In view of the large predicted turn-out, I decided to travel by train to the conveniently sited CMK railway station. I didn’t arrive too early as the weather was clear but cold and I was hoping a promised parcel might turn up.
I arrived about 15 mins before the show was due to start and found that a very large crowd was already lining the track about 4 deep on both sides. (Some reports put the attendance at 60,000). Accordingly this isn’t so much a report on the Home Run (there are some excellent amateur videos on Youtube) as a report on the difficulty of seeing or photographing anything.
I was hoping to position myself near one of the giant TV screens, but the one nearest the station was throughly obscured by tree branches and the next one was across the road from a long Press stand on the trackside, so that was no use either.
I positioned myself a few hundred yards from the railway station and hoped for the best. In the end, I got to see the Red Bull stunt biker Chris Pfeiffer, the F1 car driven by Mark Webber, the Red Bull NASCAR saloon driven by David Coulthard, the F1 car driven by Sebastian Vettel, and finally both F1 cars and drivers driving side by side. In each case (except the stunt biker) I saw them for about a second as they whizzed past. To get a photo in such a situation it is necessary to start pressing the shutter before the audible but unseen car appears, a near impossible task.
A F1 car is noisy, but less ear-splitting than I expected. The most exciting noise was made by the NASCAR driven by Coulthard.
After that I went home to de-frost, passing up the chance to visit the paddock or see a static F1 car display in the shopping centre. Reportedly, retail takings were up.
