Congratulations Sebastian
Well Sebatian Vettel has taken the 2011 drivers championship in dominant style. If I had more spare time I would write up a report that did him justice. Four races left to go means that he has plenty of time to buy all of his mechanics drinks in different bars around the world. The next practice session is just 5 short days away. You have to wonder whether the Red Bull hangovers will let some others fight for podium spots!
Congratulations Sebastian
2 Comments
Formula 1 is an international sport with a ton of supporters. Unfortunately these supporters are spread arond the world just like the sport and so it is rare that we fans run into fellow fans and have an opportunity to talk about the sport we love. The people I go to the Montreal Grand Prix with are from all over the continent from Georgia to Alberta. I don't know of any fellow fans in Montreal and there is always a fear that you will meet someone who claims to be a fan but can't even remember how qualifying is run or even the last time they watched a whole race.
So it was a huge relief to spend 5 glorious days in the Ardennes camping with hundreds of fellow enthusiasts. I got to spend Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the track getting wet and cold but watching some great racing. And then in the evenings I got to spend time pouring cheap tasty beer down my throat and talking to fans from all around the world about what we had been watching. We got to talk about the financial situatin of Williams, the ups and downs of KERS, and the good and bad sides of Bernie. I talked to people from Belgium, England, Scotland, Italy, Holland and Germany. The racing at the track was fantastic but the time spent with fellow fans in the stands, campsites and bars made the whole weekend complete and fantastic. Although I can't remember who said it because I was too drunk, Formula 1 is a great sport where supporters of all teams can come together and appreciate the race for the race. In any other sport so many supporters of different teams in one place could only lead to a fight. But in Formula 1 it ends up being a party. And Spa was a great party. I wish I could head back every year. Well we are on Summer holidays which means Formula 1 mechanics are allowed to go home and see how many members of their family they still recognise, which must be lovely I guess. Unfortunately for race fans, we have a few weeks of waking up on Sunday mornings and having the arduous task of trying to think of what to do for two hours. Generally this is hard on me. It is kind of like the pre season, waiting to see if the racing is going to be decent. Unfortunately, this year we know that the racing is good but instead of watching racing we are waiting for cars to get back into their angry state in Belgium.
This is where the Summer holidays become a little more bearable for me. Because the next time 24 Formula cars get angry they will be doing it in front of me. That's right. I'm going to Spa and chances are that you're not. So, be jealous. While you dear reader, will be contemplating whether to take up golf, fishing or croquet over the next few Sundays, I will be trapezing around Europe before arriving in Belgium the on the 25th of July. While you are busy dusting, mowing the lawn, and ironing I will be wondering whether I should spent Friday the 26th watching cars ripping through Pouhon or Blanchimont. Maybe, on the 28th of August I will be cold, wet, hung over and broke but while you sit down for the end of the ads and the start of the race I will be 2 and a half days through a week. It makes me laugh all this talk of Formula 1 teams developing technology for road cars. I was reminded of this during this weekends German grand prix. Renault was having to decide whether to run forward or rear facing exhausts and it occurred to me how little a Formula 1 car has in common with a real car. Formula 1 engines turn over at 19,000 revs reasonably comfortably and so there is a big benefit in spitting the exhaust out over the floor and pushing the car into the ground. Normal road car engines do not rev in the 19,000 range and so the blown diffuser technology has 0 relevance to anything except Formula 1 cars. The same can be said for double diffusers, F-ducts, mass dampers and DRS yet manufacturers will always pretend that they are in the sport to develop technology for the average Joe like you and me. Does anybody believe this? Do people think that Mercedes builds a better road going V8 engine because they happen to build a good Formula 1 V8 engine? Apparently people are that stupid otherwise the teams would have put up less opposition to transfering to 4 cylinder turbos. Instead we are heading to V6 turbos so that stupid people will believe that Formula 1 technology will trickle down into their cars and they will have V6 turbos in their road cars designed by Norbert Haug. It seems to me that a car designed to transport you and your family to work and back in one piece and a car designed to shoot a skinny midget around a race track as fast as possible don't have much in common and we should stop pretending they do.
