The Grand Prix of India - Day Two

Saturday dawned, kind of, hazy and dark. My driver was right on time which kind of amazed me. Today we knew exactly where we going so that was pretty stress-free. I was feeling better after some sleep that's for sure and ready for a day of real racing. I left the SLR behind and carried the HD camera instead. I got to the track somewhat earlier than Friday and so had some time to wander. I took in the mighty grandstand and the new facilities of the JayPee Sports complex, the new head offices of the organization that built the track and got the GP signed and sealed. They own the whole area and are busily building apartments, a cricket stadium and other amenities hoping to attract young affluent Indians to their new Sports City which right now is a very nice race track and whole lot of dirt. A Whole Lot.

The fountain near the Buddh Circuit HQ

Still, the reaction to the Indian GP was universally good. The drivers love the track. It's quite a departure from Tilke's previous creations. Much more interesting, with good overtaking points, meaning more than two, and with multiple options for making a move due to the width of the track and the sequencing of the corners. Much less technical, and with the elevation changes, more interesting for everyone.

Button comes through…

The surface was brilliant and the way the runoffs are painted is spectacular, even more so on TV. The big grandstand is amazing. It's just huge. The stands were very comfortable with plastic seats for everyone. No bleachers. The bathrooms were surprisingly nice, by my new Indian way of perceiving things anyway. Crowd control was good for the most part. The construction was uniquely Indian in that they build this amazing looking grandstand with imposing style and modern lines, and it's actually constructed out of steel beams that look like they were found in a scrap yard somewhere, covered with rust and kind of hammered together. It all seems really solid (I checked) but it's just odd that the execution is somewhat less well conceived than the plan.

Kamui Kobayashi was not shy in Turn 4

When the F1 cars hit the track at 11am we were all pretty excited to see how everyone was going to come at it with a little experience under their belts and some need to put in a last few changes before the qualifying. The hard tires, brought as a safety measure, were pretty useless so the soft tires were an even hotter commodity than usual. The sound of the cars this year is different than years past. The high-pitched scream of the V12s and V10s are gone so it's not quite as ear-splitting as it was a few years back. Either that or my hearing is really going. I was actually quite careful this time and wore ear plugs any time the F1 cars were out. With the plugs in you can actually hear the shift points better as they are not buried by the high frequency harmonics which are making your eardrums essentially non-functional without plugs to mute it. The various forms of ignition overrun they are using to blow gas over the aero package really creates a racket. You've heard the sound when there is a misfire on a sports car and all the fuel is exploding in the exhaust, that Bra-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-p sound, only this is intentional so it's on/off and misfiring every time on purpose, so it's very regular. We really heard it as the the cars came screaming up to us at full rev then braked and dove down the hill to Turn 5, which has a long braking area and so the gas blowby is really extended on the downhill run as the drivers let off to avoid carrying too much speed into the turn at the bottom. I tried to get a feel for how the Renault front-exit exhaust was different from everyone else and didn't really hear much to separate them.

Here's the sound of Mark Webber's Red Bull coming into 4 and heading down to 5 and 6:

My seat was very good. I would have liked to have been a bit higher up though. I had a good view up the main straight, all the way to Turn 3. It was good with binocs. Plus we had the full Turn 4 right in front of us and fairly close pass-by before the cars were obscured by the downhill run. You could really see guys setting up passes from quite far away. 

As usual, there were always these glimmers that maybe Ferrari and quite possibly McLaren would give RBR a run for the pole, but it never really looked like happening. Button drove very well, very consistently, and Alonso again showed that he is one of those drivers who can get more out a bad car than most others would even bother with. While Massa was making a mess of it, trashing his suspension on the curbing, Alonso was cutting times that seemed unreasonably fast for the equipment he had to work with. Maybe that's just my Ferrari hat talking but I am always impressed with his ability to do more than you think he can.

Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton looked unbalanced all weekend, which has been the story of his year. He just looks to be trying too hard and flailing a bit. He and Schumacher are in the same boat and Button and Rosberg are making it clear that the fast times are in understanding where the car lives. I guess that's what makes Alonso so impressive. He seems to be doing the same thing that Hamilton and Schumacher are doing but he's going way faster than his teammate, not slower. I think it's unfair to say that that is because Massa is driving poorly, even if it's true.

In the end Vettel did his usual job of letting McLaren enjoy a few seconds of glory before relegating them to P2. He was just driving along in his race car on his race track as fast as he can and lo and behold, he's faster than everyone else. Just the way it's going right now. The individual aspects of the tracks are almost a non-issue.

Tire warming hubs!

I spent a lot of time reading the F1 program during breaks and they actually have a lot of good stuff in there and really recent, too. Printed into the glossy bits are full diagrams of the exact changes the teams have brought to the current race. Really detailed stuff about wing-ducting and so on. Very Cool. 

One other thing I began to see as I watched the support races was that guys were trying the inside line at Turn 4 and getting past if they were way faster or surprised the leading driver. (Huh? Who gets surprised there?) Most times though the leading car blocked the inside forcing the overtaking car to the outside. What people were figuring out was that you can carry speed through the outside of the corner and then use it to dive down the hill and get inside at Turn 5. The bad news is, if you don't make it, well, you're going to have trouble. Uh. Oh.

Attendance was about the same for Saturday as Friday, though people on Friday seemed to be random people who got the tickets from someone who couldn't make it and Saturday it was the ticket holders, most of whom showed up just in time for the qualifying session. The crowd was more mixed than any I had seen, certainly at an F1 race, but really anywhere. There were old-timers and kids, men and women, mostly Indians but the ubiquitous white-skinned English who will go anywhere, and take their wives, to see an F1 race.  As everywhere in India the contrasts (by western markers) are a little bewildering. From an Indian man in his 70s, wearing dress pants, a western shirt and an aged Renault F1 hat, to his grandson in jeans and a Force India flag, to the young women in tight fitting waxed jeans and halter tops walking behind a man and a woman in a kurta pajama and sari respectively. It's what some people wear and they wear it everywhere. I wear Levis, they wear pajamas and saris. It's just odd (for me) to see people traipsing through the dust in a sari with sandals and a Red Bull hat. These aren't people who are cluelessly mixing their messages. India is a mixed message. The whole country is the original mash-up. 

Meet the New Boss, the same as the Old Boss

So again, I stayed a little late, caught a bus that was a little too full and spent the eventful ride back to the parking lot standing crammed in the aisle while the driver did his best to impress everyone by driving at blinding speed (for a bus) while weaving through the slower cars and bikes (!!!) and laying on his mind-bendingly loud electronic horn all the way. He seemed to be enjoying himself quite a lot!

I got to the lot with a little more shake in my legs than I had previously had and walked right out of the bus where it had gotten stuck in traffic and was almost run over by… my own driver. I just got in like it was all part of the plan and we were on our way back to the hotel once again. I still don't know how that happened exactly and neither apparently does he.