 |
|
FORMULA ONE OBSESSIONBorn on 2 January 1981 in Hong Kong, Enoch Yan-Tak Law blames his father for getting him into cars, because it was when he was only six months old that his dad bought him his first toy car, much to his mother’s chagrin. And the rest, as they say, is history. Something clicked, and from that moment he developed a passion for things on four wheels that he is still at a loss to explain. It started with buses in his native Hong Kong, including a disturbing recollection of the city’s entire bus network. But much to his horror, when he moved with his family to Sydney, Australia in 1985, he discovered there were no double-decker buses to salivate over, so his attention turned to road cars. With his parents willing to waste an exorbitant amount of money on monthly magazines to sate his desire to look at the pictures rather than read the articles, the odd touring car and Formula One race reports in the back of these rags introduced him to the world of motor racing, and a dangerous seed was sown. Matters took a dramatic turn when one day in mid-July 1989, his mum innocently told him she had noticed some F1 on the TV whilst doing some late-night ironing. She would soon discover that this was one of the biggest mistakes in her life as Enoch started taping Grands Prix with unbridled enthusiasm. Add that to his compulsive anorak nature, and he has taped every race since - and still has all the Grands Prix and Bathurst 1000 touring car races from 1992 onwards. To the collection of tapes has been added a collection of magazines, a collection of books, a collection of 1/20 scale Tamiya models, and a collection of computer games. Which now, in this cyberspace age, has also become a collection of media files, a collection of JPEGs, and a collection of files full of interesting tidbits which might come in handy on a rainy day. But he was not alone. Back in 1991, whilst at Eastwood Public School, he had befriended Jamie McGregor when they were both utterly friendless, incredibly influencing him into also liking F1 without the use of either hypnosis or bribery. From then on, even if everyone else he has ever met has thought him quite nuts to follow car racing as passionately as he does, he at least had one other person with whom he could discuss the unrecognised talents of Roberto Moreno without getting strange looks. Preferring to write rather than read any day, Enoch has also been writing about F1 for over a decade. From 1992-96 he had created his own fantasy F1 series, the International Grand Prix Circuit Championship, writing reports for races in some of the remotest places of earth which he had dreamed up in his imagination, and in which the weirdest things would happen ... like Rubens Barrichello winning the 1995 Finnish GP for Jordan after Mika Hakkinen in the mid-wing McLaren had taken pole and Mika Salo had led a lap in his Tyrrell. If only Grand Prix racing in real life had been as unpredictable! So in the end, starting up F1 Rejects was a logical thing to do, giving him an outlet to write to the world about F1, and putting all that collected stuff over the years to some sort of good use.
 With Jamie McGregor and the legendary Murray Walker at Muzza's book signing in Sydney.
NON-FORMULA ONE OBSESSIONSAway from motorsport, Enoch went to Newington College from 1993-98, where he studied way too much and basically didn’t have a life. He particularly enjoyed English and Latin, although by far his favourite subject was history, thanks mainly to the exaggerated anecdotes and leftist rantings of the head of history, Mr Peter Reid. He also played violin in the Newington Symphony Orchestra, having learnt the fiddle for about six years and the piano for ten. These days, though, he prefers to warble, having been a fan of Cantonese pop legend Alan Tam since the mid-80s. Currently he admires Craig David “for his voice but not his lyrics”, and also 2003 Australian Idol runner-up Shannon Noll. At Newington he was also scorer for the school’s 1st XI cricket team for five seasons, and in 1996 became a qualified cricket umpire. Cricket is his second love behind motorsport, whilst he also loves watching soccer (“ahem, that’s FOOTBALL”) on the telly, especially when the World Cup comes around. Not surprisingly his favourite player is Harry Kewell, and after their famous victory over Uruguay to qualify for Germany 2006, he looks forward to the Australian Socceroos making the quarter finals of the World Cup. Or so he dreams. These days Enoch has a Bachelor of Arts from Sydney University, majoring in history and government/public administration, and in 2003 completed his Bachelor of Laws. He is now a solicitor working at Colin Biggers & Paisley, a medium-sized law firm in Sydney, where he does mainly insurance litigation work. Purely by coincidence, one of the partners at CBP used to be Mr David Greenhalgh, one of the foremost motor racing historians in Australia and author of numerous books and articles. However, if there is anything that gets him even more excited than motorsport, it is the fact that he is a Christian and has been since an early age. He currently co-ordinates the youth group at the Chinese & Australian Baptist Church (West Ryde), where he looks after a team of around a dozen leaders. He has been involved in youth ministry since 1999, and is passionate about seeing high schoolers and uni students come to faith in Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. By happy chance, his pastor, Paul Bottrill, is an ardent F1 and Michael Schumacher fan. Finally, in December 2005, Enoch tied the knot with the lovely Gail, with the F1 Rejects webmaster being his best man. For the record, the new Mrs Law has no interest in racing at all and wonders what the attraction is in seeing cars go around in circles. Back to About this Site
|