If manufacturers were serious about developing racing technologies that could be used in road cars then they would seriously look into racing electric cars. There some development in battery capacity and charging could actually be transferred into a car that we should be considering taking seriously. I have seen small clips of the first electric car Grand Prix at Pau and think that it has a lot of potential. I don't think, like Bernie, that race fans turn up for the noise and the noise alone. I like the noise of Formula 1 cars, but I also love the much quieter Formula 1600 cars. I don't think too many people fell out of love with the almost silent Audi Le Mans cars and I don't think racing fans would be anything but excited to see electric cars raced hard by good racing drivers on good racing circuits. I touched on this a bit after the Valencia valerium-fest. But I think tracks can say a lot about the country they are hosted in. This was clear this weekend at Silverstone. I love the Silverstone circuit. I find it uniquely English. It didn't originate from tons of money but with a little improvisation after the war. It was simple, efficient, cheap maybe, but it worked. All great English qualities. Oh and it rains a lot there.
Australia has a race in the park in truly laid back Australian style. The only more Australian way to do it would be to hold the race at the beach or in a pub. Suzuka is technical, distinct, fast and full of crazy Japanese people, just like Japan. As a side note Fuji is none of these things so I'm glad we are staying the hell away from there for the time being. Hockenheim used to be very German. It was all about whose engine worked the best. Never mind this damn steering input nonsense lets just see how fast they can go. The old Avus circuit took this even further to the extreme. The Bahrain track is forgettable just like the country. Honestly, who knew where this country was before the race started. The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is always fun, fast, and unpredictable just like the city where I live. Spa-Francorchamps is lonely out there in the forest and often forgotten by Bernie just like the rest of us often forget that the country is there. Interlagos is different, bumpy, and a great party to close the season just like the carnival country it sits in. Monza was built for crazy Italians in crazy Italian sports cars to live crazy Italian lives. Monaco is a seaside, casino side, concrete side race through a ton of money. France never works. Races in the USA never work because they get tacked on to great racing tradition like the piece of poop that was held in Indianapolis or tacked on to a marketing scheme like the race at Ceasurs Palace. But Americans never catch on because Americans don't care about what is happening in the rest of the world. They are perfectly content with their own racing, their own football, baseball, and basketball to be bothered with anything else. As long as they get their oil Americans don't pay much attention to the rest of the world. You might notice that I haven't mentioned any Tilke tracks except Bahrain for being crap. This is because tracks that TIlke makes don't say anything about the country they are in. The Chinese track might be in the form of a lucky dog turd symbol but nothing about the atmosphere, the setting, or the track says anything about China. The opposite in fact because China is the most populous country in the world and yet the stands are always empty. I have slept through plenty of races. Having originally come from New Zealand and the time zone that entails, I have had plenty of 2am race starts that have lead to terminal open eye malfunction. Unfortunately I was not able to sleep through the European Grand Prix and instead spent 2 hours of my life watching Formula 1 cars following each other around a track which is as exciting as any other industrial port where it is staged. What made it worse was that I was introducing Formula 1 racing to a friend of mine who had never seen a race on tv before. I spent the race explaining Pirelli tyre wear rates and pit stop timing to optimise track postion. Late in the race I got to point out high the high degradation rate lead to a very dirty track off the line. But that's as exciting as it got. Luckily he said he liked it enough to come back for another shot at the British Grand Prix in a couple of weeks.
I can't work out why it is that the Valencian Grand Prix is always so boring. It is hard to pass, but it is hard to pass at Monaco and I love the Monaco Grand Prix. I think the main problem comes down to the fact that the track has no soul. It is a street race which gives you no indication that it is in a great city. Monaco on the other hand holds a car race amongst scenery that shows off the wealth and good taste of the city. Melbourne holds a race in a park that suggest the laid back, fun kind of place it is, Montreal is fast paced with some nasty walls and plenty of fun. What has Valencia got? Judging by its race track it has concrete and warehouses. And tracks are generally not made up of straights seperated by corners but corners seperated by straights. When you think of Spa you think of Eau Rouge, when you think of Silverstone you think of copse and maggots and chapel, Montreal has the chicane into the wall of champions, Turkey has turn 7, Monaco has Tabac and Ste Devote. What has Valencia got? I still can't recognise a single corner or tell one apart from another. Some of the problem with the European Grand Prix may have been down to Pirelli's tyre choice. But the fact remains that Valencia has never held a remotely interesting race whether Bridgestone or Pirelli were bringing the rubber. The problem lies with the track. And I say the sooner we can scrap tracks like Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and Valencia for their lack of soul the better. How great is it to have had a home race. Not too many people get the opportunity to have a race right on their doorstep. Silverstone might be the British Grand Prix, but how many Brits can wake up in the morning, get out of their own bed, head out the door and 30 minutes later be at the track for the first session of the day? For the Montreal Grand Prix I don't have to worry about hotels, taxis, directions, meals or bags. I don't even have to worry too much about a crowded metro system since I get onto a train before the downtown crowd and therefore always manage to get a seat. After this years race I was home and starting to dry out 40 minutes after leaving the track. No wet clothes to stuff into suitcases.
