A Suite View… Rain On and Sunshine Lollipops Press on regardless I have been trying to make a concentrated effort of keeping my endless piles of notes from being here in some kind of order. Forget it, a waste of time. The best part of any race for me is improvisation. Sitting in the press room is boring, I just can’t find the patience to sit and write… just now I looked up in time to see three Porsche SuperCup cars run in to each other. So much for looking at my laptop. I think I will head down to the Paddock Club and get some food. Two triple cheese, side order of fries Regardless of how I feel, the whole paddock club gig is seduction. The food, the wine, the women… it is like having the scene at Monaco following the cars from country to country. Most of the invited guests are not the type that would lean on a fence during practice or qualifying and be impressed. They want to be sitting and viewing it all from above while an efficient staff caters to their whims. Yeah so, what’s wrong with that? Nothing I suppose, except that isn’t the whole reason to be here have something to do with a race? Well, as track conditions showed, it was wet. Rain mean delays and might as well be comfortable. Pit Balk See the nice man with the sign. Pay attention to the man with the sign. The man is smiling because if you do not pay attention to the words on the sign, he will hurt you. The pit walk is one of F1’s more bizarre visuals. All these well dressed and well healed people being shuffled out of the paddock and down pit lane. Think of this, what if a bus full of poverty stricken families were given a roped off tour of Nordstroms? Our Man in F1 Good old Nishy, he has the resiliency of a true champion. Allan refuses to let the circumstances and politics get to him and those on the inside expect him to stay in F1 for 2004. His runs during the test session showed him to be on the pace of his teammates and it should be pointed out that in many of the past sessions, Alonso and Trulli are on lighter fuel loads. McNish knows what he was hired to do and his set-ups are often on full tanks. To the casual observer, it will show on the time sheets. Nishy will never be the quickest and knows it, but he is one of the smartest and intelligent human feedback is still a requirement in even F1, the most technological of motorsport. So off now to see what BMW is doing, some gig at 6 PM to announce what they are going to do in the U.S. |
Kerry Morse |
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