Growing up, I used to be glued to the TV on F1 weekends. If I knew ahead of time that I would not be able to watch then I would assign my mom and/or one of my aunts to watch it for me. When I got back home they would then tell me who¹ finished in what position. I have always wanted to attend at least one race since the first day I was introduced to F1 by my sport enthusiast dad.

I got the chance to do exactly that recently. Sometime in mid-March the idea of attending this year’s Canadian Grand Prix occurred to me. Montreal is just shy of 4 hours by road from here and it is regarded as the next best thing after (if not better than) Monaco Grand Prix by many. I did some research² about the vibe around the city during the F1 weekend and I got pretty promising results. Not that I needed any convincing, but yeah. :P

Getting to Montreal

I rented a car for the weekend, readied the playlist for the drive and I was on my way. I have been to Montreal by road before(may be I will blog about it someday) and it is a very pleasant drive. The Adirondacks offer beautiful sights along the way. Also there is Lake George which is a must-see (again, I’ll post an album sometime). After a couple of hours of driving, I thought it would be a good time to take a break and have something to eat. There is this place near Plattsburg called Guma’s which is a family owned restaurant and has great food.

I refueled the car because I wanted to avoid refueling in Canada as much as possible. Why? Because Canadian gas prices are 1. too high; 2. are in cents/liter. I didn’t plan on driving much in Montreal and the city is very close to the border anyway so I wouldn’t have to refuel in Canada. Speaking of the border, border-crossing on road is pretty interesting. It looks very much like a toll station. There are multiple lanes and there is an officer at booths corresponding to the lanes marked open. You drive up and stop at a stop sign which is a few yards away from the booth. When it is your turn, the officer waves at you. They ask you simple questions like why do you want to go to Canada, where do you plan on staying there, when are you getting back etc. There were a few people in line this time and not a lot of lanes open so they had officers kind of approach the drivers in line and ask them these screening questions. If, according to them, you seemed like a normal person trying to get to Canada they would just let you go. The officer got pretty envious after he came to know I was going to Canada to watch F1. He raised his eyebrows when he saw my tickets. I kind of had accepted that he would confiscate those tickets for himself. :P. I sighed with relief when he handed them back to me. :)

I had setup the GPS to follow a specific route. My first stop was a TELUS store so that I can buy a SIM card and get Internet on my phone. You know, that’s the first thing people do when they get to a new place³. Next stop was an ATM where I got some spare Canadian currency. After that, it was a shop that sold Metro passes. I bought a weekly pass which would be good for my entire trip. Now I was good to go to my AirBnB place. I had looked up the place on Google Street view and the street looked narrow. Also after looking at it I got the feeling that once people got a spot to park there, they never moved. I had already researched the best places to stop for these transactions on my way there so that once I parked, I didn’t have to move my car until Sunday night. Legend has it that my rental car is still parked there⁴.

Thursday Open House

I think this is one of the best parts of the weekend. Open house is when the drivers take turns to meet with fans. You take pictures with them and/or get their autographs. They don’t announce the order in which the drivers will meet the fans and this adds to the excitement. You can also roam around the pit lane and see the engineers put together the car for the practice session on Friday. This is the closest you can get to the drivers and cars all weekend.

:)

The Open House was scheduled to start at 9AM. I woke up pretty early and got there at 8AM and there were a ton of people there already. I met a guy from Toronto. He said he has been going to Canadian Grand Prix since the 90s. His whole family was there and his kid was a Go-Kart driver. The kid’s helmet had signatures from many Formula 1 greats. Pretty inspirational for the kid. His sister apparently bumped into Lewis Hamilton once in Old Montreal and his dad was telling this story to everyone he met. It got old pretty quick and I could basically recite the story verbatim after the 23rd time. :

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The legendary Ferrari Hat Guy

The crowd was pretty well-behaved. Although we were standing very close to each other since we were running out of room, nobody seemed to be overly bothered or irritated by it. Also, the managers of the event were on top of their game. There was a volunteer/staff every 10ft and it was impossible to get lost. The directions were clear and in French and English. Also, they were trying to sell merchandize at exorbitant prices everywhere.

One of the merchandize selling booths

But the official program takes the prize for the most advertised product during the weekend.

She was relentless

After wading through the crowd and finding the beginning of the circuit, I was brimming with F1ness ⁵.

Open House Day

I decided to wait in the autograph line because once that was done, I could roam around as I wanted. The first batch of drivers didn’t have any World Champion. Felipe Massa was the closest⁶ to being one.

Felipe Massa at the autograph booth

But by the time I got closer to the booth, the drivers decided to call it a day. We were waiting for the next batch of drivers. And boy, did we get lucky! When Fernando Alonso arrived at the scene, the crowd went berserk. Then, Jenson Button, Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen joined Alonso. We ran out of breath. I was simulating in my mind what I would do when I got my chance to get their autographs. But when the time came, I just froze. :(. I forgot to take a selfie with them. I managed to get them to sign my Official Program though. I opened the page on the program which had Daniel Ricciardo’s face on it so that he could sign next to it. But during the process I spilled his Red Bull! I was terrified for a moment thinking that I would be bounced from the scene. But he smiled at me and said “No worries” in Australian. :)

After I got back to reality, I walked along the pit lane where the engineers were assembling the cars. The spare parts looked really big in person. I had imagined them to be much smaller from what I saw on TV. Every driver had a section to him and their name and number were painted up top.