The only downside to a home Grand Prix is that your city gets filled with people who don't seem to know how to use it. For 362 days of the year you can walk up and down escalators because everyone not walking will stand on the right and leave the left side free. But come Grand Prix weekend every American travelling with a friend will invariably come and stand side by side on an otherwise empty escalator. This used to piss me off. For one of my first Grand Prix I would tell people to get out of the way in french. I'm sure they all went home saying that the race was great but the french locals are assholes. Now I just accept it and use the stairs for the weekend. Usually I avoid downtown for the Grand Prix weekend since I usually try and avoid downtown for every other day of the year. But this year I headed down to Crescent st for a Friday night drink. Holy crap it was full. The only other time we get the road so full is for free Stevie Wonder concerts during the Jazz Festival. I was heading to the Winston Churchill pub which is about 3 doors down from the corner I arrived at. It took me 20 minutes of shuffling to get to the door! Lots of people in the city don't like the Grand Prix. I'm sure this doesn't come as a big surprise. People say that Formula 1 motor racing is ecologically irresponsible and noisy. Because the Grand Prix is in the city and accesible by public transport, though, I would venture to say that the Grand Prix is a lot greener than it appears. Sure 24 cars run around and burn off 100 litres of fuel in a couple of hours but on the other hand 100,000 people turn up at the track by Metro having not burnt much fuel at all. The circus flies around the world every couple of weeks but a hockey team flies around the continent every couple of days and F1 teams send gear by ship and truck when it's possible. I bet that keeping a hockey rink frozen at the Bell Centre would use up plenty of energy as well. Maybe the locals should embrace Formula 1 as the pillar of environmentalism and gt rid of these polluting hockey players. What a great weekend! I guess we shouldn't be surprised. I can't remember the last Montreal Grand Prix that wasn't a thriller.
The weekend started for me at about 3:30am on Friday morning. I couldn't fall back asleep so I made sure that I had all my supplies ready for the weekend and waited around to head to the track. I would have been first into my stand if I hadn't headed to the support races garage first. Unfortunately most of the teams hadn't arrived yet and there weren't many photo opportunities. I must really learn to sleep in on Fridays. For some reason the race organisers started off Friday with a qualifying session and then it was practice all day so the day was quite long. Luckily the F1 boys provided some entertainment with Vettel smacking the Wall of Champions, Kobayashi tapping the wall at a Sauber eating turn 3 and d'Ambrosio and Sutil both crashing out. Even so I was managing to nod off in practice 2. If you can fall asleep in the front row of a grandstand with Formula 1 cars ripping by you know you must be tired. In the evening I headed into Crescent street for the first time during a Grand Prix weekend. Talk about packed. It took me a good 20 minutes to move 20 metres to meet up with my friends in a bar. The weatherman screwed up on Saturday which was good as the rain stayed away. The Ferraris managed to put up a decent challenge to the marauding Vettel. D'Ambrosio joined the list of people to be excsed from the 107% rule. Why bother if they aren't going to enforce it? It didn't rain but it was windy and cold so I left the track after the Formula 1600 race but before the first Ferrari Challenge race. Sunday. Sunday was crazy. First off we had 3 excellent support races. Formula 1600, Porsche GT, and Ferrari challenge all had great racing with race long fights out the front of the field. Right after the F1 drivers parade the rain started coming down properly and as you probaly know, after 20 laps it came down in Malaysian quantities, sadly without the heat. The water was inches deep on parts of the track and I was sure they wouldn't restart. The only reason I stuck around was to chat to my racing friends who I only get to see once a year. Of course it did restart and I'm guessing you know what happened. What a great weekend. We didn't get to see the Pirelli dries tested on the tyre eating Circuit Gilles Villeneuve but we got to see a race that lots of people won't forget in a hurry. Monaco has just come and gone so what better time to blog about how to be a cheap motorsport fan. Motorsport, and especially Formula 1 racing is not cheap. It is not cheap to compete and it is not cheap to be a fan. That's why I am giving my advice to be able to watch racing while keeping your money buried deep in your pockets. Here are my tips.
