Formula 1 U.S. Grand Prix

All I can say is, what a weekend. The Lovely Mina and I headed back to Cleveland for a good friend's wedding on Friday, took in an Indians game on Saturday (a loss to the Braves) and then made an over and back trip to Indianapolis for the Formula 1 U.S. Grand Prix. It was 5.5 hours each way from my parents' house to the Speedway, but absolutely worth it.

The race tickets were my present to Mina for her birthday. On our first date, 5 years ago now, we watched an F1 race, actually, and she has been known to stay up until 5 am on Sundays to catch a race from the far corners of the globe.

We got to the Speedway about 2 hours before the start of the race and watched the drivers parade around the course in vintage cars. Our seats were in the Paddock section, which is under cover, along the front straight, and with a nice view of the pits. We were probably 400 meters from the start/finish line, so had a nice view (though Indy is an old enough structure that there are all manner of obstructed view seats). It was pretty darn hot, so being under cover was a blessing, and this Oil Can of ice cold Fosters certainly made me happy.

The start of the race was as impressive as anything I have seen or heard, to tell the truth. I felt like my head was going to split open as the cars took off from their standing start. It was so disorienting, in fact, that after the first lap ended I ran off and splurged $2 on some earplugs. Maybe the single best investment I have ever made from an immediate ROI point of view! I am not sure how well the intensity of the moment comes off, but here's the short video we took of the start.

At the end of the day, McLaren's Lewis Hamilton continued his unprecedented rookie season with a 2nd win. He has yet to finish a race below his spot on the starting grid and has won from the pole in the last two races. Isn't it interesting how in sports someone always comes along to help us forget the retirement of a legend? I was set for a reasonable boring year of Fernando Alonso dominating with Michael Schumacher having hung up his racing shoes, but Hamilton's performances have given me something really impressive to cheer about this summer. Hopefully he keeps it up.

With the race in the books, we did battle with the other 100,000+ people trying to get out of Indy and all I can say is that I absolutely cannot imagine what a hellish experience traffic there would have been in the days when 400,000+ showed up for the Indy 500. My hats off to all of you who were ever in that traffic jam or who are planning on sitting in traffic after the Brickyard 400 next month.

Anyway, it was a fantastic weekend and my next goal is to go to an F1 race in some more exotic locale. Indy is full of lore, but somehow it doesn't seem to compare to, say, Monaco or even the Nurburgring. Anyway, here's one last picture of Mina with the Pagoda in the background.