The Travelling Life of Silvan Colani
March 2006 - Malaysian Grand Prix, Kuala Lumpur
I am fortunate enough to have a girlfriend, pardon me, fiancée who buys me really cool birthday presents. This one was a trip to the F1 race in KL – flights, 5-star hotel and grand stand tickets! Not bad, eh?
The thing with the Malaysian Grand Prix is that it is hot, really hot. It must be one of the toughest races for the drivers, but the spectators are suffering equally in the heat. Luckily there was plenty of Foster’s around (see picture).
We had tickets for the K1 grandstand, which is the one looking at the first sequence of corners down from the start/finish straight and arguably the best seats on the track, because you get to see the action in the first corner. There is also a giant screen to follow the action on the rest of the track, but unfortunately the writing was illegible, making it somewhat difficult to follow the race, particularly in qualifying. When the positions are determined by split seconds, it is hard to see with the naked eye who’s fastest.
Getting to and from the track is relatively easy (especially compared to Shanghai, where the track is far away from the city). The Sepang circuit is close to the KL airport and there is now a train running from the airport into the city. From the airport there were buses connecting to the race track. However, if you are a group of people, the easiest thing is to hire a taxi for the duration of the event.
After watching the qualifying and the Porsche Carrera support race on Saturday, we checked out the KL nightlife. Despite having insider’s list of all the good places to go to, I didn’t think it was as exciting as I remembered it from my first visit to the Malaysian Grand Prix in 2002. Either there were fewer parties by the various teams, or we were at the wrong places at the wrong time. Through a friend of a friend we did manage to get entry into the Mercedes Benz party, but that also turned out to be a rather quiet event (and due to the fact that McLaren is now sponsored by Johnnie Walker, they didn’t even serve any beer).
The race itself on Sunday was reasonably exciting, although Giancarlo Fisicella was leading from start to finish. My favorite, Honda driver Jenson Button, was initially in second but was eventually beaten into third by the superiority of the Renault of Fernando Alonso – who had an incredible start moving from 7th or 8th on the grid into third at the first corner. There was also plenty of action further down the field, particularly at the far end where the new Super Aguri team was fighting hard with the Midland cars (previously Jordan).
All in all a great weekend, but given the price of flights, hotels and tickets you really must be a big fan to switch from the TV to the real thing (or have a great fiancee, as I do). The sound, however, is definitely better. WRRRRRRMMMMM.
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