HOT CORNER
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What: “Dangerous Jobs: Race Car Driver”
Where: National Geographic Channel (NGC), tonight, 8
It comes as no surprise that the first episode of a new series titled “Dangerous Jobs” would focus on auto racing. It would be difficult to think of a more dangerous profession than that of race car driver.
As pointed out in this one-hour documentary, Ernest Hemingway believed there were only two real sports -- bullfighting and auto racing -- because participants are putting their lives on the line. Everything else is a game.
The show, narrated by Jason Priestley, covers open wheel and stock car racing. Featured is CART driver Adrian Fernandez, a 15-year racing veteran originally from Mexico, now living in Phoenix. Fernandez won the CART G.I. Joe’s 200 at Portland June 22 as an owner-driver, but this show was not updated to include that victory. Nor is it mentioned that Fernandez won the Marlboro 500 at California Speedway in Fontana in 1999.
The focus is on the season opener, a street race at St. Petersburg, Fla., and two races in which Fernandez was seriously injured last year -- at Vancouver, Canada, and Surfer’s Paradise, Australia. In Australia, he broke two vertebrae in his neck. He returned six months later for the St. Petersburg race, where he was involved in another accident. Only this time, he escaped injury.
One aspect of the show deals with safety improvements in racing, some of which also apply to passenger cars.
The topic is a worthwhile one for this new National Geographic Channel series, but this episode goes on too long.
NGC, launched in January 2001, is available on Adelphia, Charter, Comcast and Time Warner cable systems, among others, and on DirecTV’s channel 276.
-- Larry Stewart