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A Racing Odyssey: 4 Races, 4 Places

FEATURE BY GUEST AUTHORS
09/08/2016

What if we put aside the TV Remote and got out of the house and actually attended the races 'live' for a change. Tom O'Keefe decided to do just that in three very different venues in North America before returning to the couch for the Austrian GP and what he experienced was the rich and varied motorsports on tap for fans this Season.

By dint of luck and circumstance, in the last few weeks, I have been able to get to three races in North America that were loads of fun and sum up the full spectrum of motorsports available to those of us who are willing and able to get off the couch, put the TV Remote aside and actually go see racing 'live' at circuits as varied as the vast Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the tiny 3/8th of a mile oval dirt track in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, and everyone's favorite F1 track, the serpentine Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, located on an island in the St. Lawrence River in the city of Montreal. By the time of the Austrian Grand Prix - the race of the 2016 Season - I was back on the couch and happy to be there for a race that was 'made' for TV.

Montreal

Backstage at Montreal, there was as much action in the paddock as there was on the track.

To get the interesting but soft stuff out of the way - celebrities - Supermodels from Victoria's Secret braved the cold, blustery conditions on race day to brighten Sunday morning, and NFL Super Quarterback Tom Brady of the New England Patriots was also in the paddock, attending his first F1 race, wearing a TAG-Heuer Grand Prix jacket, a sponsorship tie-in to Red Bull. At one point Tom Brady met supremely relaxed Max Verstappen face-to-face at Red Bull's hospitality tent; meanwhile, elsewhere in the Red Bull zone Verstappen's teammate, Daniel Ricciardo, barely cracked his warm and engaging smile all weekend, so serious is he about the business of coming to grips with Mad Max, whom he once again finished behind at Montreal.

Actor Michael Douglas, a serious F1 fan who has come to many of the races over the years, was in the paddock with his teenage son Dylan but without his usual buddy, McLaren part-owner Mansour Oijeh; Douglas had the honor of conducting the post-race interviews and his easy relationship with the drivers, polished style and knowledge of the sport came through in the Q&A.

As for the drivers and the other habitués of the paddock, Bernie Ecclestone stayed long enough for the announcement of Heineken entering F1 as a sponsor of three races and as a trackside advertiser, but "Mr. E", as the former Bernie Ecclestone is now known, left early given the difficult and threatening weather conditions on race morning, leaving his chief aide-de-camp, Pasquale Lattuneddu, to run the race and manage the paddock with Pasquale's usual panache and precision.

Bernie did hold a luncheon while at Montreal focused on "Social Media" of all things and rumors abound that he now actually has a computer on his desk at Princes Gate.

Given the Darwinian culture of the paddock, the newest team, Haas F1, is at the far end of the paddock, and not having as many people on staff as the more established teams, Team Haas Principal Guenther Steiner could be seen checking the Ultra Soft tires after Friday practice, receiving and giving advice to the mechanics, not just entertaining guests of the team. Like Bernie Ecclestone, Team Haas owner, Gene Haas, was not in the paddock on race day morning; Tony Stewart and the other drivers of the Stewart-Haas Racing NASCAR team - Haas's other motorsports interest - were over the Canadian border at Michigan International Speedway for the Fire Keepers Casino 400.

At the sharp end of the teeny weeny Montreal paddock, we have Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull, where much of the non-stop schmoozing goes on with American sports marketing promoter Zak Brown in and out of every hospitality suite talking business, a mini-Bernie. Red Bull's talent hunter, Dr. Helmut Marko, was huddled at a Red Bull table with Jos Verstappen and Gerhard Berger; as F1 racers in the mid-1990's, Jos Verstappen and Berger sometimes tangled on track but all that is forgotten these days. Jos Verstappen seems to be having more fun in F1 now than when he was driving, all of a sudden back at the center of the sport and no longer a second class citizen to his former Benetton teammate Michael Schumacher.

Spaniard Carlos Sainz, Jr. was unapologetic about hitting Champion's Wall during Q2; his attitude is you have to go for it on every turn, a rally driver's son through and through. In the race, Sainz exonerated himself and finished 9th from his 20th starting position; go easy on him Dr. Marko and let him thrive.

I met with Dane Kevin Magnussen last year at Montreal when he was McLaren's Reserve Driver and he was visibly unhappy in that do-nothing role, so it was good to see him a year later fired up and driving for the latest factory Renault team. Like Sainz, he made a costly mistake during Practice 3, losing control without warning on cold tires under overcast skies and incurring everyone's wrath by bringing FP3 to an abrupt end before the other drivers got their final runs in. The Renault mechanics wheeled the remains of Magnussen's damaged Renault tub through the paddock (covered up of course but the tentacles and fixins were dangling) and it was remarkable that the Enstone/Chipping Norton team managed to get Magnussen a car that could take the grid on race day. Magnussen is a diamond in the rough, but he is still rough.

Lewis Hamilton was off form all weekend but both he and his Mercedes-Benz PU 106C Hybrid "power unit" have so much in reserve that it does not seem to matter: he is a Winner, plain and simple, and exudes confidence and skill in everything he does.

But he does love his gizmos. Although he is a master of social media amongst his fans, en route to the grid, he is all business and whisks past the media engrossed in whatever was playing on his headphones and simultaneously touch-typing his phone, like all members of his generation. Shrewd as they come when it comes to endearing himself to fans, when Lewis won he had the presence of mind to make a mock boxing jab/dancing-in-the-ring motion, a nod to the recent death of Muhammed Ali.

