Does liking endurance races mean I'm on the spectrum?

This and other thoughts from the Bathurst 12 Hour

I’ve been going to the Bathurst 12 Hour, an endurance car race, for more than a decade now. But this year I noticed something a bit weird. 

It happened when I was walking around the pits on the Friday. I was watching the teams make some changes to their cars after practice, when I caught sight of a rather nondescript fellow in his 60s or 70s taking a few photos.  

‘That bloke has a very expensive camera,’ I thought to myself. 

He was wearing cargo shorts, joggers and socks which had been pulled up to about a third up his calves. I watched as this man held the camera up to his right eye and snapped several photos of a mechanic tinkering under the hood of a Porsche. 

‘Huh, that camera’s good too,’ I thought as I spotted another bloke, who I would describe exactly the same way, standing right next to him. I heard the shutter go off as he took a few dozen photos of a wing piece leaning against a wall.

Then it was as though my awareness shifted. My vision zoomed out and I paid attention to the entirety of the scene as it unfolded in front of me. I was a bit of detritus bobbing around in an ocean of men all with nice cameras, white joggers, high socks and collared shirts.

While the Bathurst 1000 (the Supercar event in October) attracts a drunken bucket-hat wearing crowd, the 12 Hour audience has an entirely different profile. I call this demographic: dads who are probably on the spectrum but were born before we diagnosed these things. It turns out they are moths to the flame of cars, lap times, and complex but definable rules. 

It struck me at one point that if one of these men went on a crime spree, the police would be powerless to stop him. Imagine trying to find just one person who fit the profile of ‘bearded man carrying camera wearing cargo shorts’. If they rounded up all the possible suspects their interview rooms would be full of hundreds of boomer dads comparing lenses and probably talking about model trains. It’d be like the final puzzle in a Where’s Wally book where they’re all Wally.

It is one thing to observe this group from afar, it is another to spend a social evening with them at the pub. Which is something I do. Every year 

It used to be a fairly normal event: a small group of enthusiasts used to meet up to have a couple of drinks with the commentators (who also run a popular podcast) and talk about the race. It was a lowkey evening which led to a couple of genuine friendships. But then an enormous Facebook group found out about it, made it a ticketed event, and the whole thing turned into a somewhat intense experience. 

It usually unfolds thusly: everyone gets a drink from the bar and then sits in relative quiet, staring at the table, fiddling with coasters, and maybe looking at their phone. Things stay this way for some time, usually until the mid-strength schooners kick in. 

“Do… do you remember the lap 17 incident back in 2017…?” someone will eventually entreat.

And then, like cars after the lights go green, they’re off. I have barely missed a 12 Hour race since I was a teenager but I’m quickly lost in the intricacies of their conversation. 

There aren’t many social connectors in an event like this. But my friend Scott is one of them. We became friends at the earlier meetups because we were the only people there under the age of 60. Scott has a gift for finding the quiet people in a room, making them feel seen, and then connecting them with someone else in the group.

This is an admirable quality. Usually.

“James,” he said to one gray-haired man loitering uncomfortably just outside of the conversation. “Tell Steph about your model cars!”. 

And boy did he do just that.

If I’m being honest, I like people who are unashamed of their passions. Better to get excited about model cars than go through life half-dimmed. Goodness knows I’ve ignored people screaming with their eyes while I talk about microphones more than once (in the last seven days). 

And while I’ve written this newsletter a little as though I’m an impartial observer, a scientist taking notes while peering through the glass of an exhibit, that’s a bit intellectually dishonest. Why did I notice all those men taking photos in the pits? It’s because I was doing the same thing. They just had better cameras. 

They say you’re the sum of the people you spend time with and the hobbies you pursue. This weekend I have almost exclusively been talking to die-hard endurance racing fans which I have a lot of common interests with.

I’m not going to think too hard about what that means for me. 

I hope you enjoyed your Bathurst 12 Hour weekend. I know I did.

See you next Monday. 

Steph