The world’s top auto-racing circuit has another powerful American in its corner.
US Presidential nominee and current Vice President Kalama Harris said earlier this month that she has become a Formula One fan.
Speaking to Sirius’ Howard Stern in an October 8 interview that has since resurfaced online, Harris was asked to defend the sport after the host dismissed it as ‘cars driving over and over again in a circle.’
‘Oh, it’s so good,’ Harris said, denying that she was only discussing F1 as a campaign strategy. ‘We love it. Our whole family does.’
Of course, she hasn’t watched quite so much racing this season as she continues to serve as Veep while running for her boss’s job.
US Presidential nominee and current Vice President Kalama Harris said she enjoys F1
Howard Stern dismissed the sport, saying it was ‘cars driving over and over again in a circle’
‘I haven’t been able to watch it a lot lately because I am campaigning,’ she said before adding another complicating factor: Time zone differences.
‘Depending on where they’re driving, the time of day, you gotta wake up,’ Harris said before being interrupted by Stern.
‘Who is your favorite driver,’ asked Stern, who famously prefers ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and ‘Real Housewives’ to most sporting events.
Harris didn’t hesitate: ‘Lewis Hamilton of course.’
She also tried to encourage Stern to watch, but outside of the NBA, the notorious radio host has never expressed much of an interest in sports.
‘You should see it,’ Harris said. ‘You might get hooked.’
Former President Bill Clinton is pictured with Harris’ favorite driver, Lewis Hamilton, in 2017
F1 now has three races in America, although NASCAR remains more popular in the US
Sports are a tricky subject for some politicians fearful of committing gaffes on the campaign trail.
While running for President in 1996, then-US Senator Bob Dole mistakenly referred to Los Angeles’ baseball team as the ‘Brooklyn Dodgers’ nearly four decades after the club moved from the East Coast to the West. The mistake was bad enough by itself, but also underscored the 73-year-old’s advancing age when he was in a tough race against popular 50-year-old incumbent Bill Clinton.
Harris hasn’t been immune either. In April she mistakenly said the women’s NCAA basketball tournament didn’t have ‘brackets’ until 2022, only for one of her spokesmen to correct the Vice President in a subsequent email exchange with DailyMail.com.
What she meant to say, her spokesman confirmed, was that the term ‘March Madness’ only applied to the men’s tournament and not the women’s prior to 2022. Of course, by that point the damage had been done and Harris was lampooned for flubbing an anecdote about sexism within college hoops.
Her husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, committed his own faux in August while wishing Harris a ‘Happy Anniversary.’
Posting several pictures of the happy couple online, Emhoff showed himself wearing the hats of both the Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants – two of baseball’s biggest rivals.
‘?????????????????????’ a baseball fan captioned his post with two separate visuals of Emhoff sporting a Dodgers and Giants cap.
‘This is f***ed up,’ a user replied, while another said: ‘This would decide my vote tbh.’