Back in 1997 or 98, I wandered over to Bill Hole’s house to watch qualifying with him between the staff orientation sessions. Qualifying for those of you who haven’t met me mean F1 qualifying. I had previously been mildly interested in F1 during the McLaren Honda years, although it more of a keeping-track-to chat-around-coffee type of thing.

And then, for one reason or another, being it sucking up to the boss, a genuine interest, or just to be ‘different’ from all my hockey-following friends I started to watch the F1 races.

For the first couple of seasons it was tough as I had an old VCR and generally resorted to getting up in the middle of the night to watch the European races. Eventually I got a PVR on my computer and it became a lot easier to record and watch qualifying and races. Since then I have watched religiously and the only time I have missed more than one race in a row was when we spent three weeks in Europe. While not a passion it was most definitely a hobby. As far as I know, Bill gave up watching the races years ago but I soldiered on.

And now I’ve missed the first two races of the 2015-16 season. Huh. Change is weird.