Pictures from the pit lane

Later that day I decided to go to a MeetUp event at a Turkish restaurant. All of the attendees were local to Montreal but they were originally from different parts of the world. Ukraine, Egypt, Argentina, China were all represented. We talked about our cultures and I got a chance to learn something new. They had invited a belly dancer that night. It was my first time seeing such a performance live⁷. Everyone stopped eating and talking and starting looking at the dancer with their jaws open. She insisted on crowd participation and soon everyone started dancing to her tunes next to her. We had a lot of fun.

Belly Dancing

I had taken a bus to get there and it was late in the night by the time we decided to go home. One of the persons at the event suggest that I rent a bixi. The word is a combination of the words bike and taxi. You might have guessed what it meant and yes, you are right. She even offered to ride with me with a bixi of her own since I was not unfamiliar with the area. She said it wouldn’t be much of a detour for her since she wasn’t far from my AirBnB place. On a cool night, it felt great to ride a bike. Bixi > taxi.

Friday Practice

Getting to the track from the city is very easy. The metro service in the city is very good. The stations, I thought, were very clean⁸. There were a lot of people wearing F1 gear and even if you were illiterate you could have just followed them and you would eventually be at the track. The metro station that you want to get off at to get to the circuit is “Parc Jean-Drapeau”. Yes, the track is on a park and it is on an island. The place is absolutely beautiful and serene (when there are no F1 machines lapping around the track, of course). You can see it for yourself here.

Bridge to the island

I had chosen to sit in Grandstand 24 at the hairpin curve. Behind it there were a bunch of food shops on the shore of Le Fleuve Saint-Laurent. It is a good place to buy some fast food and relax during breaks and such.

Le Fleuve Saint-Laurent

When the cars first came on the track for practice, the first thing I noticed was the sound. Those things were loud! But not I-will-go-deaf-without-earplugs loud. I was told that when the old V10 engines were in play, the cars were so loud that you could hear them in downtown Montreal! “Too bad you haven’t experienced that” said one of them. :(

There was a cool moment when Lewis Hamilton lost control at the curve and turned 180º. Then his teammate Nico Rosberg arrived there. They were facing each other. I managed to capture the moment on camera. Given that there is/was some tension between the two drivers, this was particularly amusing.

HAM (#44) and ROS (#6)

During the afternoon session it started raining really heavily. Thanks to the crowd-pleasing attitude of Mercedes, their two drivers came on the track. It was like a thank you to the people who had decided to brave the pouring rains. But it didn’t end well for Hamilton because he rammed his car straight into the tires stacked at the hairpin curve. After that they decided to call it a day. On my way back, I noticed that his car was being towed back. I grabbed this hard-to-see-what’s-going-on photo.

HAM being towed

The thing about the hairpin curve at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is that it is very unpredictable. Every time a car passes the curve you are left guessing what is going to happen. Drivers run wide, lock tires all the time. I was happy I chose that seat. It was seconded by Sal who has been coming to Montreal since 1988. He said he chooses the same seat every year because it is the best. He showed a few pictures on his phone of him talking to the engineers at the pit lane. He said it was a lot more relaxed back then. He also bought the pre-sales tickets for next year’s race.

Saturday Qualifying

Fortunately for Hamilton his car was fine and he was able to compete in the qualifying. After he secured pole position he put on a show for the crowd right in front of us.

Aftermath of the show

I decided to stick around during the breaks and watch the other competitions on display as well. Ferrari Challenge was one among them.

Ferrari Challenge

There was no shortage of action for a Motorsport fan. On Crescent Street, there was something or the other going on throughout the weekend. Restaurants had checkered flags near their entrances. There were auto shows and video gaming booths too.

Crescent Street

I went to Little Italy in the evening and they had old Impalas with weird mods.

Vintage modded cars in Little Italy

Sunday Race

Raceday is of course the main event of the weekend. I was very excited to see the first Formula 1 race of my life. I wanted to avoid the crowds so I decided to go early.

Raceday

They had a parade in the beginning when all the drivers are taken in vintage cars around the track. Sometime they stop by and wave for the fans. Alonso stepped out of the car, interviewed with the TV folks and threw his cap to the crowd.

Driver Parade

There were more people attending the race too. The place was jam packed. There was an air show before the race.

Air show

Celebrities from around the world were present as well.

Javier Hernández

During the race, Kimi Raikönnen had a mishap which cost him a podium finish.

RAI in trouble

Lewis Hamilton was solid throughout the weekend apart from the slight hiccups on Friday practice and he won the race comfortably. I managed to find this picture on the internet which has Sal, his friends and me in the background. Obviously you can’t see me but this is where I was seated during the weekend.

I’m somewhere in the circle

After the race was over, people flocked to the tracks. I followed them and I decided to walk around the track. I searched for debris and grabbed a few. They can be good souvenirs.

Souvenir

I exited from the track at a different point this time and got a chance to see some of the other parts of Parc Jean-Drapeau.

My laptime of 60 minutes was way off some of the laptimes that were recorded over the weekend.

Even after spending so much time after the race, getting to the Metro Station was no joke as you can see here.

Crowded Metro Station

After a busy weekend, it was time to head back. I met people from around the world, got to watch Formula 1, got the drivers to sign merchandize for me and met with fans who have been following F1 long before I was even born. I want to do this again. Soon.