For most sports, for Sunday games, you need to get up early, or, at least be there for a decent hour, not F1. The F1 race, in Singapore, doesn’t start until late – the joys of a night race, meant that we had all morning to ‘faff’ around before we headed out the door.
My ‘faffing’ was, let’s just say, well spent…OK, so I spent at least an hour playing Angry Birds in bed. The Stevensons had another visitor (our friend Mariano) crashing on the sofa, so I didn’t want to wake him, my brain had shut down to things on my to-do list (knitting, reading, letter writing) so, Angry Birds it was!
After Mariano got up, Colin S. made us breakfast (which was yum!) while I deleted over 1,000 pictures off my camera (from the practice sessions and Qualifying – do you know how hard it is to take pictures of cars, through metal mesh, travelling at almost 200mph? No? Well, take my word for it, it’s hard!)
On our way to the track, we split up from Colin S. and Mariano and headed to Zone 2, where we intended on cutting through to the seats we’d found the previous day. However, en route, we happened upon a path that the drivers were taking to ‘work’.
We discovered this when we happened upon Jaime Alguersuari (we only figured out who he was, cause being bombarded by people for pictures – and the Torro Rosso garb kinda gave it away!)
After Jaime, we got a slew of other drivers, including Jenson Button (of course, when I went to the use the facilities and wasn’t there to see him), Mark Webber and Rubens Barrichello – yes, I felt like a stalker, but, not enough to stop taking pictures – and, I wasn’t anywhere near the worst of them (some were even filming the drivers as they walked!)
After a $15 (ouch!) chicken kebab, we watched the drivers parade (where the drivers hop on to vintage convertible cars and get driven around the track to wave at all the fans) before the race started.
The race itself was pretty dull, but for a few points of interest, Lewis Hamilton (whoot!) started in 4th place, he had a poor start and a drive-through penalty (following an incident with Felipe Massa). We spent the entire race, watching him perform some excellent overtakes at various parts of the track – which was very entertaining!
Our boy Jenson *almost* won, I think he’d have had an honest-to-goodness shot at winning the race had he not hit upon traffic in the last few laps and ended up second, which isn’t a bad place to be, by any means, but he *could* have won!! Grr! Frustrating!!
Another ‘need to note’ driver, has to be the ‘wee scott’ Paul Di Resta, who drove a solid race, coming sixth – his best result to date driving in F1. We were pretty proud!
As far as the experience went, it wasn’t a bad one, but, it wasn’t all good either. Col and I had been at the track from 4pm, Col went to get a seat, I stayed to take pictures, but we’d both ‘made camp’ by 5.30pm and we were set for the race.
Or, so we thought…turns out two chicks came and planted themselves RIGHT in front of us. That pissed me off no end.
What pissed me off even MORE, were the 4 guys who hopped the railings and stole the places of the girls beside us. They were rowdy, they were drunk, they spilled beer all over the place, they pushed and shoved (Col lost it at one point) and they were just general pains in the ass, it wasn’t pretty!
After the race, the trophy presentations and the fireworks, we got a taxi pretty quickly, and, it turned out to be cheaper than the previous night. While waiting in the queue to grab a taxi, we chatted to two Aussies (a father and son), who were in town for the race, for the father’s birthday. They were a lovely couple of guys, full of craic and made the waiting time pass pretty quickly!
As you can imagine, it was straight to bed when we got home, a GP weekend really takes it out of ya!!
