Trip to US Grand Prix at Indy

Watching the US Grand Prix race live at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was one of the items in my checklist of 'to-do sports activities'. So, was planning to go & watch the US Grand Prix, for sometime now. Went there on last Friday and got back on Tuesday. Following are some random notes from the trip:

1) Like in any other sport, the experience of watching the race live was amazing and completely different from what you experience while watching in TV. But there was a difference as far as car racing is concerned: usually the excitement level in the stadium for other sports (like basketball, football, baseball) is mainly due to the audience, the fans whose chanting and shouting which makes the experience all the more enriching & memorable. But over here, there was a difference in that it is the cars that provided all the excitement. I still cant get the vrooming sound of the cars out of my head. Particularly the time when the race started. That is when we had all the 23 cars in the race and the noise generated by all of those cars was just deafening.

2) The next thing I noticed is the huge attendance of desi fans. This was something that I was completely unprepared for. I had expected around 200-300 desis but I am sure there would have been a good 3000+ desi fans. Not only did the sheer number of desi fans took me by surprise, but their involvement & knowledge of the sport impressed me to no ends. I am no big F1 fan but I do follow who is winning and the other important headlines. But many of our folks who attended the race seemed to know so much more about the Formula 1 circuit. Many of them wore Ferrari paraphernalia - flags, T-shirts and hats. Some of them even had the Ferrari logo painted on their faces :) But you could see some trying to act like big-time fans too and they didn’t know what they were doing - like for example, during the presentation ceremony, some were even clapping/dancing for the German anthem, thinking that they were cheering for Ferrari and looking ridiculous in the eyes of the other spectators.

3) This amazing coincidence should say something about how many desis came to the race. My friend had booked the tickets for the 6 of us, few months ago. Our tickets were in Q row, 1-6. And when we got to our seats, to my friend's biggest surprise, he found that 4 of his school friends had booked the next 4 seats in the same Q row (from 7-10), even though they didn’t know that each other was coming. What a coincidence!!

4) Our seats were pretty close to the starting line. So, we had a good opportunity of seeing all the drivers from up-close before the race began when they were getting ready to get into the cars for the formation lap. Schumacher was the obvious crowd-puller and the crowd trying to get a glimpse/ picture of him was just too much. So, I decided to watch the drivers with the Alonso fans. So, I got a very good view of Alonso & his Renault crew. The pit stop of Ferrari & Renault too were very close from where we were seated. On the downside was the fact that from where we were seated, we couldn’t get a good view of the turns which is where all the action (like overtaking, brushes, accidents, etc) usually takes place. Thus, we missed seeing the important crash which happened in the first lap which resulted in 7 cars pulling out of the race.

5) The excitement which was there when the race started gradually went down as the race progressed. I watched the first 40 laps from my seat and then roamed around for a while (mainly bcos it was clear by then that Schumacher had an unassailable lead & he would clinch the race easily) & then finally came back to watch the last 10 laps to watch the finish. The last couple of laps were great to watch since the whole Ferrari crew was in the pit lane waiting for Schumacher & Massa to pull up near the podium. The podium celebrations too were a treat to watch.

Overall, a very memorable trip. And the answer to the usual question as to if all this was worth the money spent to go to Indianapolis – YES would be my answer. May be, I wouldn’t do this next year but this is something every sports fan should experience atleast once.

With US Grand Prix ticked off the checklist, all it remains are the following:

- The US Open tennis tournament (This should be ticked off in September when I am going to NYC to watch the tournament)
- Any PGA Golf tournament, preferably one where Tiger participates
- The Cricket World Cup
- The Olympics