Though Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is less than two miles away from my hotel (as the crow flies), I had to take the Metro to get there. As I walked towards the station, I noticed this billboard. It's Heidfeld's #9 Renault. Must be a good sign.
I decided to get General Admission tickets for the weekend. Essentially, you get to see the track from anywhere you want, just not from any of the grandstands. During P1 on Friday, it was already pretty crowded. Finding a good view was difficult-- because of the chain link fences and because of my fellow man. This was about as good as it got view-wise. The following pictures were taken at the Hairpin.
It took a lot of attempts to catch the cars in time with my camera.
The Renault's exhaust was really distinctive. It sounded like a farting semi-automatic. I listened to it as it passed me, with one of my earplugs taken out. It felt like a plunger forcefully pushing my ear drum. Ouch.
Between P1 and P2, I decided to do a little exploring. Off in the distance, I noticed a bunch of tractor trailers parked next to each other. I had to snoop. As I approached the trucks, I saw a golf cart towing this, Alan Jones's Williams. I stumbled into a treasure trove, and the place was deserted.
I've apparently hit the mother lode. It's the paddock for the Historic GP cars, Ferrari Challenge cars, and Porsche IMSA GT3 cars.
These Porsche support scooters were cool.
The classic F1 cars were everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Here's Mario Andretti's JPS Lotus.
Climax was reached with this, Gilles Villeneuve's Ferrari. It looked so basic, and unsafe. It's just a souped up, a very souped up, go kart. I was careful not to drool all over it, especially when I stood a little too close to it for an overhead shot of the cockpit.
Jody Scheckter's Walter Wolf.
F1 personnel were ferried around in these mini buses.
Four dudes were frantically mounting and balancing hundreds of Pirelli tires under this tent for the Ferrari Challenge. Just watching them made my back sore.
As I continued exploring the track, I bumped into P and M. I met this couple on my flight from San Francisco. When I saw them at the track, they told me they were not going to stay for P2, so they gave me one of their Grandstand 11 tickets. Score!
After spending P2 with this view of the Senna Curve, I simply could not go back to the masses and stand on the grass. I mean, come on.
After P2, I avoided the Metro and tried to walk back to town via a bridge. Bad idea. The bridge does not connect directly to downtown Montreal. The detour took two hours. My feet were aching. And I was schvitzing like a pig.
I barely had time to freshen up at the hotel before I ran back out to catch Joe Saward's "An Evening With" event at 7 p.m. It was entertaining, informative, and should be an integral part of every F1 weekend. Joe reserved the top floor of a bar and about 60 fans attended. People essentially just asked him random F1 questions and he answered every one of them. Saward is a really good story teller. What sets him apart from other journalists is his ability to explore and interweave his subjects' personalities and motives into his stories. My only complaint: A jerk hogged the session and didn't really give other attendees much of a chance to ask questions.
I asked Saward to go in depth about why he thinks Renault is imploding. His answer: There is no leader; there is no money; and though Eric Boullier is competent, he is inexperienced. Plus, Petrov and Heidfeld are not as talented as Kubica.
Though Joe was interesting, I was beat by 10 p.m. He stayed on to answer more questions from diehard fans. I left to catch some z's.
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