39 replies to this topic

[hodgsonc]

When I go on holiday in Spain/Greece I always attempt to watch whatever GP is on when I'm there. There is nothing like watching a race in the sun with a few beers!!!!

While in Ibiza I remember running around the resort in the blazing heat frantically looking for a bar that had the GP on - I thought it would be easy as it was the Spanish GP, not likely! I finally found a little bar that had it on so I ordered a big beer and promptly sat and waited for it to start. Typical! it was on a Spanish channel and I didn't understand a word of the commentry. Lesson learnt - if you are going on holiday have the decency to learn the lingo before you go - it'll help understand the GP commentator!

Another time in Ibiza the race was on in my hotel and it was the German GP. The hotel was full of Germans and I was wearing my Damon Hill cap with pride. I was sitting amongst all the German fans gunning for Schumi. Imagine how emabarrsed I was when he spun off on the first corner (2nd or 3rd lap) and I had to sit though the rest of the race with the smug Schumi fans! Anybody remember what year that was?

So..... anybody else had any interesting locations/stories about where they watched a GP from?

[SpeakerGuru]

Originally posted by hodgsonc

Another time in Ibiza the race was on in my hotel and it was the German GP. The hotel was full of Germans and I was wearing my Damon Hill cap with pride. I was sitting amongst all the German fans gunning for Schumi. Imagine how emabarrsed I was when he spun off on the first corner (2nd or 3rd lap) and I had to sit though the rest of the race with the smug Schumi fans! Anybody remember what year that was?

So..... anybody else had any interesting locations/stories about where they watched a GP from?

That would be 1995. DH ran off on lap 2 for a reason that still escapes me.

On topic - although not a very strange place, per se, on August 28 1998 my sister was getting married. I was supposed to be getting dressed (tux & all) in my hotel room with my wife. Instead, I'm watching the Belgian GP and losing my mind with all the drama in that race (great race ). We barely made it to the ceremony!

Dont ever tell my sister, but I don't remember much of that day other than that huge pileup at the start, Hakinnen's spin @ the restart, MS & DC, Jordan, etc. What a race!

[Viktor]

It was Germany 1995

Whan I was doing my military service in 1997 we where 4 service men on one boat and I was the only hardcore F1 fan, Ferrari fan, Schumacher fan, the last race of the year was on and I had booked the only TV on the boat to watch the race and everyone else was also watching.
During the week up to the race I had been saying "Schumacher will win easy" and then came race day and Schumacher got a perfekt start and into the lead and then on lap 47 it all ended and I was in hell for the next couple of weeks.

/Viktor

[dick]

I remember watching the USGP at Detriot in a hotel room north of Chicago. Sometime in the early eighties. Funny thing was I was sharing the room with a new girlfriend who was attending a wedding there. Needless to say we didn't want her parents knowing we were sharing a room. Who do we run into in the elevator...her Dad. As it ended up all the men got dressed in our room as I watched the race.

[jaisli]

The French Grand Prix in 1996. I forgot about the race and went with some friends to the transportation museum in Lucern Switzerland. As part of a display they had about 3-4 dozen televisions all spinning around slowly each showing a different channel. I spent about an hour at the display slowly walking around in circles trying to follow the action. I ended up dizzy, sick and tired.

jaisli

[jonpollak]

1997 Argentina
I watched from a brothel in Hamburg
Somehow... it ended up being twice the cost of flying down there and buying tickets!!!!

Jp

[ffiloseta]

hodgsonc, it will do you good not to know spanish if you ever come to Venezuela, the commentators suck big time. At least they have the decency of letting one listen to engine sounds every time an in-car camera is on...

On the other hand, you will have no trouble finding a place to see the race: be it at 8am on Sundays when the race is in Europe or 3am when it's Malaysia, there will be some place open, with the race on.

[pRy]

A caravan in North Wales. It was the race Schumacher ran into the back of Coulthard at Spa in the rain. Needless to say I shook the caravan with my "YES!!!!" shout.

[MarkWRX]

This was back in the summer of 1979 I think. I was home on military leave and met a girl at some event that I had to attend in uniform. We chatted for a while, then I told her I was going to go home and watch a Formula 1 race on TV. She said she wanted to come watch it too, although she knew nothing about Formula 1.

