Friday at the Grand Prix - an essay in photographs

[Rennen]

Impressed you got JVs autograph Dixie!..a friend kept pestering me to ask a certain member of my family to ask JV to sign a print of himself in a Williams...well nearly 6 months passed by...no signature...I was at the 2003 Monza tyre test standing next to the pair of them...and the poster had gone missing! Hahaha! So there you go it ain't "who you know"...it's who you don't know!

[dcp2685]

Dixie. Amazing Photos. That's all I can say. Amazing and great camera work.

Knowing the speed those cars are going it's amazing to me that if you look closely, you can tell who the driver is in most of the photos.

Keep it coming.

[Dixie Flatline]

Thanks guys - I know I've been slack in putting together the photos for the remainder of Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but I'm currently doing research for my masters subject in sports marketing law, which funnily enough revolves around Formula One! I'll get back to this ASAP.

[Dixie Flatline]

Well, there's no better time to add more photos than now, so here we go.

First up, continuing from the second practice session on Friday, we have a McLaren rounding the last turn to throttle up the main straight.

Ferrari were out to play in the second session on Friday

Finally, to round things off for the second practice session on Friday, Felipe Massa learns the idiosyncracies of Albert Park and his Sauber

[Dixie Flatline]

As I said, that finishes off the on-track action component of this essay, as my wife and I decided that we would rather pursue more autographs and photographs of the drivers and senior people in F1 than watch the V8s and the other support categories.

But on the way back to our favourite haunt for such items, we stopped by the support paddock to have a poke around. As I recall, the V8s were to follow the Formula One cars onto the track, so they had already left the paddock by the time we arrived. Instead, we chose to wander around the Formula 3 cars and have a look-see.

Very scrubbed-looking tyres on this machine

Looking down the length of one side of the paddock

[Dixie Flatline]

So, after a quick tour of the support paddock, it was back to waiting for drivers and team principals (and other famous people) to come out to sign autographs for their adoring fans.

However, unlike the morning session, we weren't as successful. The drivers seemed all to be holed up in their pits for what seemed like hours discussing whatever it is they discuss, and they seemed relucant on the whole to come out.

One of the first to leave the track on Friday was BMW chief, Dr Mario Theissen, captured here by my wife walking towards the paddock carpark. I was amongst the crowd of fans clamouring for autographs, and he graciously signed as many as he could, so I added his signature to those of Williams' drivers Mark Webber and Nick Heidfeld.

After he had gone through, we spotted a grumpy-looking Niki Lauda, but he did sign autographs, and fortunately I managed to land the autograph of the triple world champion.

[Dixie Flatline]

Back to it after a bit of a break!

Lauda was followed by Minardi test driver, Channock Nissany. Then, Antonio Pizzonia walked through the crowd to sign some autographs. He didn't look too happy to be test-driving the Williams only in the ultimate speed comparison, but he was happy enough to sign autographs for the waiting fans.

We decided to call it quits on Friday, and rest up for another early day as we were scheduled to do the pit-straight walk early Saturday morning. I had done this walk several years ago and thought then it was alright, but since then, the fence had been reinforced so much that it was difficult to really see into the pits. However, my wife hadn't done it before, so we took the decision to do the walk and see if we could obtain more autographs and photographs afterwards.