9/3 Race Day in Monza
Sunday morning was some more breakfast cake, and the skies were crystal clear blue and the temperatures were perfect. The Porsche SuperCup cars were back out early Sunday morning and were bouncing off the first chicane curbs like exuberant toddlers at a playground. The Formula 1 drivers were then paraded around the track in classic and historic cars like they had just became the homecoming queen. I ventured during this break to hit up the tent for lunch. Security had changed their protocol and instead of returning to my grandstand I had to go back through the main gate to get into our stands. This was incredibly ineffective. All water bottles had to have their caps removed so they couldn't be thrown. I had just bought 4 bottles with my lunch. Two of them I pocketed, and the other two I removed the caps, put the caps into my pocket, and after a 45 minute delay finally made it back to the stands. Luckily there was no racing action that I'd missed.
Our seats were in turn one and this seemed to be where all the race action was. Even the best drivers in the world can be prone to make mistakes. The chaos made the 1st turn super exciting and even with about 8 laps left we made our way back to the start finish line. Monza has one of the greatest podium ceremonies on the calendar and we wanted to be a part of it. One the winner was declared and all the cars were off the track the race organizers open up the gates and the crowd rushes the track by the thousands. The fans do a full sprint along the track to the podium celebration just to cheer on their heroes. Simi and I found a gate that had about 100 people all bunched up and when the gate opened we did nothing. Trying to shove all the people through a 3 foot wide door isn't effective in moving people and we just didn't exactly force our way through the gate with sharp elbows and screaming in Italian. It was deemed a little too unsafe for our comfort level of getting trampled. We then just decided to meet up with our shuttle bus where attempting to leave the track were about to go south fast.
Due to the recent terrorist incidents of cars driving over people no cars were allowed to leave the track until a vast majority of the fans had left. All the fans were on the track and they weren't about to leave any time soon. We waited at the van in a gridlock not even moved from our parking position for FOUR hours. Boredom soaked in like the Saturday rain and I just went off exploring and found a few of the cars the driver's came in on in the VIP area. It was good to read a book and just stroll around. Simi scored a selfie with one of the F1 driver's as he was leaving the track with a police escort and after the major delay we were finally on the road with everyone else as the sun was setting. That was a whole afternoon of sightseeing wasted, as we'd planned to book tickets to get into the Milan Duomo on Sunday after the race.
We opted to go to downtown Milan anyway and found a super cute little Italian restaurant that was decorated like a 1950s house on the inside. The hostess said that they only took reservations which was startling since a majority of the tables were empty! She asked us if we could sit down and eat within 45 minutes she could squeeze us in before our table had to be cleared. The Italians eat a little, then tell a story longer than this whole trip recap, and then they eat a little more. Every meal we noticed for the locals it was more about sharing a story than the amazing food on the plate.
Comments
Post a Comment