Hello,
I just got back from the US GP and it was a great time. I was
let down by the Prost team and searched every vendor for Peugeot
items but there were none to be found. It was a Ferrari weekend
for sure.. There was a display by the Ferrari club downtown on Friday
night and after qualifying we were guests of Ferrari of SF in their
Formula 1 Club. We had a delicious lunch and then went down to tour
the pits. It was quite a setup. A Shell fuel guy in a room preparing
or testing fuel mixes and 4 million dollar cars being stripped down for
the next day. They even showed us the telemetry room where they monitor
everything on the car and give information back to the drivers. I was
dying to go over and talk to the Prost team but because we were a guest
of
Ferrari I did not think it was a good idea. I did have a $100 bill ready
to buy one of their team shirts though.
Qualifying:
One of the Prost cars blew an engine during Qualifying. They are using
Ferrari
engines next year. One of the neatest things during this was when the
Mclaren/
Merc. team made an effort to push ahead of Schumaker (sp?) using a both
cars
in a tow/drafting situation. They were only .001 seconds off of
Schumaker's time.
Race:
Schumaker was exceptionally smooth around the first few turns (that
was all I
could see) but Mika was steadily gaining on him (1 sec a lap) until his
car
caught fire. I am not sure what happened but his Mclaren/Merc. sounded
the best
between turns 3 and 4. Most cars where shifting 2 times and it sounded
like he
was only shifting once. It was screaming though. 18k rpms...
The Mercedes pace car (not the SUVs but the coupe) which had more hp
than the
Ferrari Challenge cars sounded pretty darn good going around the track
too.
We were sitting by turn one and I hope that I got some good pictures
and will
post them if they turn out.
Its too bad the Peugeots did not do better.
This would have been the way for Peugeot to return to the US...
This is definitely something to see.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue 26 Sep 2000 - 19:44:36 UTC