Everything You Miss Not Seeing Formula 1 Live

This time was different. A coworker had handed me a seat at the turn one grandstands and I got to take the subway and walk to the track like everyone else, sit like everyone else, get drunk and cheer like everyone else.

Hundreds of us gasping together as a Force India driver made a tire-squealing pass right in front of us. We laughed as four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel had to dodge a pair of seagulls standing on the racing line, losing some of his buffer to three-time world champion Lewis Hamilton chasing after him. As the race wound down, Hamilton had leapfrogged Vettel by steadily and relentlessly outlasting him on his tires. From the stands, I could see how Vettel drove each corner a little bit harder than Hamilton did. Vettel always let the car run out to the rumble strips; Hamilton never strayed off the smooth pavement, gentler on his car and just as fast.

I felt keyed in to the race, which might have been why I felt entitled to stream through the holes in the security fences with the rest of the crowd after the race, running out on track and swarming the podium.

I walked the whole track, too, along with thousands of other people milling around what had minutes before hosted the fastest and most technologically advanced road racing cars on earth. I watched as kids stripped advertising banners off the walls and rolled them up like bedroom posters. I listened to the wind run through the trees hanging over the track, like this park in the middle of the Saint Lawrence was reclaiming the circuit for the city.