European F1. A dream now a reality. The first will be the Spanish grand prix at the circuit de catalunya. A track that doesn't produces the best "racing" but it is a track that has sweeping fast corners that really shows off how good and fast these cars are. I know the track through many years of playstation, and the drivers know every single centimeter since they test here during the winter, doing over 130 laps in a day (grand prix distance is 66 laps). This race wasn't the reason I came back to Europe. Monaco was, it just turned out that the Spanish GP was on one week earlier.
So online I went in search of grand prix tour packages. One jumped out at me, motoexpress. A UK based tour company that organizes your accommodation, transfers to the track and whatever ticket you would like. They even have breakfast and dinner included in the accom price. So instead of staying in Barcelona and getting public transport to the track with every other Manuel and Sergio and the occasional Juanita, the package was perfect for what I needed and more. Communication was perfect and the booking process was easy. We were based about an hour away from the track, and the opposite direction of Barcelona so traffic wasn't a problem. Motoexpress has the experience and know how to make everything smooth. That's enough of a plug! Honestly if I was doing more races that they are covering and I had the money I have no hesitation booking with them again.
The track. Wow! Coming from the highway you can see it in the distance. The excitement builds for me, I'm actually going to the Spanish GP! It's hard to think that I'm here, bit like the first time I explored Europe. But this is it, the circuit de catalunya. The stands stick out like a sore thumb. Especially the main grandstand! It's like a colosseum of motor racing. When our bus arrives, our guide explains how to get to the track and the usual standards of Friday at track. Lenient to zero standards really, in Australia they have a person on each grandstand permitting only pass holders on to the designated seats. Friday, Spanish GP you can walk and sit anywhere. This is something should be encouraged throughout the world. There is never that many people on the first day of a motor racing event, so open it up for everyone. You feel you get great value for money that way too. I walked in with the screams of engines that can only be F1. My guide took me up to the stand along the straight. What a view, you can see the cars exit pit lane then look left, turn one and two, straight ahead you can see the exit of turn five and entry to six and seven. If you want a great place to view motor racing, go to this track! I had one hour left of morning practice, so off I go straight to the outside of turn one. They come barreling down the straight at over 300kph, brake heavily to a series of fast corners. A right, left, followed by a long 180 degree right. The hills are heavily banked so you can clearly get a good shot of the cars through this section. I love it. All races I have been to as a spectator have been street circuits, high safety fences and no hills to be able to get a clear photograph without the safety fences in the way. There are ways around it, but the conditions have to be right. But here, at this track, you can see everything! I'm constantly smiling behind the camera, the smell of the fumes, the sound of the screaming 2.4L V8s as they produce over 700bhp, revving limited to 18,000 RPM, in cars that weigh a minimum 650kg (with the driver). They look great without fences to ruin my view, and the shots are good too. I'm so happy to be able to get clean crisp photographs of one of the things I'm most passionate about. Talk about a match made in heaven! Me, photography and F1!!! All the time, I keep saying, this is so worth it. I wish Liz or someone I know went along to experience this with me. I like to share my passions with people I care about. Liz says she likes fast cars, well there was no racing cars faster around is track than F1. They are the pinnacle of motorsport and will stay that way for a long time. The one thing I know is that F1 doesn't disappoint me. If I turn up so will they.
