The following is a race report of the Canadian Grand Prix, written by one of our lucky users who attended the event, Darwin Dali.
The weather was beautiful, but it was frigging hot and the grand stand constructed of shiny aluminum made it even worse, so I got a pretty bad sunburn. But that’s beside. It was a great experience and the atmosphere was fantastic. The first impression you get is that TV doesn’t do justice to the cars in terms of speed, noise and livery. I have to say that the new Ferrari red is just phenomenal in real life. On the other hand, the McLaren was rather dull and disappointing. Renault doesn’t look that bad on the track, but Honda still remains ugly.
The race was as you know very chaotic – I can’t remember the last time this much was happening in a single race. It already started on Friday with groundhogs crossing the track. One had the misfortune to get flattened by a car during the Ferrari challenge race. They had caught quite a few of them before the race, but evidently not all of them – this needs to be improved like many other things at this venue, not the least of them the crumbling track surface that they had to patch up with Quikrete on Sunday. And they better get their asses in gear if they don’t want to lose the event, which according to official estimates brings about $75m annually to the city.
RK’s horrific accident happened right in front of us. It was shocking to see how violently the forces were throwing the chassis and the driver around – his helmet was bobbing so badly, I was afraid we’d see him rolled off the track in a body bag! Just as an illustration: from the first impact to the final stop of the remnants of his car, you could probably fit any of the downtown high rises.
Driver performances: KR: boring, going nowhere. FM: showed some speed, but was stupid to get black flagged (so was GF, a veteran!). FA: very ragged, many mistakes and agricultural excursions, looked like a rookie in some instances – seems under pressure quite a bit. LH: flawless performance, rarely locking up, definitely was his race on a track he’s never been before. NH: solid drive as usual, never a threat for LH though. TS: good performance and an amazing pass on FA – the whole crowd was cheering.
While waiting to get to the Metro station (which took about half an hour), there was a bunch of Spaniards, obviously ardent FA fans. Despite his crap performance, they were singing ‘Alonsoooo’ and waving the Spanish flag. After a while, a Ferrari fan from the back chimed in with ‘Viva Satooo’ and everybody was cheering;-)
