The Grand Prix of India - Day One

The view from Star Stand 3 East. The track is beyond the armco. Main Stand in the distance on the left.

After a late night arrival in Delhi, I was pretty nervous about Friday morning but I knew that I really had all day to figure it out and that I would need that experience to make Saturday and Sunday go well. Boy was I right about that! 

The driver was there at 730am on schedule. The first good sign. I showed him the map and where I thought we should go. He appeared to understand so off we went. I kind of knew where we should be going and I felt we were headed wrong at one point, but that turned out to be the detour for the taxes and soon we were headed right again. We began to see the signs for the track after a bit and so now the process of figuring out how to get dropped off began. I thought there would be a place for taxis and hired cars to drop us right at the track, but that turned out to be impossible. They only let people with parking passes onto the access roads. No-one had bought these passes because they were expensive and most people planned to take busses. As a result the organizers changed the rules, disallowed any access to the track without a pass and then set up a free shuttle from the distant parking lot to cover people like me. They didn't tell anyone they were doing this, but we eventually figured it out after being turned away three times and then following our noses. You really learn the meaning of faith when your driver, with whom you share no common language, drives around the police barricade onto a dirt track that parallels the freeway, drives in the dirt for 5 miles, cuts through a culvert under the highway and comes out on the other side pretty close to where we need to be, drives over the curb and onto the highway, then off the off ramp and into the desired parking lot. Points are scored. There was a free shuttle bus leaving every 5 minutes. Terrific. I did my best to insure that my driver would be at this same place at 6pm and climbed aboard the nearest bus.

The Main Stand seen from the Bus Lot

It's a long way to the track. It took easily 30 minutes and then we were stuck under a bridge by a clot of busses all trying to get through at once. This is typical. I had a nice chat with a kid from Kolkata who had been an F1 fan for several years, maybe four, which was a good chunk of his life, and was of course really excited to be seeing F1 live. No more so than I though. Like many I met, he was mightily impressed that I had come from California! The bus dumped us out at one point and we got a view of the mighty mounds Hermann Tilke had built to give the track elevation changes. Impressive. They stand about 250 feet off the ground level on both ends of the so-called Main Straight (as opposed to the Pit Straight) and on the south end at the big carousel, giving a big climb from the start line up through turn 2 to turn 3 at the top, then downhill to the middle of  the main straight then back up again to turn 4, over the top, down into the chicanes at 5, 6, 7 then 8 and 9, then uphill again through the carousel (10,11,12) and down through 13,14,15 and 16 back to the start line level. 

Next we had to find the circuit shuttle which was just getting running. That took me around to my seat at the East End just at the end of the Main Straight. I got through security and found my seat. It was about 1020am and although I had just missed the first car on track, which was Karthikeyan, I had not missed much due to a delay caused by the predictable dog on the track. One imagines that this poor animal was deliberately released to echo the one thing most rich westerners now associate with India: the slumdog.

DiResta probing the limits of Turn 4

It was quite cool to watch the drivers trying to figure out just how fast they could come into the corner at the end of the straight. It was the very first moments of seeing the track for everyone so no-one really knew where the limit was. Lots of tire smoke resulted, which was actually why I had chosen the seats I had. I knew that something would happen there both in practice and the race. Most of the top drivers were careful to approach the limit bit by bit. The Usual Suspects did light up the tires though, most notably, Kobayashi, Senna, Massa and DiResta.

Our view of Alonso's long walk on Friday

Bruno Senna gets it all wrong 

Alonso hit the chicanes a little hard and tore up his Ferrari in the morning session. Those curbs would prove costly to The Prancing Horses over the weekend. Right from the start you could tell that whatever experience the guys like Alonso, Button, Hamilton and Schumacher would bring to a new track, it really would be no match for the combination of the Red Bull chassis and the prodigious talent of Herr Vettel. He was all over it from the very start. His car was balanced, his lines true and consistent. He made it look easy the way Prost used to do. He was simply faster and he didn't look fussed to make it happen.

I spend the mid-day touring the track by foot and by bus. When the crowd got heavier the busses got jammed. India-jammed, with people hanging off the sides and crushed into the bus like twelve sardines in a five fish can. Once I  literally got pushed out the door because I refused to hold ground like everyone else was doing when kids and grannies were getting squeezed. So sometimes I walked. I needed the exercise and the atmosphere anyway.

Just outside the F1 Village where Swag is King

Sadly you can't enter the trackside anywhere expect the two "picnic areas" which are seatless spectator areas and even there only with a ticket for that area. Actually these looked to be pretty good spots and were underpopulated all weekend even though they are the least expensive tickets. So there were no other vantage points for me to enjoy or to take pictures other than my actual seat, so I headed back there. After a couple of sessions though, I had pretty much shot everything I could think of so I just watched after that. I did manage to talk my way into the area where the merchandise was being sold. That was odd. Don't they want my money? I thought that was the whole point! I got myself a nice Team Lotus hat and things for everyone who helped me get to Delhi by fronting for tickets, calling drivers services, booking hotels at the last moment, etc. I've long ago learned the lesson to get all your stuff on Friday so you don't have to fight the crowds for the left-over medium sized shirts on Sunday.

Felipe Massa's Ferrari and Sebastian Buemi's Toro Rosso jousting in Turn 4

Session Two was in much better light as the haze had burned off and the times really started falling. I noticed Schumacher taking a different line than everyone else which is really typical of him trying to find a way to go faster. He was wrong this time though and his times were not competitive. After about 20 minutes of this he started following everyone else's pattern of acceleration out of Turn 4 and his speed increased by about 3 tenths a lap. Oh well. Hamilton, Button and the Ferraris were really trying hard all session. The Mercedes looked significantly slower. They just aren't in the same league as the other three. Schummi is overdriving to try and regain his form and that's why Nico is beating him. 

Nico Rosberg's Mercedes

There were some practice and qualifying for the support races but they were not very interesting truthfully, plus I was dying from only four hours of sleep and a whole pile of stress from travel, language-free communication and general disorientation, so I called it a day and set off to see if I could get home to the hotel. I did hang around a little to let the first crush go and take the second series of busses. (Had to guess where they would be but guessed right!) I managed to call my driver successfully and he found an English speaker and we hooked up with very little trouble. After a long drive through Delhi I was back at the hotel where I was unable to connect to the net and put all my extra knowledge into my Fantasy League picks. Rats! Oh well, reality was better than fantasy anyway!