Nico Rosberg seems as rattled by his teammate Hamilton as Ricciardo does by Verstappen and Rosberg not only blew his qualifying lap by slithering too broadly through Turn 1, but then got bested in Turn 1 again at the start, rubbing wheels with Hamilton and losing seven places - and ended his race by spinning out on the last turn of the last lap of the race, across from Champion's Wall while trying to overtake Verstappen. You get the feeling watching him through a race weekend that Rosberg may hit that Wall but will never be a Champion.

Vettel is someone not intimidated by his teammate, the inscrutable Kimi Raikkonen, who is having a difficult return stint at Ferrari, and all weekend long the contrast with Kimi was palpable. Vettel showed a flair and determination for his racing at Montreal that was truly impressive, furiously warming up his tires before his spectacular qualifying run, and pulling off a stunning start to engulf both Hamilton and Rosberg, probably losing the race to Hamilton by Ferrari strategy calls but doggedly pursuing Lewis as well as he could lap after lap, hoping for rain that never came. Vettel has more fire in the belly than anyone else in the paddock right now and is on the cusp of winning races this Season.

My seat for the Montreal race was in "Silver 11", one of the two Grandstands that look over Turn 1 (also known as the Senna Curve). These Grandstands and the Grandstands at the other end of the track at the Casino Hairpin, have some of the savviest F1 fans in the World. On the ground level of Turn 1 in front of the Grandstands where there is just open space, everyone in the paddock who actually wants to watch the race instead of watch TVs in hospitality suites goes to the fence area at Turn 1. (In the inner portion of Turn 1 we have the Senna Loges and Fangio Loges for the rich people and in those Loges, they actually have it best: a roof overhead, food and drink and less costly than the Paddock Club.)

Turn 1 invites action on the track; this year, Massa crashed there as he has in previous years (with the help of Perez in 2014) and probably 10 drivers went offline during the weekend, so tricky is that turn to master, coming as it does after the high speed the cars reach on the main straight, having launched from Champion's Wall.

Mad Max navigated Turn 1 flawlessly all weekend. When no other cars were next to him, you could see and hear his technique, blasting into the turn from over 180 mph and on the ragged edge, manifest by an ever-so-slight but audible chirp of the Pirelli tires as they caught the slide. He really is an artist.

Everyone in the paddock loves the European-like atmosphere of Montreal itself and the track and the fans make going to this race a sure thing. For Americans, it is really our second U.S. Grand Prix: Go next year.

Indy

Since my Mother was from Indiana, I have been going to the Indy 500 since I was a teenager so I was not about to miss the historic 100th running of the Indy 500. In Monaco, which was on the same day this year as Indy, my colleagues in the F1 paddock watched the 500 on TV after the Monaco GP was over.

And this year, in addition to the regular IndyCar drivers to watch, we had one of our own: American Alexander Rossi, a recent refugee from the F1 paddock, having raced five times in the 2015 Season for Manor Marussia, almost always finishing better than his teammate, while simultaneously running in GP2, eventually finishing second in GP2 to the much-ballyhooed Stoffel Vandoorne, now with McLaren, who substituted so impressively for Fernando Alonso in Bahrain after Alonso's accident at Melbourne.

Rossi was well-liked in the F1 paddock and apparently learned a lesson or two in current F1's "Green" era as to the "lift and coast"/saving fuel driving technique all drivers are now forced to employ in our "road relevant" F1, because when everyone else at Indy ran out of fuel as the 200 laps wound down, Rossi - in the Honda-powered car owned by ex-IndyCar driver Bryan Herta and run by ex-F1 guy Michael Andretti - began to move up the standings until - miraculously - he was the last of the leader group still running - coasting, towing, doing all he could possibly do to reach the finish line, with his Andretti teammate, Colombian Carlos Munoz, always strong at the big oval track, making up ground behind Rossi but not quickly enough to overtake the American rookie, finishing 4.5 seconds behind Rossi.

Having won the race by crossing the Yard of Bricks on fumes, Rossi finally ran out of gas during his cool-down lap on the track apron below the Turn 4 Grandstand - like Silver 11 In Montreal - full of knowledgeable, long-time fans, some like my family with blocks of tickets going back 50 years of the 100 years of the Indy 500 - and the Millennial Californian jumped out of his car and gave a two-handed wave of genuine and primal enthusiasm to the Turn 4 crowd and they returned the favor thunderously.

In the 1966 Indy 500, another refugee from Grand Prix racing, Jackie Stewart, stopped at the very same spot in Turn 4 as Alexander Rossi did. Jackie, then, like Rossi, 24 years old and himself a rookie at Indy, had led the race for 40 laps until lap 190 of the 200-lap race, when his Ford engine gave up, allowing Jackie's BRM teammate in Grand Prix racing, Graham Hill, to win the 1966 Indy 500 in a Lola T90-Ford. Being Jackie and a Grand Prix driver, the wee Scot at first tried to push his #43 Lola T90 back to the pits but ended up walking back to a cheering crowd, the beginning of a life-long connection to Indy, with JYS becoming a broadcaster for ABC Sports at the Indy 500 once he hung up his helmet.

I spoke with Sir Jackie in the paddock at Montreal about the Rossi/Stewart/Turn 4 coincidence and he is still quite proud that he almost pulled off winning the Indy 500 as a rookie; even though he is now an Ambassador for Rolex and Heineken, it pains him still to have let Indy slip away. For Alexander Rossi, his win at Indy bodes well for them and he may be one of the few F1 refugees that makes his way back to the F1 paddock. (And, going the other way, Fernando Alonso, has said he too would like to win the Indy 500; the lure of those dangerous walls!)

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