The third week in May was Formula 1 weekend in Shanghai. A group of friends from work got together and bought grandstand passes for the weekend and shared them. Half of the group went on Saturday and the other half on Sunday. Fortunately, I was with the Saturday group and we enjoyed perfect weather with blue skies and comfortable temperatures. The group that went on Sunday sat in the rain for six hours !
For those of you, like me, who are car racing novices, Formula 1 is a class of car racing where the cars must adhere to strict set of design rules. The cars are pretty amazing with speeds up to 220 MPH, engines running at 18,000 RPM, and cars capable of pulling 5Gs of acceleration in the turns. There is a lot of technology in the competition and hence the requirement that teams spend more than a billion US dollars each year in order to be successful.
The sport is popular in Europe and supposedly growing in popularity in Asia and the Middle East - although the Shanghai stadium was far from full. Apparently it never caught on in the U.S. and F1 no longer holds races there.
This is only the second auto race I have attended in my life. The first was 20 years ago when I went to a Nascar race in Watkins Glen, NY. In general, I was impressed with the speed (and sound) of the cars, but found it a little boring after five or six hours in the grandstand. It starts to feel a bit like pulling a chair up next to the freeway and watching traffic. Maybe 20 years from now, I'll check out the Indy 500.
For those of you, like me, who are car racing novices, Formula 1 is a class of car racing where the cars must adhere to strict set of design rules. The cars are pretty amazing with speeds up to 220 MPH, engines running at 18,000 RPM, and cars capable of pulling 5Gs of acceleration in the turns. There is a lot of technology in the competition and hence the requirement that teams spend more than a billion US dollars each year in order to be successful.
The sport is popular in Europe and supposedly growing in popularity in Asia and the Middle East - although the Shanghai stadium was far from full. Apparently it never caught on in the U.S. and F1 no longer holds races there.
This is only the second auto race I have attended in my life. The first was 20 years ago when I went to a Nascar race in Watkins Glen, NY. In general, I was impressed with the speed (and sound) of the cars, but found it a little boring after five or six hours in the grandstand. It starts to feel a bit like pulling a chair up next to the freeway and watching traffic. Maybe 20 years from now, I'll check out the Indy 500.
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