieved that he was the commentator for the 500.

 

glad to know i'm not the only fossil here. been at it since '59 '60. inspired by car and driver. went to the glen in '63. i too remember Bandini at monaco. what a tragedy, and von trips at monza what a nightmare.

 

Got hooked to F1 just a few weeks ago. Partially due to flipping through the channels and just so happening to catch the first race of this season, discovering F50.com, and, of course, reading about it here on Fchat.

Although I've heard some say that "F1 has gotten boring, etc." this is all very exciting for me to follow as I am new to it!

I'm a broke 19 year old college student, btw.

 

99, and 15 years old. It was the last race of the season.

I started knowing nothing.

I ending yelling at the near miss for Micheal.

Awesome race.

 

I had been reading fchat for a couple years or so, and of course after all the talk about f1, i finally started looking at Speed more last year, good timing, huh? Then last summer I went to visit my family in Europe, saw a ~July race on TV where Schumi got a flat, nevertheless by then I was really hooked! Now I can't wait for the upcoming Grand Prix. I want to get my family tickets so we can go together next time, and for the first time live!! Would love to see the current racers up close before they retire or get bumped around. About as interesting as tennis for me, and that's saying a lot considering I've been watching/playing tennis for a bit over ten years now.

 

For anybody who wants to be educated on what it has been like for us fossils may I suggest you find a copy of the April 2004 issue of AutoSport and read the wonderful special section entitled "When Ferrari Were Human." Subtitle says it all. "Life before Schumacher: 50 years of boom and slump."

 

That's about the same for me. I was 19 in '86 too! When I was a kid, I really liked that black and gold John Player Special Lotus, but I didn't start following it regularly until about '86. I didn't always have whatever cable station carried the races, so I'd miss entire seasons at a time.

Since '98, I've watched very nearly every race live. Since I live in Hawaii, that's 1:30am Sunday morning for the European races.

One thing, though... Ferrari has ALWAYS been my favorite team. Even back then when they sucked and I never thought I'd drive a Ferrari of my own. I've always loved the way racing is really all they care about. Road cars are secondary.

 

I was 5. Tough not to live in Montreal in 1979 and not be a Gilles Villeneuve fan. Lost interest in the mid-80's, picked it up again around 1994.

 

1966 or 67 was when I got interested, but I watched on Wide World of Sports before that.

Jim Clark winning the US GP, I was maybe 11 or 12 watching Jim Clark.

According to their website, WWOS first broadcast Monaco in June of '62, when I was 7.

 

I was 23 years old when I first became interest in F1

 

Got interested in high school thru reading Road&Track in the library. First race was '70 at Watkins Glen just a month after getting my drivers license (N.J.). That was my first road trip. Back then the garages were open and you could walk literally arms length from the mechanics, tools, cars and drivers. What amazed me was the size of the drivers, small petite like jockeys. Jackie Stewart, Cevert, Ronnie Peterson, were smaller than me and I was fresh out of high school. Just not what I had expected. Peter Revson and Emerson Fittipaldi were closer to what I expected a racing driver to be (in size). Even then the scream of the engines was painfull and they were "only" spinning at 10K rpms . The Glen was a great place to watch a race - but the cars soon became much too fast for the conditions. Oh yeah, I was 17 at that '70 race.

 

My dad did his first Ferrari factory tour in 1961 and watched the Monaco GP that year standing behind a hay bale as the cars passed a few feet away. We always had F1 literature/stuff around the house. We used to get a hardback publication (Automobile Quarterly?) that had color drawings of the F1 cars. And I remember when I was a Cub Scout (1968) carving my 'pinewood derby' car to look exactly like Jim Clark's Lotus before there were any wings. I still have a huge attachment for the last of the non-downforce 1960s F1 cars - pure speed missiles. We also had a large-format picture book about the 1967 (or thereabouts) F1 season called something like "The Cruel Sport" with fantastic pics of the cars&drivers.

It was a miracle if you caught a race on TV back then. Even though there's a lot of griping about Speed Channel coverage of F1 - it beats the hell out of the old days.

 

Funny, I just read this thread and was thinking of my own answer, and the last one (from Bryanp) almost hit the nail on the head for me. Bryan mentions the book "The Cruel Sport" - for me, it was a paperback by the same author, Robert Daley, named "Cars At Speed", which showed up in my Christmas stocking somewhere around 1964, which would have made me 12 years old at the time. Still have my copies of both books.

I started buying Road & Track in January 1967, I have a complete set now, all the way back to 1947. Ah, the good old days. If only so many of the drivers hadn't been killed.

 

Regarding that last comment of mine ("if only so many of the drivers hadn't been killed") I just looked at the final points standings for the 1967 Grand Prix season. Of the 21 drivers who scored points that year, 9 of them died in racing accidents, 1 of heart attack during a vintage race, 1 in a road accident, 1 in a plane crash, and 1 retired after near-fatal injuries in a racing accident. Yikes. Bad record.

 

I started watching in 96, the year Schumi went to ferrari. I think I have missed one race since then. I was immediately hooked.I really wish I had discovered it sooner. I was living in a small town in South Georgia. It was kind of frustrating not having anyone to discuss the races with. I was deep in Nascar land. I bought my Porsche ,discovered F1 and my daughter was born that year. Pretty good year!