Montreal: Good, Bad, Ugly

[Chaos]

I was actually at this race sitting at the hairpin turn (section 24), so I'll probably leave a lot out. I'll let you all fill in the gaps :)

Good:

Ferrari strategy - it won MS the race. BTW, I noticed today that RB is ALWAYS the first car into the pits. This gives MS a lap or two with low feul to really rip through the field.

Bad:

Renault - two early exits after some good qualifying results.

Sato - the man never fails to bring excitement of some form. He has shown that he has the speed, but he still has to refine his skills in racing to the extreme, but not passing it. He spun out on his qualifying lap that would have definitely put him top 5. His engine also blew up. This is not the first time the engine has gone on him, and I dont remember Button's engines going up this many times in smoke. As a side note, there was a girl from Japan sitting beside new who almost cried when Sato spun.

Ugly:

Massa's hit in the hairpin. The whole audience was holding their breath waiting for the impact. When it did, we waited to see whether he was ok. Thankfully, he was. But that was some impact.

Minardi. Now that i've seen them in public, they are SLOW. After just a few laps they were way behind the Jordan's.

If you've never been to an F1 race, you must go. The sound of the engines were just symphonic. Also the speed and breaking on these cars was breathtaking.

Some other notes: They ran a vintage F1 race. Really cool to see some of those classic cars. Some drivers were just tooling them around, but others really got into it. The other support series were great too. The Honda Civics series was really awesome...perhaps the best racing of the weekend. The formula BMW series was also exciting, but for the wrong reasons (lots of collisions...it was like they were at the go-kart track). The Ferrari 360 series was also fun to watch.

[Ziggy]

Glad you had a good time.

I had a couple of buds there as well

What was the crowd like? Give us a weekend report on the fans you met

[Rob]

Massa's hit in the hairpin. The whole audience was holding their breath waiting for the impact. When it did, we waited to see whether he was ok. Thankfully, he was. But that was some impact.
Somebody elsewhere was speculating that Massa's rear tire ended up in the grandstand. By what you've said, can I assume that that didn't happen?

[Ziggy]

It hit the tire wall and kicked up a couple into the stands. Somebody got hit, dont know how bad

Ziggy

[Chaos]

yeah....one of Massa's tires flew into the grandstand. I'm not sure if anyone was hurt though. I did not see any medics on the scene. As for the crowd, it was jammed full. I met some guys from the DC that sat in front of us. Very nice people. Lots of people from Toronto went to the race. It seemed like they all stopped at the service centre near Cornwall on the way home :)

[Ankf00]

Good: schumacher qualified 6th

Sato going bonzai everywhere, even in quals :D

Euro '04 going on during the weekend, so get to watch all the europeans talking mess to each other, it's great. france over england with both goals in extra time, BAHAHHAHAHAH

The dutchies I'm with here saying that the Friday crowd here easily outdoes the european crowds

Bad: schumacher winning yet another CGP that I go to

Ugly: the waitresses here, service has gotten worse every new place we go to

[Cart4Live2003]

all the good's have been good so far.. but hey another good to be added..

Good: Both McLaren's finished the race (and after the f up by williams/toyota) both finished in points.. now.. can we see 2 races in a row where both finish with no engine's blowing up *crosses fingers*

[TedN]

Massa shunt report from F1-Live ...

http://f1.racing-live.com/en/index.html

[14/06/04 - 15:25]
Massa's Sauber front wheel into the crowd !
A moment that wasn't recorded by television...
by Hugo GIGUERE
CAPSIS International


Felipe Massa escaped with no injury after crashing his Sauber a few laps before the end of the Canadian Grand Prix yesterday.

However, the Brazilian wasn't the only "lucky" person to avoid serious injury in this accident .

While the end of the crash was recorded on television, showing the Sauber hitting the tyre wall head on - almost at full speed - the car initially brushed against the left side protection wall of the track, sending off a cloud of dust and debris.

Upon impact, the left front wheel - including the tyre, hub and brake assembly and pieces of the control arm - flew straight up into the air with amazing force, high enough to clear over the protection fence in front of grandstand 15, which is located in front of the hairpin.

For a moment it appeared that the wheel was heading straight into the crowd but it first landed on the ground in front of the grandstand... but its "flight" wasn't over yet. This huge chunk of debris touched the ground and then bounced back in the first rows of the grandstand, the spectators frantically moving away to avoid being hit by the object.

Witnesses report that the wheel made contact with at least one person but no one was seriously injured.

The sharp pieces of broken carbon fiber and the heavy mass of the wheel flying in the air straight into the crowd was a scary sight. Fortunately, the very dangerous high speed of the debris was slowed down dramatically before it reached the crowd. Motorsport will always be dangerous... and not only for the drivers.

[VtOpenWheel]

Thanks for the update on the fans. We were sitting in 24 and seeing that reminded me of a CART race where I watched one go over my head. Scary stuff.

As a first time F1 attendee I would say one thing to anyone who has not been to an F1 race: GO! I now recognize how fortunate I am that they have a race two hours away (please don't point out how I've been an idiot for so many years by missing it).

I love the sound of a ChampCar turbo, but the F1 cars blow that away. You have to feel it to understand it. The crowd was simply amazing both in terms of number of fans and the excitement level. Sort of makes the ChampCar vs. IRL attendance threads seem pretty silly. One of the more interesting things all weekend was seeing the historic cars and the development of F1 over the years, they've tried some pretty interesting stuff. Formula BMW provided some excitement (where else can you see Rahal take out Montoya?). I was waiting for a well timed nudge in the hairpin to send a Honda-Michelin car tumbling, most were on three wheels through there. Although the weekend isn't exactly cheap, the on track action was pretty constant.

Despite another Ferrari win, and another MS record (most wins at a single track by a driver), it was one heck of a weekend.

[Sean O'Gorman]

A wheel bouncing into the stands with the fans moving immediately like its no big deal....I guess there actually was something accurate in Driven afterall! :gomer:

[TedN]

Found this link to home video of Massa shunt on AtlasF1 forum.

Video Link (http://www.cyberpunkuniversity.com/canadagp/gpcf1crash.html)

Ted

[Insomniac]

Found this link to home video of Massa shunt on AtlasF1 forum.

Video Link (http://www.cyberpunkuniversity.com/canadagp/gpcf1crash.html)

Ted

It got over the fence, but the good thing was it was already slowed down and didn't go straight into the stands from the car (like Michigan). Looks like the tire probably got about 25-30 ft in the air and came down. I'm glad no one was seriously hurt.

[Ankf00]

Good: 317,000 weekend attendance

95,000 Friday attendance

the dutchies said there was only 15-20K friday at Imola when they went a couple of years back