Rain delays at motor racing are pretty nasty things. At Montreal, the stands have no cover, so you are going to get wet. You never know when or if cars are going to get back on the track, and you are going to get cold.
My first rain delay was at the last Champ Car race held at Montreal. I was sitting in Grandstand 24 when the skies opened up after a couple of laps. Luckily, there is some shelter behind the stands and it was there that everyone hung around and waited for developments. As per usual, noone bothered to tell any fans what the hell was going on. After about an hour of waiting for hyperthermia to set in, I gave up and went home. Thankfully, the whole day was red flagged and the race was held on the Monday. Not having much in the way of serious employment at the time, I was able to spend a Monday afternoon in a half empty stand watching the race.
My next chance to become thoroughly drenched came at my second Nascar nationwide race. As far as I know, this was the first time that Nascar had brought rain tyres to a race, so when the rain started to fall it looked like we were in for a show. Apparently however, it does not rain in the States and the rest of the race was filled with American drivers driving into walls. I would have still gone home happy if Marcus Ambrose were to win the thing. Unfortunately he got caught out by pit timing and found himself second as the red flag was pulled out. Byt this time the water was pouring down too heavily even for rain tyres. Grandstand 1 is a pretty fickle mob, so there weren't many of us left. I had managed to be allowed to share a sheet of plastic that some fans had brought. Underneath this leaky contraption we waited for anything to happen. Once again though, the fans were left in the dark untill the end. Nascar eventually called the race and we had to settle with watching the celebrations on the big screen despite the fact that they were taking place right in front of us behind closed garage doors.
You probably remember the final rain delay I had to endure. The 2011 Montreal Grand Prix was a crazy day. The rain started during the driver parade and kept on intensifying untill it was biblical. The water on the track at the hairpin was at least 6 inches deep. The one and only reason I stuck around was to talk to my friends in the stand who I wouldn't see for another year. There was no way that I could see then restarting the race. But, you know the rest. When the cars came back out, we thought that they might run behind the safety car untill they had 75% race distance and could call it a race. Instead, we got the race of the season.