1. Know your seats. I am cheap, but that doesn't mean that I buy the cheapest grandstand tickets out there. The cheap tickets are usually worth what you pay for them. On the other hand the most expensive seats are usually not worth half the price they go for. The most expensive seats in Montreal are on the main straight which gives you one of the worst views for a grandstand seat. I sit in grandstand 21 which is $100 cheaper and gives a view bettered only by grandstands 11 and 12 (I would think about moving but I watch with some good racing friends and we have front row seats locked up) 2. Don't buy things. This sounds overly cheap but everything at the circuit is a rip off. Food is expensive as well as being bad. I prepare food in advance to bring along with me, but if you are staying in hotels I would recomend finding a supermarket to save yourelf $20 and a case of food poisoning every day. The same can be doubly said for beer and water. I always take 2 bottles of frozen water and half a dozen beers in with me. After that the beer gets too hot and you have to bite the bullet and buy budweiser in $6 plastic cups. 3. Support crappy teams Anything with a Ferrari or McLaren logo on it is going to be overpriced. Why not be a Spyker, Super Aguri or HRT fan. The clothing is half the price and everyone will know that you are a real fan. I often buy clothes from the year before which they usually have in a cardboard box beside the main sales. It is also a good idea to check out merchandise online for last years clearance. I just bought 2 t-shirts from the Montreal 2010 grandprix for $10 each off the circuit Gilles Villeneuve which would have otherwise been $25. Other than those three tips I am afraid I can't defend you wallet much more. Eventually you will find that going to motor races is pretty damn expensive. If they weren't so much fun I would stay away and hitch hike out to Formula 1600 race meetings. The Spanish Grand Prix was meant to be the big test as to whether this years rules are working. A Grand Prix in Spain is not something which usually gets the heart pumping very quickly. It's a nice track in a nice country with nice weather and nice people but it always produces boring races. Personally, I prefer a race in Hungary to one in Barcelona although I think I may be in the minority there. This years rules had been introduced to get rid of boring races, so Spain was the perfect test for Pirelli, DRS and KERS.
KERS isn't really new but some teams are still struggling to get it working properly. I am not a big fan of KERS. I get the need for car companies to look a little environmentally friendly while burning 100 litres of fuel in 100 minutes. But if everyone has KERS and uses it at the same time then there is no difference in speeds and KERS turns into an expensive way to get nothing done. So far this year the only time that KERS gets interesting is when it doesn't work. Thank God that Red Bull can't get Vettels KERS hooked up for a whole race. Luckily Red Bull's KERS is about as solid as a Pirelli supersoft and the fast cars get slowed down every now and again. Spain was no different with Vettels mid race KERS breakdown being the only time that you noticed KERS was in the race. DRS seemed to be the big failure of Spain. In China and Turkey people said DRS made passing too easy but in Barcelona DRS didn't make a difference to the passing even with the longest DRS zone of the season. Although Spain had a record number of passing manouveures this year I don't recall a single DRS passing moment. Maybe instead of reducing the drag of the follwing car the FIA should look at increasing the drag of the car in front. Where there was a lot of passing in Spain was in the back of the track where passes have never taken place before. There was a simple reason for this. Pirelli tyres. There seem to be people out there complaing about the new rules saying that they are making racing too artificial. I don't recall these same people cheering loudly at processional 2 stop races around Barcelona and Valencia in years gone by. I think it is great to see drivers like Jenson Button being able to overtake people by setting them up through the corners rather than a Tilke inspired passing under breaking after a long straight. If Spain was the test then I would give the rules a passing grade but that is coming all on the back of Pirelli tyres. DRS and KERS and any other abbreviated device you can think of might as well be thrown away. Give me marbling |
TonyI am a race fan. I cannot claim to be an expert on anything, but as a fan I am apparently the most important part of the sport. So I assume everyone wants to hear what I have to say. Archives
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