Day One of the Australian Grand Prix.....
Pig heaven is not the phrase..... Enjoyed the day immensely from start to finish and for one its me who's still buzzing at 8pm while all around me are flagging!
Best of all we all enjoyed the day, Fairy in particular is enjoying her first GP as much as I am. We are struggling with our respective ailments as much as ever, Wayne's back is bad, Fairy's tonsils are torture and my asthma is strangely troublesome despite the warm weather.... Hey ho!
After some heavy queuing action we make it across the pit straight bridge for the pit lane walk. Previous experience of these episodes involve a cast of countless pushy arseholes and even more countless elbows and backpacks in the face. Not today, and not in this fine country. Politeness rules, and people here somehow have grasped the concept of there being people other than themselves in today's world. I'm beginning to love this country. We shuffle past the very heart of Formula One, Scuderia Ferrari. I don't know whether to bow, or pray, or to take as many photos as I can. Tifosi? Me? Not till they have a driver I love as much as the red cars themselves........
And then a series of practice sessions throughout the day, notable points being us totally missing the whistoric session and then walking, purely by chance, right into the muster point for these prehistoric beauties of racing. I'm six feet away from a Maserati 250F, Bugattis, Lotuses and Coopers I don't know the number of and really don't care. Fangio, Moss, Ascari, Brabham, Hill, Clark, Hawthorne and all the other forgotten giants of their era drove these beasts in cotton overalls, leather helmets, dirty faces and winning smiles, heroes of a bygone age which still to this day mean so much to me when they have no reason to. Born too late maybe? Maybe......... Or maybe, just for once, I know what's what and fully appreciate what's Been gifted to me today. Fairy asks me about Fangio and who he was, and I can't find the right words to describe the Great Man. Talent and skill, honour and humility by the truckload.. In a world where a top driver is now a face, a lifestyle, a brand, we'll never, ever the likes of him again. Progress? My arse.
Back to the modern action and we see v8 supercars, Carerra GT3's, seventies Le Mans sports cars, all sorts of interesting machinery roaring past our eyes along the pit straight for the remainder of the day. Our last spectacle is the Ultimate Speed Comparison, in which a road car (albeit an eff-off fast one) a v8 supercar ( for this read Australian version of NASCAR, or something thereabouts) and an F1 car hammer round the circuit, handicap-fashion, with a view to all crossing the line at the same time. The players being no less than Casey Stoner and Mick Doohan from the two-wheeled side of my petrolhead fantasy world, the evergreen David Coulthard from the four-wheeled side. Contrived? Absolutely. After 5.3km of Albert Park tarmac they cross the line, virtually together. Brilliant? Even more so.
We round off the day talking to the maddest man in Melbourne. He has a flying rabbit on his shoulder. I am not joking. I ask if the pet shop was out of parrots when he went there. He doesn't get it. He produces video evidence that his rabbit does indeed fly. It does. In a helicopter. We make our excuses and leave, as fast as we can....
Roll on tomorrow, for once, great things can do nothing but get better!
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