Friday seemed animal-free, but we got more than our fair share on Saturday. In Sat morning practice pt 1, digital viewers saw a hare zipping across the gravel trap at priory corner, just as the session was about to start.
Then, on the installation laps Eddie Irvine had to almost make an emergency stop to aviod another (possibly the same) hare as he was building up speed on the hangar straight.
Three strikes and your out as they say....... During part 2 of the Sat morning session we suddenly see Mcnish`s Toyota mostly brown & red covered. John Watson straight away "He`s hit a hare or a rabbit no doubt". Then, the digital director shows us the replay of how Allan`s car came to be in that state.
I honestly did`nt know whether to look or not. The replay was at almost "real" speed......Mcnish barrelling down the straight. The luckless animal changes it`s tragectory at the last minute..............fatal.
Kudos to the replay guy. He paused the replay when Mcnish was literaly about 2 feet away. I did for one awful moment think that they would show it.............but the viewers were spared of the resultant collision. The car looked bad enough anyway, so we could imagine. Allan later said that he thought at first it was a bird, and that he`s not expecting a christmas card from the local animal welfare society this year!
Then in the afternoon qualifying session, world feed viewers (this was`nt shown on the digital i think), the bravest hare of them all decided it`d be fun to play "chicken" with the cars and run UP hangar straight in the middle of the road towards them! A Jordan & a Renault lost....and the hare won.
Have we ever seen this amount of appearring wildlife during an F1 weekend before??
I certainly remember 1997 at Silverstone when HHF just missed one on the start finish straight.
Australia 2000, Jenson Button`s first real taste of F1 competition - he hit a bird on the Friday, and that seemed to shake him a bit.
Austria of course has a history of wildlife, esp. the deers. There`s the famous Montoya "oh deer!" incident of last year during the Sat morning practice. Tim Preston was`nt sure if JPM knew what a deer was, and so he shouted him on the radio saying that "It`s like a horse with horns"
Also in Austria, Stefan Johansson hit a deer full-on during practice in 1987 - the remains of his car can be seen on the 1987 F1 season review video - he was a lucky guy by the looks of it.
Brazil does`nt escape either! In 1999 (don`t remember which day) a stray dog dodged about three marshalls in the middle of a practice session before being rugby tackled violently by a fourth. No-one knows what happened to our 4-legged friend.
.....and finally, just before the Sat qualifying session for Italy 1993 there was a 4 ft snake
slithering it`s way around the barrier on the outside of the lesmo curves.Are there any other similar moments from the past?, and what would you do in a similar position if you were confronted by a stray animal at 190mph?
