The Johnsons' Journal

This weekend one of my coworkers hooked us up with a couple tickets to the F1 Grand Prix. It was an all day event and we got there at 10:30am and didn’t leave until around 7pm. The day was full of action though. There were several races of various classes of cars culminating with the F1 race at 5pm.

Before the races got started in the morning we wandered around checking out all the booths and activities. Our first stop was the “F1 Experience” tent where you could try your hand at changing a tire on a formula car just like in the pits. While we skipped that, I didn’t want to miss out on a photo with the Grand Prix ladies.

WIth the Grand Prix ladies

As we walked around the rest of the park we saw lots of cars on display. There were a lot of classics, some of which they paraded around the track later in the day, but Courtney’s favorites were the Mini’s that were on display in open garages being worked on by the teams. They seem like tiny cars but compared to the Formula 5000 and the Formula Ford class cars (both like F1 cars but smaller) when the Minis came out on the track they looked huge!

Courtney likes the mini's

We found a great spot on a hill overlooking what ended up being one of the most exciting set of turns on the track. We stayed there the rest of the day to watch all the races. We tried many times to take pictures of the cars on the track, but they go fast…very fast, and our camera wasn’t up to the challenge of keeping up with them.

That's LOUD (and fast)!!!

It was pretty cloudy all day which was nice because it kept it cool and kept the sun at bay.

Looks like it might rain

Unfortunately that also meant that it had a chance of raining, and that chance turned into a certainty in the afternoon.

Just a little bit of rain

Luckily we came prepared and the rain was light and only came in short showers. The rain also made for some more exciting racing as the teams battled to pick the right tire for the ever changing conditions.

After the race they let us go down on the track and walk around. Courtney was excited to go check out the “power strips” (just like in Mario Cart.)

On the race track

They may not make the cars actually go faster, but these strips sure did collect tire rubber throughout the course of the day. It was strange walking on the track, it was still warm in spots from the cars and it was quite sticky.

We’re not sure that we’ll get into racing like some of our friends, but we did have a great time watching all day.