What it’s like. more or less, today. Monaco. She’s captivated.

Maybe it’s just possible some of you are getting tired of the NFL. My wife isn’t. But I am. Sometimes you revert to the pastimes of your childhood. Seems backward, I know. I’m encouraged, though, that the missus has suddenly developed an interest in the current season of Grand Prix racing.

It’s not the World Cup, where nothing happens at great length. It’s an older and cruder sport, but perhaps now the most technologically advanced in the world.

The good news is that people haven’t died in it in a while, though they were doing so at regular intervals when I first fell in love with it. Most of the drivers I admired and idolized died. Most of the history I inherited about the sport when I first started following it was worse. But when did I ever pretend to be civilized?

I actually drove the Monaco circuit when I was young, when it was still mostly in black and white. Like this:

NASCAR is the big oval, cars with fenders bumping one another in left hand turns.

Indy racing is another oval, open wheeled but endlessly iterative. Grand Prix is curves, straightaways, open wheeled, intricate gear changing, even more intricate passing strategies, and historically far more deadly. Not about steering but driving.

I remember the first year when a gap in the schedules allowed Grand Prix drivers to compete at the Indy 500. All the Indy drivers figured they would intimidate the European pansies. It was a blood bath. No one giving way to anyone, open wheels climbing over open wheels, fuel explosions as cars careened into walls. Multiple deaths.

Why, perhaps, I don’t get as concerned as some about the possibility that maybe, one day, there will be a fatality in the NFL.

Last week we watched the most elemental kind of battle in the Grand Prix ranks. Beat this if you can. Two members of the same car team have traded wins all year. They are neck and neck. One has had some mechanical failures of late and fallen behind. The other is coming on strong. (Oh, okay. Let’s get demographic. They both work for Mercedes Benz. One, the one presently behind, is a black Briton named Lewis Hamilton. The other is a German named Nicki Rosberg, charging to the front on his German team.) at the Hungarian Grand Prix, Rosberg won the pole position. Hamilton had a car fire in qualifying and had to start not from the grid but the pits.

For a time it seemed that Hamilton might do what no Grand Prix driver had ever done — win the race from the pits. It was not to be. But he came all the way way from last place to third, and Rosberg finished fourth. Exciting and dramatic, no? They’re driving the same cars, they’re faster than the competition, and what they’re fighting is each other.

The next race is the Belgian Grand Prix on August 24. You have to start watching early. European time you know. 8 am.

If you got to have it in American, here it is:

But still not the real thing. You have to have all of them — French, Brazilians, Italians, Brits, Germans, Swiss, Americans — which is the real World Cup. No Russians in Grand Prix. No guts, no glory. Or — no talent, no Tattinger.

It was American driver Dan Gurney btw who first sprayed champagne as a victory celebration. Americans have always been the first and the best. Don’t forget.