I'm not crazy about motorsport. I like it more than any other sport, but for me, that's faint praise.
Part of my affection is devoted to the peculiar jargon of the motorsport commentator.
I don't mean just the really good commentators, here. I'll take a Walkerism or Brundlequote if I can get one, but even the God-awful everyday commentators here in Australia (who have a particular affection for the word "carnage", possibly because they think the first three letters mean it's particularly applicable to automobiles) have a collection of diverting stock phrases.
It is, for instance, important not only to "keep it on the black stuff", but also to "keep the shiny side up", and by extension the "rubber side down".
One must attempt to not "spear off into the bushes".
A brake failure, patch of oil or excursion onto wet grass is likely to cause one to "proceed directly to the scene of the accident".
(That's a bit too highbrow for the Aussie commentators, as is the delightful Rolls-Royce euphemism for a breakdown, "failure to proceed". I've also previously mentioned "understeering directly to the scene of the accident" in my Prius post.)
A transmission failure can give you "a box full of neutrals".
"Talent" is generally regarded as a fungible commodity; expressions involving the transfer, location, misplacement or storage (typically in a "bag") of varible quantities of talent may be employed by a driver or rider to explain virtually any occurrence on the track.
If you rip all four wheels off an open-wheeled racing car, you have "turned it into a canoe".
There's also the verb "to alligate", which arises from the description of a line of nose-to-tail racing cars as "an alligator". It naturally follows that what they are doing is alligating, just as oysters oyst, tigers tige and lemurs leme.
I invite your own contributions.
