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Sitting in my tent hoping for the compact rain will end.
Was at the thursday event yesterday (in more or less tropical dump weather).
I lined up for the pit lane walk and wisely followed the advice from a young italian fan next to me. Just stay put, he said. The late comers will suffer… At that time a decent que of some hundreds where there and it was around 2 hours before the gates to pits opened. As an experienced rock concert visitor (with a stubbard mind) I held my stand. The big advantage was that we could walk through the full pit without any problem and did get a good look of all the garages. Later the walking area was totally crowded and outside the Ferrari pit totally blocked. All the lae comers eager to see anything.
Anyway, the pits had prepared their appearances. Some of the cars was worked over by engineers. A lot of wings, extra car bodies etc. was exposed in front. And the Ferrari garage had a bit more of course :).
A couple of drivers (later was some assambled autograph session with all present drivers but skipped that seeing the crowd in the pit lane) was in garages. I saw Kimi, Hülkenberg and got a nice close up of Palmer instead of an autograph (some of them did autograph writing at the pits). Anyway, my experience of the pit walk was far better than it was for those who didn’t line up 2 hours before – if you ever will be in this situation you should follow the advice to que for 2 hours :).
The atmosphere as such is great and I have to mention that an icon like Alonso suddenly sat at a bench right in front of me with some friends. Glad to see that people gave him the respect of NOT (surprisingly enough) hustle him with getting close and taking selfies. Had some bad luck there as I just had trouble with the big sausage sandwish and dripping mustard. Had no chance of even touch my camera to get a nice pic. When I finally could wash my hands he was gone…
Bad news today is that compact rain all day is expected. As I drove for 14 hours wed-thu I had to take an extra nap today and will miss the first training session. Will drive my 30km for the second 14.00 and hope the rain stops. To me an extra obsticle as I use a big lens and exposing a camera in heavy rain (and everything else you need) is a bit of a pain…
Was also informed (my italian friend from the que) that on race day you better take your stand around 8.00am if you aim for the better ones. Today is not a problem I guess, not that many will go for training sessions in rain. Tomorrow it might be some bad weather as well, but probably a bit more people. Racing day will be sunny so I better get up around 05.00am in the tent that morning to plan for a as-perfect-as-possible-experience.
Shot some photos yesterday. Was walking around the different sections and the old banking. Would pass some here if I could but pics are in RAW-format right now and not light enough for web-use. Perhaps when I get home.
Turned out to be some dairy here (hope you don’t mind) but it was easy enough, sitting in a chair in my tent with a macchiato beside and rain on the roof. Nice to have a un-stressed morning and slept well after those around 1200 km last day ;).
Anyone experienced how frequent and steady the shuttle bus traffic from and to the official P-spots is? Does it run smoothly and frequent even hours before and after the race? I’m living at a camping 30km north (track camp was over booked) and as I guess it would be awful to drive around by myselt without any knowledge of the surroundings I found the official P-spots with shuttle would be the least exhausting alternative. Comments anyone?
