Montreal: Thunder, lightning, rain and racing
Montreal delivered an amazing race weekend on the Notre Dame Island. We started with a pit lane walk that included free food and drink (take note Melbourne), driver interviews and a track drive – we we witnessed some great pit lane acton. The practice races on Friday were hard work for the drivers and fans alike. The rain fell in monsoon proportions and disrupted P1 and so P2 had 30 minutes added to try and make up for the loss of track time. Saturday P3 and qualies were all in the wet! The rain meant that all the cars were out all the time and that a lot of the upgrades were only tested in the wet. Qualies threw some curve balls with Williams and Haas making great choices and getting unusually high placings – P1 for Albon in Q2 but failing to get a time in Q3 and Haas placing P2 for the race until penalties kicked in. There were a lot of drivers penalised for impeding others during the qualifiers – this was due to nearly all the cars being out at the same time as well as road conditions and Ferraris. There were plenty of crashes too, with Sainz and Russell hitting the wall, Stroll also had a tap and Magnussen and De Vries almost crashing and driving off together down the escape chute! Ferrari did their usual strategy blow up in quallies but seem to get their act together for the race (mind you no rain or big decisions needed!). Exciting stuff!
We were seated on the finishing straight near the start line (a first for us) and this meant we saw all the build up before the race, with the cars and drivers right in front of us. It was very cool watching the set up of the grid before the race and seeing the drivers prepare just a few feet away from us. Also the engine noise was super loud adding to the excitement!
Fans who have been to the circuit before knew the “loopholes” of the fencing and as soon as the race was over a “hole” miraculously appeared in the fence and fans were streaming through this, over the barrier and onto the track. It took us a split second for us to go from censorial to actually joining them!!
An amazing and very different experience being so close to the action before, during and after the race!
