Motorsport: Kiwis roaring but motorsport can be bland

Scott Dixon holds the Indycar Championship lead with five rounds remaining. Photo / Getty Images

There's a couple of good events on this weekend with Kiwis at the forefront. Scott Dixon will be fired up to extend his 62-point lead at Mid-Ohio this weekend. He's looking damn good to pick up a fifth title with just five races left (including this weekend) and as long as there isn't a hiccup in pit lane things should go swimmingly.

GT driver extraordinaire Earl Bamber, at the time of going to press, had qualified for Super Pole at the 24 Hours of Spa along with co-drivers Laurens Vanthoor and Timo Bernhard, with whom he won the World Endurance Championship.

Our World Rally Championship contestant Hayden Paddon has saddled up again with co-driver Seb Marshall for the first time since June at Rally Finland this weekend. Due to his part time role this year with Hyundai this year, Paddon is not in contention for a driver's championship but is paying a vital role for the South Korean car manufacturer by hopefully picking up a number of valuable manufacturer's points. He went well at Rally Italy coming home in fourth so on a positive note he could be in the points again.

Shouldn't forget Formula One as Kiwi Brendon Hartley will be lining up this weekend for the Hungarian Grand Prix. Delving into his endurance experience the New Zealander stayed calm and focused when the rain arrived last weekend in Germany and brought his Toro Rosso car home in 10th to get another world championship point.

Now that's all covered off, there is something I've started to notice becoming more and more prevalent over the years in motorsport — the bland reply to answers when drivers are interviewed. Having said that, there are a few exceptions the likes of Supercars' David Reynolds (he of the "he's dead to me" fame) and Kimi Raikkonen who's one liners are an art form. As for the rest; eh!

The younger drivers are probably the worst as they have been coached in blandness from a very early age. It's all formulaic now with responses normally starting with, "The team gave me a really good (insert type of vehicle) today, I'd like to thank (insert about 15 sponsors) and I'm just taking it one race at a time and I was just doing my job."

Or there's the Lewis Hamilton approach after a bad day at the office where he just ignors the interviewer and walks off.

The "I was just doing my job" comment got me thinking. Maybe they are just doing their job and that's all there is to it. But to fans wanting to know what it's actually like to fling either a bike of car around at speeds most of us can't really comprehend, it would be nice to try and gain an insight into what it's like to blast along at over 300km/h, or walk away from a massive accident.

Could it actually be, that to riders and drivers there actually is nothing impressive or incredible about what they do, especially after doing it for a couple of decades from the age of five.

One of the greatest tennis writers of all time, David Wallace, may hit on why the people doing the job aren't that interested in talking about it when he wrote, "It may well be that we spectators, who are not divinely gifted as athletes, are the ones to truly see, articulate and animate the experience of the gift we are denied. And that those who receive and act out the gift of athletic genius must, perforce, be blind and dumb about it — and not because blindness and dumbness are the price of the gift, but because they are its essence."