I will leave out the details, except to say it was rough textured blue couch at my mother's house, and I had to move her waist length dark hair out of the way so I could see the TV.

Oh, and Niki Lauda won.

Mark

[Tomecek]

Being from Czech republic I was watching F1 race in Germany, Austria, Tenerife (!), Croatia - this was the most funny, it was Austrian Grand Prix 1999 or 2000? When Concorde crashed...(Schumacher finished in first corner I guess) and I wanted see the race (as usual) so much that I asked some poeple in house where I heard F1 sounds from ;) Thank them!

[ILV4RCING]

It was the day Senna die. I was in the hospital in Lima Peru nursing a Motorcicle accident and several broken bones. I shared the TV with a old person and no common ground between us (not even the language) . I want it to change channels to see if the race was on but my roommate who could move did not understand a word of what I was saying. Finaly, one of the doctors was able to decipher what I was saying and he was also a F1 fan. So we watch the race in silence.

[CLX]

Motel Room.

[dolomite]

Originally posted by MarkWRX
Oh, and Niki Lauda won.

Mark

Can't have been 1979 then!

[LB]

Wheres the strangest place you've ever watched a GP from.

Watched Suzuka 2001 in a hotel bed in Norfolk with my then girlfriend ( no you are NOT getting details). Even stranger was that i met Ross that day....

[POLAR]

The soaking wets grandstands of Interlagos.;)

[Linus27]

Either, a small pocket casio TV with a 1.5" screen on a tour bus rolling into Liverpool. It was Nurburg 99 or at a recording studio in London whilst recording a bass line watching Canada 97.

[Double Apex]

On the terrace at the exit of Ste Devote, last year.

Just a few feet away from the cars racing past you, poignant smell of fuel and rubber in the air, the deafening sound of screaming V10's blasting straight through your earplugs, bits of rubber flying past you...waves of air running through you hair as each car passes, seeing and feeling a driver bump his rear wheel into the barrier just in front of you.

Unforgettable experience!

[exg]

Canadian GP '95 in a hotel room in Dallas Texas. I was there on business. It was the worst thunder and lightning storm i've ever been in.
The race was tape delayed on ESPN if I recall and so I knew who won already! The broadcast came on at 11:00 pm and I watched every last second of it! Alesi riding back on top of Schumi's Benetton. A magic moment! I had to get up about 5 am on Monday morning, but it was worth it.

[Eau Red]

a few interesting/memorable ones over the last few years--

monaco '00- accidentally left my cell phone in my jersey pocket while i was in a bike race.. it rang during the race but of course i couldn't answer it. message later was from my dad saying schumacher DNF'd.

italy '00- caught a brief recap of the race while sitting with very sore legs in hotel room in the french alps, after training that afternoon on the col de croix de fer and col du glandon.

france '01- missed the race the previous day... saw a french canadian wearing a Rothmans Williams hat on the ferry to Nantucket and asked him who won. frickin' coulthard.

silverstone '99- hung over, at a friend's apartment in NYC, the morning after hooking up with my current girlfriend for the first time. shh, don't tell her i wrote this.

[Brother Fox]

Spa 2001 from a pub in Amsterdam. With Dutch commentary on the TV and me not knowing any of the language (not even Hello) we watched as Luciano Burti plowed into the tires and took an age to be freed.
Not a nice feeling seeing the pictures and not knowing what they were saying, although we eventually asked the barmaid and she told us they were saying he's ok.

[prettyface]

This is not a joke. I watched classifying for 2002's European GP from the crapper. I had food poisoning. I don't remember feeling worse in my whole life except for last January when it happened again. I had been ill since the day before and spent virtually all night and the morning in the bathroom, so I dragged the TV in front of the door and sat sideways in the john.

[MONTOYASPEED]

Watched the 2000 Hungarian GP @ Penske's hospitality.

[Davebo]

From the control room of an oil rig offshore Angola.

Thanks God for satellite dishes!

[dgsg]

A state room on the "Blue Whale" cruise ship on the Yangatz River, China in May, 2002. Tsingtao beer and announcers I could not understand!

[Bex37]

1999. Sheraton in Stockholm. French commentary; couldn't understand a thing so it was lucky I could tell drivers apart by their helmets.

