Formula 1

I completely agree with evilgmbethy that sports fans should be more welcoming to newer fans, and I am trying not to be a bitter old fandom queen, or whatever the sports fan equivalent is but

Lewis Hamilton, stop droning on about Ayrton Senna

I <3 Senna and I like you, and you are the very best Lewis Hamilton we are ever going to get but you are not and never will be Ayrton Senna.

I've got nothing against hero worship, but the constant mentioning of Senna whenever any question gets asked about racing gets grating.

Partly it's that while I realise that, as a kart racer, he's going to have paid more attention to F1 when he was young than I did, and he's more likely to have rewatched his favourite racer and so on, but at the same time, Lewis Hamilton is five days younger than I am, and I know how much I remember of Senna from before that and how much I don't, and I doubt his is much more than mine.

Partly is that, he's really not Senna, and it's no fault of Hamilton's. You know when people who interviewed Bill Clinton come over all faint and declared him to have weapons-grade charisma. Senna was much the same*. And Hamilton doesn't have that, and it feels like he's trying to grab some of that for himself and it's like 'no', and I know I am being horribly unfair.

The other problem is that the amount he mentions it makes Hamilton sound insincere, and I know he's not. He absolutely adores Senna, it just comes across that way.

* I still say I'd love to see what someone with no (or little) previous exposure to F1 would make of Senna after seeing the Senna documentary.