Why Motorsport Needs to Take Itself Less Seriously

Motorsport is one of the best things in the world. It’s clever, emotional, technical, frustrating, expensive, and occasionally brilliant. It’s also, if we’re being honest, completely absurd.

Somewhere along the way, between data engineers, stewarding flowcharts and press releases that read like legal disclaimers, we started pretending this is all very normal behaviour. It isn’t. And that’s fine — it’s actually the whole point.

The problem isn’t that people care too much. Motorsport should be taken seriously when the lights go out. The issue is everything around it. The over-analysis. The fragile egos. The absolute certainty that what just happened was a grave injustice that history must remember.

History, for the record, is not watching.
Dave from scrutineering definitely isn’t.

Racing drivers are a fascinating bunch because everyone on the grid is the main character in their own story. Everyone was quicker before traffic. Everyone was held up. Everyone knows they’re better than their last result suggests. Even at club level, the intensity can be astonishing. Setup secrets are guarded like state secrets. Telemetry screenshots are examined like evidence in a murder trial. Entire weekends are emotionally ruined by a decision involving a white line and a ruler.

All for a trophy that cost less than the fuel to get there.

The funniest part is that the moments everyone actually remembers are never the “perfect” ones. They’re the red flags caused by something deeply avoidable. The radio message that shouldn’t have gone out live. The driver who insists they were calm while very clearly not being calm. Motorsport’s best bits are usually the cracks, not the polish.

Somehow, though, we keep trying to iron those cracks out.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in club racing — which, paradoxically, is also where the sport is at its best. Grassroots motorsport is held together by optimism, empty wallets, borrowed tools and people who absolutely should have packed up years ago but simply can’t. Towing through the night. Fixing cars in the rain. Turning up again even though last time was expensive, humiliating, or both.

That’s not something to sanitise. That’s something to celebrate.

Which is where Purple Helmet comes in.

We’re racers too. We get it. We care about lap times, results and doing things properly. But we also know how ridiculous this all looks from the outside, and we’re completely fine with that. Motorsport should take the racing seriously — but it really doesn’t need to take itself quite so seriously.

Laugh at the nonsense. Own the innuendo. Admit you’re not saving the world, you’re just trying to be a bit quicker than last time and maybe not bend it this weekend.

If your enjoyment of motorsport relies entirely on being taken seriously, you might be missing the best bit.

We’ll see you in the pits.
Probably still arguing about tyre pressures.
Definitely laughing about it later.

🟣🏁