Since Marc has the racing aspects of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s trip to Australia during which he caught the season finale for the V8 Supercar series completely covered here and here (as if you'd expect anything less from the Pacific's premier pundit), I'd like to focus on this example of the local coverage of his visit:

I imagine Dale Jr. was loving every minute of being there.  No talk of DEI and blown engines and blown up relationships with his stepmother.  No gloryhound gossip mongrels... uh, mongers dogging his every step seeking information for this week's whisper at the top of their lungs about who they say Dale Jr. is dating this week.  No expectations, no pressure, and no worries mate (sorry, had to say it).  Just a racer hanging out with other racers, talking a little shop and having a little fun.

One of NASCAR's strongest appeals is its emphasis on the personal.  In most sports, being a fan means having a team to root for along with whoever is on it at the moment.  Athletes come and go; team's fortunes rise and fall.  It's the nature of sport.

In NASCAR, things are different.  You'll find the occasional "I always root for/against anyone who drives for so-and-so," but for the most part it's pick a driver, stick with a driver no matter the sponsor and/or number and/or team owner.  I'd include car manufacturer, but with today's homogenized CORN cans that factor barely rates a ripple on the ocean.

The downside of this is when an element of the fan base becomes a little too obsessed with their favored one and starts focusing to excess on the private areas of their being.  I've often said my personal interest in any given celebrity's love life is commensurate with their personal interest in mine.  Oh, wait, they don't know I exist and therefore could care less since it has zero impact on their existence?  Right back at ya.  Nothing personal, of course... since there is nothing personal.

I have never heard a single compelling argument as to why being a celebrity should automatically exempt one from the rule usually referred to in connection with items containing a certain malleable yellow-tinted metal.  In other words, being treated as you yourself wish to be treated.  Certainly it's natural to desire a connection with someone we admire; certainly it's understandable why so many pursue acquisition of whatever information is publicly available about a favorite.  But it has to stop there.

We don't actually "know" these people.  We know of them via what they say and do as captured by the camera's eye and microphone's ear.  But when the spotlight and sound recorder are turned off, we owe it to them to similarly turn off further inquiries.  Let them live their life even as we live ours.  And if you're tightly wrapped up in someone else's life, please work on getting one of your own.  If you don't, you run the very real risk of running off that in the one you admire making them admirable as they build bitterness and defense mechanisms against prying into what in your own life you insist remain sealed.

Enjoy the racing.  Root for your driver.  And then go home.

Yours, not vicariously theirs.