F1 USGP 2007
Its that time again, I missed the previous year’s F1 race while in Spain unfortunately, but I made it to indy in 07 which sadly turned out to be the last year for USGP in the US, again. This year was a little different than the previous years as my friends and I got to go into the McLaren pits after the last practice session Saturday. Plus everyone actually raced, which was nice, since the last race I had been to all of the Michelin cars pulled off after the warm up lap.
The McLaren pits were pretty awesome, we were a good 20 feet closer to the cars than they let you get Thursday when the pits are open to the public, plus, plus, plus, they were totally tearing down the cars readying them for qualifying. Sadly I can’t upload the pictures I have per McLaren’s request. They were actually splitting the transmissions off of the back of the engines. I was snapping pictures like MAD zooming into the inside of the transmission casing before the guys noticed me and made me stop. Afterwards I felt bad about it, I still do a little bit. We were there as guests to kinda look in and get a close view and I kinda went camera/engineer nerd and started snapping pictures of computer screens and as much F1 innards as I could. All of the mechanics were mad at me and the McLaren contact that hooked us up kinda got grief from the team about it. I offered to delete the photos, but he said it was cool, so long as the images didn’t get out… So unfortunately for you I’m gonna respect his wishes. It was neat nonetheless and it helped make this last trip to Indy that little bit more special.
I also have pictures from McLaren’s factory in Woking that I can share, I’ll post those in my blog some time in the future.
This year was kinda a bum year for pictures. I didn’t walk away with as many keepers as I had in the past. There were more than double the number of amateur photographers there than years prior. Getting to my favorite spots was difficult which kind of lead to me not trying as hard as I usually do. Looking back on it I should have taken the opportunity to find new, spots less traveled, but I didn’t. Live and learn I guess.
Tags: motorsport