The track is quite big, but it backs onto itself a few times, so you don't have to walk far to get a view from another corner. It was so good to have the opportunity to go pretty much anywhere and sit wherever you want. Some places had views of 5-6 corners, and there is always a screen to view it from. You can stand in places and can see the different driving lines, styles and who is quick and where they are quick. And you can see the drivers struggle. Melbourne you may see them for 2-3 corners and they are pretty similar kinds of corners 90 degree or 90 degree that open up on exit. And in Melbourne there's only three of the sixteen corners that are fast, challenging corners. By having this viewing freedom, it then opened up different types of photography styles that I could try, that I've wanted to try. Still couldn't get a braking blur shot with a locked up wheel, I'll try that one in Monaco. At the circuit they have a big leader board, it's like a massive totem pole with 10 places and next to it the number of the car. Mark Webber is no.2 this year, and it was good to see at the end of the first two practice sessions he was P1 for both. So certainly a good start! On the friday morning I got to see the next Aussie in F1, Daniel Ricciardo. He's a real talent and is pushing very hard to get a drive in the second Red Bull team (Torro Rosso). He was good too, he was faster than the other Torro Rosso driver to which his times are always compared to. Two weekends in a row he's been quicker than the other driver. Very interested to see how he goes at Monaco, he certainly knows the track, he won there in a junior category last year! For all three days at the track e weather has been prefect, not a cloud in the sky and there is numerous trees and shaded areas if you want to escape the heat. Saturday morning practice and the grandstands and member areas are monitored by stewards. Couldn't get to one area, which I thought was a pelouse (grassed hill area for anyone) but in fact it was for circuit member only. So I sat in between two corners, and I knew in this section the drivers would be activating their DRS (drag reduction system). It's a lever or button on the steering wheel that moves a section of the rear to flatten out..... To explain it, when you're driving along and stick your arm out the window, tilt your hand down, the force of the wind pushes your hand down, flatten it out and it just cuts through the air with ease. It reduces drag and therefore increases the speed. This is a new element in F1 and I was very excited to see it in action. I know I know, lame huh. Most things in F1 are hidden and under the body work, so to see this in person was something cool, well for me anyway. Saturday morning practice is when the drivers get a chance to fine tune their cars before qualifying. Webber did a hard tyre run , then a soft tyre run, and Sebastian Vettel did the same, though his one run on soft tyres topped Webber's time by.08 of a sec. So it was close between them. Webber doesn't seem to have the form that Vettel has at the moment. Mark has been quicker on occasions in practice but qualifying has been outdone 4-0. Advantage Vettel. According to Red Bull team boss Christian Horner, Mark has been struggling to come to grips with the new Pirelli tyres. I'm sure soon enough he'll find the sweet spot, start getting poles and fighting for wins.
Qualifying - Saturday afternoon. I went to the grandstand in which I had booked with my tour, and boy am I glad I booked that one. It was a packed stand, probably more in one grandstand than a whole crowd at a Gold Coast United home game! A view of six corners, all of them with a different approach, one uphill, one downhill, off camber and a dinky chicane, noisy, you better bloody believe it! Ear plugs? Nah, you get used to it anyway. It's like a rock concert, go away with your ears ringing! And with the wind sweeping towards the grandstand the smell of fumes just brings a smile to my face. It's not a coughing, bad smell but the pure racing fuel burn smell. Whether it's F1 or even the Indycar/V8s ethanol fuel its a great smell for motorsport enthusiasts - aka rev heads. If you are to dodge a bad fuel smell it would be top fuel dragsters, that stuff burns your eyes, nose, lungs and the engine sound is penetrating, and not the oh good let's experiment kind of penetrate :-D sorry I had to put that one in!! There are three stages to F1 quali, Q1, Q2 and Q3. All 24 cars do at least one run for 20mins in Q1, slowest 7 get eliminated. Q2 next pretty much the same thing but with 15mins and Q3, the top ten fight it out for pole position (start the race at the front). Mark Webber won from pole last year, let's hope he can do it again. Tyres and reliability became an issue and one of the slow teams cars made it into Q2. That session was a little bit more straight forward, with both Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bulls getting through. The last part of qualification. All teams are now opting to run once instead of the previous twice to save tyres for the race. So you get a good look at each driver go through the 6 corners I can see and see who's quicker. The red bulls were clearly quicker through there, and they were a second quicker than Lewis Hamilton in third. I watched Mark's run closely and the first corner that is in our view, he ran fractionally wide, missing his apex, at that point I had given up, it's not much of a mistake but with how close Vettel and Webber have been all weekend it might be the undoing. And it wasn't, P1 for Mark, .200 sec quicker that Vettel, it looked like pole position for Webber. There was still the McLarens and Ferraris to run their quali laps, but seeing the pace of the red bull all weekend it was going to be Mark or Seb to get pole. Alonso did a great job, he hit every apex and exit perfectly and ended up fourth, splitting the two McLarens. I knew Mark had clinched it when they were showing Vettel pull his steering wheel out of his car. Finally, pole position, Mark's first of the year, and the first I have seen live! I was happy, but I knew that you don't win races on Saturday. But you start from the best spot.