[raceday]

I’ve watched F1 at many peculiar places. Bars in countries where I don’t know the language must be at least 15 by now.

The Barcelona airport 2001 Silverstone. Screwed up my travelling schedule and was forced to go to the airport at the time of the F1 race. Wasn’t sure whether they would have a tv, if they would have the channels showing it and if I would be allowed to watch it (they might have some other football game on or whatever). Went out to the airport hell bent on finding a place to watch. Went through the whole airport when I finally found a tv. The confusion of not being able to speak the language and asking whether the F1 race was gonna be on was quite fun in retrospect. The ones sitting there didn’t know much English and my Spanish is limited to say the least. So I had to use sign language and make sounds like vroom and so on and all of a sudden he lit up nodding his head saying something Uno nodding his head pointing at the tv. Phew, I was lucky and relived and happy to find a tv where it was gonna be shown.

The most strange place is probably watching a race through a shop window of a tv store in my birthtown Gävle, when I was visiting temporarily. Cant remember what race it was. It probably was sometime 97-98. For some reason it wasn’t on tv, at least not the channels I had available where I was staying, and the bars weren’t open or didn’t have the right channels. Just about when I had given up it hit me that there was a tv store where they usually have heaps of tv’s on with very many different channels. And sure enough, at a tv in the middle of the shop they had the correct channel on and the race was to be started just 10 minutes away. I stood there watching the whole race with just the picture and no sound. It must have been a strange sight seeing somebody standing like that for two hours…

[HSJ]

During the summer of 2000 I was a sort of research assistant in Lapland. The place was literally in the middle of nowhere, a national reserve I think that place is in fact. Anyway, TV picture quality was very, very poor almost all of the time, and the damn TV itself was malfunctioning 50% of the time. I often got to see only part of a race or qualifying, with bad picture quality, for many of the summer races. Hockenheim I didn't see at all, I had to listen to updates on the radio when it was running. That was pure hell. Well, I did watch each race properly from tape when back in Helsinki of course, thank goodness for that.

[HSJ]

Originally posted by MarkWRX
This was back in the summer of 1979 I think. I was home on military leave and met a girl at some event that I had to attend in uniform. We chatted for a while, then I told her I was going to go home and watch a Formula 1 race on TV. She said she wanted to come watch it too, although she knew nothing about Formula 1.

I will leave out the details, except to say it was rough textured blue couch at my mother's house, and I had to move her waist length dark hair out of the way so I could see the TV.

Oh, and Niki Lauda won.

Mark

Lucky bastard. I have to try that too, sounds interesting...

[BRG]

I watched a race (I think it was the 1992 Italian GP? in bed first thing in the morning in the Hotel Presidente in La Paz, Bolivia. I had arrived there the day before and was wiped out by the altitude (3,700m above sea level). Waking on the Sunday morning, I switched on the TV without ever imagining that the GP would be on Bolivian TV. But the hotel had cable and I got the US coverage. So I watched it all and then went downstairs for a late breakfast. Very civilised! The breakfast was nice too...

[garbo]

From Japan!

[rek]

1996, on a small colour handheld LCD television in the sticks.

Moral of the story: You can "get away from it all", but you can never escape F1

[fifi]

from my hospital bed
watched the french gp in 98 when i was in hospital, pissed everyone else off

[Viss1]

Originally posted by jonpollak
1997 Argentina
I watched from a brothel in Hamburg

Either you're the world's greatest F1 fan or that was the world's worst brothel.

Me, I watched many F1 highlights on my old Casio portable LCD TV back in the late '80s/early '90s... in college, I would hog the lounge TV because it was the only one with cable.

[AlesiUK]

i watched most of nurburgring 1995 on a small tv that was sticking out the back of an orange transit van.I was competing in a Kart race that afternoon and missed some laps in the middle of the race coz i had to go win a race instead of spending the time between races working on the machinery,everyone spent it crouched round this transit(dunno who owned it) watching a classic race.

