Monza 1976 was pretty good for me, when Lauda made his miraculous return, was the fastest qualifier of the three Ferrari's entered, and to then come 4th in the race..... wow. Was I happy, you betcha. Bummer that it was before VCRs were general household items. In fact I think it was before my Mum and Dad even had a colour TV. (My parents refused to buy one cos they thought my bro and I would watch it 24/7. Even though to do that we would have had to watch about 14 hours of Test card, and we only had 3 channels back then. Channel 4 came out about just before I came to Australia in the early 1980's.
Which brings me on to arriving in Melbourne in 1983 to discover that I would be able to watch GPs in full and live on TV, as opposed to the c 40 mins IIRC of highlights on the BBC "Grand Prix" programme, delayed until after the 10.00 news.
Of course, having been a regular British GP goer, I was very happy to hear the confirmation of the first Championship Grand Prix at what is apparently the third oldest continuing GP on the planet, the Australian GP (I know there was a European GP at Monza, that venues first GP, also in the 1920's, but the French GP of course goes back even further to 1906.
I was pretty happy when the AGP moved to Melbourne, a Grand Prix that I could drive to in quarter of an hour and park within a couple of hundred metres from the track. Plus when it was first held in Melbourne for a few years I could actually hear the cars from outside in my garden. Now all the trees they planted have matured and grown, thus deadening the sound.
The strange thing is that even though I have a GP within such close proximity (anyone here live closer to a GP venue?) I dont really go these days, certainly not for the race anyway. I have been to practice sessions and qualifying, but despite the fact the Albert Park venue is so close to me, and indeed has been the venue for well over 15 or 16 years, against the Adelaide Street circuit where they had a run a dozen GPs until it moved it on to Albert park.
I have to admit that I have still been to more Adelaide GP's on raceday than I have Melbourne. Last time I went to Melbourne raceday I watched the race in front of the largest of all the Giant TVs, listening to the live sound.
Moving on to 2007 and Kimi winning the Championship from an awfully long way out, to take the title by a single point over Hamilton and Alonso was bloody fantastic.
Lol, I just remebered one of the favourites of all time..... two of them actually.
One I know I have posted about before, at Brands when Jim Clark was racing. I wont repost it here, as I have mentioned it before, and it is elsewhere on the forum, but it is certainly one of my Motor Racing highlights.....
In fact here is a link to that great memory.
The other one is not quite as 'special' as the Clark memory, but was the culmination of a great weekend, ironically at the Adelaide Grand Prix back in the late 1980's.
I had been running in the Historic Touring Cars support race that year, and in fact I managed to win my class, so I was in a pretty jubilant mood. From memory I dont think we had a race on GP day.... we used to have to be there (the couple of times I was involved there) by 5.00pm Wednesday for Scrutineering that evening. To this day the Thursday is basically all the support categories practice and qualy. Even now at Albert Park on a hursday is support day. It is free admission for all , all day Thursday, which always has a good crowd in, so we had practiced and qualified on the Thursday, and had a race on the Friday and two on the Saturday.
We were stationed in the support paddock, the entrance to which was just after the first chicane, and after racing we turned in to thee paddock within a couple of hundred metres of the finish line. We would go to the dummy grid by joining the track where the left hander after the end of the long straight and hairpin right. Basically right in the centre of the track, so pretty well we were told that if we wanted to head home before the GP ended, we were to be out before the first race on the Sunday. No convoys of trucks and trailers leaving the track as they were trying to keep their programme of events flowing. So we uaed it to our advantage and one of our category who was happy to stay for the GP parked his truck right over near where we would join the track. They bring the truck to all the events, so we were all aware that the truck had a platform which basically was assembled on the top of the truck which was all levelled off so people would not be chasing bottles across the roof. So for the GP we were all sat on the platform fitted to the roof. It had like a little fence around the edge, we had folding chairs up there and of course plenty to eat and drink. So we sat on top of the truck with an elevated view of the end of the straight and hairpin through to almost the last corner onto the start finish.
It was not the year of the big rain, which I think was the following year.