An early rise and an early bus for race day. Slowly we've worked ourselves to an 8am departure for the track. They are predicting big crowd numbers, though I don't think it eventuated with only high to mid 70,000 crowd. A shame really, but I was there, so that's all that mattered. Lather up with sunscreen again. You can tell who the brits are, they are either very white or very red! Watch the GP3 and GP2 races from grassy hill where I watched Saturday morning practice. You get to see them coming down the straight and then not as they turn into the first corners. But the bit that was visible we saw a big crash. A few guys squeezed each other for room until there was none, BANG! Race over in a few hundred metres. After applauding the GP2 I went off to my grandstand to get settled in and lather up again. I did get stopped by a one armed drunk Spanish guy who had to tell me why he loved Australia so much! How could he tell, well the fact that I was wearing the Australian flag as a cape would do it! He was very tipsy and didn't speak to much English, but he made a good point. Cities are shit, too pretentious, but the rest was beautiful, especially W.A. And he loved the people too, so if you're reading this and are an Australian, this one armed Spanish guy, loves you! Awwww!
I pop myself in my seat, lather up again. The driver parade is coming along. Each driver siting in an old pre WWII car waving to the crowd. Sebastian gave his hat away to a marshal, Mark had some fun gesturing comically with the same marshal. He saw looked up and pointed up to me on the stand with the Aussie flag fluttering in the breeze, it was a moment we had..... It wasn't that special, no blushing from me, just wanted to show there is an Aussie up here in a see of red support for Alonso. It's good to have drivers acknowledge the crowd, sometimes they are chatting away to the driver and don't even look up. So one hour to go before it's race time. We get to see the cars briefly while they do one-two laps before they line up on the grid. This is a time that drivers can do system checks and make sure everything is bolted on the car properly. The festivities die down on pit lane as the 5 minute board is displayed. Then the drivers set out on the warm up lap. This is the final lap before the race starts. The drivers swerve back and forth, generating heat in their tyres, then performing burnouts again to get the rear tyres hot and sticky. From where I'm sitting you can see the grid from the reflection of the windows on the main grandstand. All eyes are on the big screens. One of the guys on our tour said at the start, the noise was so bad he had to close his eyes and put his fingers in his ears, and the noise of 24 formula one cars revving was too much to handle. As each light goes on the drivers select a gear, increase the revs to a ideal point, and wait....... As the lights go out, dump the clutch paddle behind the steering wheel, go up the gears (also behind the steering wheel) and for Mark, check your mirrors. Circuit de Catalunya has a very long straight so anyone behind Mark can get a slipstream and therefore and advantage. Vettel gets in behind Mark, Mark covers the inside line, so Vettel goes to the outside, out of no where home tow hero Alonso comes from the dirty side of the second row and gets Mark and Vettel for the lead into the first corner. The crowd goes berserk! The home town hero in the lead! Vettel manages to stay othe outside of Mark and keep the inside line into the next corner. For Webber fans, fuck it! Shit, bum, fuck, bugger! For Mark being behind Vettel means that his strategy had changed. It ended up being a great race, and in our section of track we go to see a lot of action and overtaking, and some bad attempts too! Disappointment, a little bit. But that was the best result I have seen from Mark in person. So fourth it was. Always mid way through the race you start to think, it's about to end. This race weekend is all about to end. And normally for me it's oh well, see you next year. You try to hold on to the feelings and the excitement of the event by traveling on the track after the race in Melbourne, pointing out oh that's where that happened, that's where they crashed, is there any pieces left around? And then walk to the start/finish straight, check out the colour, spirit and fanfare of F1. I still have that ringing, only slightly now when it's really quiet.
For me, it's not oh well, next year. It's oh yeah, bring on next week......
MONACO
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