I also watched Phoenix 1990 in house with Eddie Irvine and Gary Anderson,it didnt really mean much to me at the time since i was only 8yrs old and didnt realy know who Anderson was and just knew that Eddie was a guy who raced in the f3000 races i had watched the year before.Would sure love to do that again now tho....

i aslo have vague memory's of watching Australia either 2001 or 2000,2001 i think from some strange guys house,went out the nite before,got pissed ended up at this party and come 3am with everyone totally crashed out all around,i sudenly remeber the GP is on.Trouble was,its on ITV and this guy got no aerial,only Sky(which had no itv at the time).Had use a bent coathanger for reception!

[philhitchings]

not so much a strange place but definately a wierd experience. I was watching the GBGP in 87 in my new flat (which was in the middle of the high street above a chemists). The whole town seemed to have disapeared during the morning and being an incredibly hot day I had all the windows opened to let in some air.

The wine was chilled to perfection, as was the salmon I had poached that morning. the phone was off, the door-bell disconected, you know the knid of thing.

I was absolutely entranced by Mansell's fight back from second place that when he did the business going into Stowe corner I yelled out at the top of my voice with delight, only to hear the sounds of dozens of other voices doing exactly the same thing. Practically everyone along the street and done the same sort of thing as me. After the race we all went out onto the balconies to celebrate.

Needless to say after that our flats became quite the F1 party every few weeks or so

[FredF1]

One of the midsummer GPs - German, French or British from 1989.
Was working in Munich at the time - an acquaintance of mine was working as a chef in a city centre hotel.
A bunch of us ended up swiping a lot of food and drink from the kitchens and legging it up to his room in the attic - We started smoking dope and drinking the beer and brandy we'd swiped. I remember switching on the tv and there was Senna & Prost in the McLarens. Don't recall anymore except my mate's manager chucking us out sometime later on as my mate was in no condition to do his shift.

[polaris]

several different hotels around the world, probably the most remote Qungdao in northern China, where I can say it was live which is alot better than what I get at home in Aus. They even showed qualifying live, all in a place where most people wouldn't even know what F1 was. Other than that Imola always presents interesting dilemas as it is usually over Easter and I am usually away on some farm or something and have to put up with going to a pub or suffering really bad reception

[Yelnats]

From on top of a motor home at Mosport in the mid seventies flying a flag "CAMP SH$T F$CK". This delightfull vehicle belonged to some VERY friendly Americans lads who also supplied us with beer and grass and was stratigically placed for race watching on turn three!

From there we witnessed the famous incident where James Hunt, who after being violently tipped off the track by his team-mate Mass, decked the official (with one punch) who foolishly tried to restrain James while he was making rude gestures to his team-mate from the outside of turn three!

P.S. We never went into the motor home.


Or (so no one gets the wrong impression) in the late sixties watching an F1 race (again at Mosport) with my new bikini clad girl fiend sitting on a hillside in the unbolted seats from my 63 TR3. God, to think that I was so naive that when she changed into her bikini in the tight (sweaty!) confines of my TR3, I looked away. As we walked the track before the race I distinctly heard some lout shouting (rather effectively) "God, where did HE get HER!

I recall little of the race because we had spent the night before in the bushes with a bottle of Teachers whiskey, hiding from a roving band of brigands who had been following us in a growing crowd, one of whom was carrying a gas can used to douse campfires when things go too quiet.

The cops by this time were cowering in their trailer as the last one that had turned his lights off and hid due to a hail of Canadian Beer bottles, some of them full. The swamp at the Glen had nothing on Mosport in the sixties and seventies!

[jonpollak]

Originally posted by Linus27
Either, a small pocket casio TV with a 1.5" screen on a tour bus rolling into Liverpool. It was Nurburg 99

Linus27..I have campaigned endlessly for the miserable tour bus operators here in Blighty to install the wonder that is thetracking satellite dish on their coaches...slowly but surely they are doing so....
for more info see KVH Industries

Originally posted by Viss1

Either you're the world's greatest F1 fan or that was the world's worst brothel.

The explanation will have to wait till I get to meet ya ....This damn internet thingy will NOT do that story justice!!!

Jp

[RacingCrusaderUK]

For me it would either be watching Spa 98 in a Turkish Resteraunt and damn well nearly inhaling my kebab at the start of the race, or Monaco 1996 with my ankles in cages after being thrown out of my Sprint Car at Buxton Speedway.