The Saab Network Now Mailing List FAQ
| |
|
[ Prev by Date ] [ Next by Date ] Member Login / Signup - Members see fewer ads. - Latest Member Gallery Photos
back from F1 Indy
Posted by Stefanv (more from Stefanv) on Wed, 27 Sep 2000 10:28:40
I made it!
First off, wow... TV can not prepare you for the sheer volume and raucousness of these cars. OMG.
For that matter, no other form of motorsport I have ever watched can prepare you for these
cars. I've been to three CART/CHAMP/INDY car races and one NASCAR race and they simply can't
come close in terms of mechanical speed and noise.
We departed from Blacksburg, VA on Satuday morning to rendezvous in Columbus with a friend
from Philly. Somewhere in West Virginia I got a call on my cell phone, he'd wrecked his car
a few miles east of Wheeling, WV. So, we detoured and went to pick him up. He was fine, but
his VW Corrado wasn't.
The closest hotel we could find to Indy on Saturday night was in Oxford, Ohio... 85 miles away.
Sleep, a little. Get up at 4:15am to arrive at the track at 6:30am.
We watched the morning warmup from the grassy hill next to the 'Mickey' turn. We stayed there
for the Porsche Supercup race, the Ferrari Challenge race, and the driver's parade. Then we
went to our seats in the grandstands. We were on the inside of the track, on the main straight,
next to the pit exit lane, 3 rows from the front. All we could really see was the cars coming
down the front straight really damn fast. However, we were very lucky that Tony George had
put a huge TV behind us on the stands which we could turn around and watch whenever the cars
went out of sight. What a great idea.
It was a great race with lots of passing and my hero fought hard the whole race to finish a
well deserved fouth place. Even though the devil ended up winning the race and the Flying
Fin (the closest I can come to a countryman in F1) retired with mechanical problems, I was
still very happy and enjoyed every second of it.
Getting out of Indianapolis was... well... if not interesting, certainly something. I've got
a picture of my car in the traffic. I got out, went into the trunk to get the camera, shut
the trunk, stood in the middle of the oncoming lane, and took the pic. No one was moving anyway.
Going east on I-70 I looked in my rearview mirror and said 'Oh my.' There, in all it's yellowness,
was a 2000 Viggen coupe. Eventually we got alongside one another, he looked over, I looked
over, we exchanged grins, I gave him a thumbs up, and we dropped into third and went WOT.
No contest really, he dropped me like a dead rat. But I caught him again when traffic slowed
and re-engaged the battle. Again, no contest, but it was fun trying. Top speed was limited
by the traffic but I saw something like 115mph before throwing out the anchor once.
I really don't like street racing but in this case, how could I not?
Approx 1500 miles round trip, BLZEBUB never even hiccuped.
I'm mailing my request to renew my tickets for next year, TODAY!
-STEFAN ...still reeling from the experience
'86 900T 3dr Malachite green (BLZEBUB)
Posts in this Thread:
StateOfNine.com
 |
SaabClub.com
 |
Jak Stoll Performance
 |
M Car Covers
 |
Ad Available
 |
  
This is a moderated FAQ - Posting is a privilege, not a right.
Unsolicited commercial postings are not allowed (no Spam). Please, no For Sale or Wanted postings, SERIOUSLY.
Classifieds are to be listed in The Saab Network Classifieds pages.
This is a problem solving forum for over 250,000 Saab owners, so expect to see
problems discussed here even though our cars are generally very reliable. This is not an anything goes
type of forum. TSN has been a moderated forum since 1988. For usage guidelines, see the
TSN Mission and Purpose Page. Please remember that you are
not anonymous
Your address is: 3.138.138.149 - Using Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com) - Logged.
|
