Australian Grand Prix

This weekend was the Australian Grand Prix, an event I've been looking forward to since before I even came to Melbourne.  This race--the first of the 2012 Formula1 season--was held at the Albert Park circuit south of the CBD.  The Grand Prix takes up an entire octane-filled weekend, with practice on Friday, qualifying on Saturday, and the actual race on Sunday.  In between the F1 events there are numerous other races, including V8 Supercars, touring cars, and the Carerra Cup.  It's pretty safe to say that my first (and hopefully not last) ever car race will be one I remember forever.

Free trams!

Albert Park is built around a manmade lake.  It's considered one of the easier circuits of the F1 season.  We sat near the exit of turn 9 (the top left corner of this map) most of the time, but walked around a bit to see other corners during the second half of the GP.

My friend Ben Rabinowitz came from Sydney for the weekend to stay with me and see the Grand Prix.  I must say, it's really a shame that it took us both coming to study in Australia to get quality hang-out time, especially considering how close we were growing up and in high school.  Anyways, it was really great to see Ben and show him around the city I've been calling home, and to experience our first F1 race together.  I know a bit more about cars than he does, mostly because of my healthy obsession, and he was impressed at my ability to name (and spit out facts on) more than 75% of the cars here without looking at their badges.  We are both total gearheads, which made the whole thing more fun because we were constantly talking about cars, trucks and motorcycles and all that fun stuff.

Mates, Australian style.

Ben arrived early on Friday after taking the redeye train from Sydney.  We caught up over a substantial cereal-and-eggs brunch.  It became evident rather quickly after sleeping in the same room and sharing the bathroom that my apartment is not at all suitable for more than one person.  But Ben and I get along well, and we managed.  Around midday I gave Ben a brief campus tour, then we met up with my friend Rob to head for our first day at the Grand Prix.

One of the nice things about this weekend is that the trams to the Grand Prix were all free.  So we hopped on one at Federation Square and it took us almost directly to one of the entry gates where we showed our printed tickets and ventured into the Albert Park venue.  Not more than five minutes after we arrived, it started to pour torrentially, so we went inside a tent to check out some driving exhibits and have a go on the video game F1 simulator.  I didn't even complete one lap before I spun out, and then some eight-year-old kid totally showed me up with a rather impressive performance.  Sadly, the one who probably couldn't see over the steering wheel in an actual car was miles faster than the one who has had his license for over four years!

Once the track was sufficiently wet and the grounds sufficiently muddy, the rain let up and we started walking around the track.  Our goal for the day was to scope out some good viewing positions for the next two days, and also to see the second of three F1 practice sessions.  The practice session was delayed slightly as the crew dried the track as best they could (apparently Albert Park has poor drainage because most of the circuit is on actual public roads).  We found a spot close to the track, then...

WHAAAAAAAMMMMMM!  The first car screamed by, Sebastian Vettel's (the current F1 champion) Red Bull machine spraying a rooster tail of water out of its enormous grooved rain tires.  The feeling of the cars going by is really indescribable in words, but I'm going to try to give a vague idea of how it feels.  First of all, F1 cars are loud.  I mean, LOUD.  Their 2.4 liter V8 engines rev to a maximum 18,000 rpm, which results in a deafening shriek when the cars whiz by.  When they shift, the motors backfire and the gears slam into place, producing a thundering thwap that bounces off the circuit walls.  It's an absolutely amazing visceral feeling, and it's exciting time after time.  It's so loud, in fact, that you really need to wear ear plugs or your ears will be ringing (or bleeding) after a few laps.

This is one of those situations where the best description is a video:

This is during the practice session in the wet.  Apparently those deeply grooved rain tires can expel up to 65 liters of water per second, which is important to keep them from hydroplaning and sending the featherweight cars into the barrier at triple-diget speeds.

The F1 cars take the track at tremendous speeds.  It's counter-intuitive to think like this, but in many ways it's safer for the drivers to go fast.  The car's grip depends almost entirely on two factors: tires and aerodynamic downforce.  The tires need to be hot to maintain good traction, and that necessitates speed--hard acceleration and hard braking.  And as even the engineering novice can tell you, aerodynamic downforce depends on speed, to the point where at top speed (in excess of 180 mph on this circuit) these cars can produce over 1 ton of downforce on the rear wheels.  That's pretty important when you're trying to transmit about 750 horsepower from the rubber to the road.  So, believe it or not, in Formula1 you will crash if you go too slow (try that one out on the trooper the next time you get pulled over).

Formula1 is a very technical and political sport with a pretty complex set of regulations.  They carefully control everything from raceday procedures to fuel composition in an effort to make the sport as exciting for spectators and as safe for drivers as possible.  The governing body is constantly adding, subtracting, or revising rules to meet that goal.  Regardless, the teams spend millions inventing new technologies to give themselves a technical edge, because at this level it really does depend on the car just as much as the driver inside it.  They have rear wings which can change pitch (but only at certain parts of the track by regulation) to change the downforce/drag ratio, kinetic energy recovery systems (KERS) to store braking energy in a flywheel for later release during passing (basically a fancy hybrid system), and paddle-shifted sequential gearboxes to crack off seamless split-second shifts.  The amount of engineering that goes into these cars is mind boggling.  Each team employs dozens of engineers and technicians who work year-round to make F1 the sport that it is.  I hate to say it, but the world would be a much better place if these incredibly talented and intelligent individuals shifted their focus to solving our energy and infrastructure problems instead of sending a couple multi-million-dollar pieces of carbon fiber around a twisty track.  Still, these jobs are a mechanical engineer's dream, and I would give anything to be a part.

On Friday Ben, Rob, and I saw a lot of historic race cars and sports cars that were on display around the venue.  There were some pretty nice rides, although I don't think there was anything in as good condition as Ralph Lauren's collection that Asher took me to see at the MFA a few years ago.  Still, I walked around drooling over these pieces of automotive and motorsport history.

An exquisite vintage Jaguar racer, right hand drive.  Ralph Lauren had a similar one in the more traditional British racing green.

On Friday night, after a delicious chili dinner, the three of us went out in attempt to see some live music, but after realizing how high the cover fee was at the place we wanted to go, the night didn't end up spectacularly.  It was a an insufficiently brief taste of Melbourne night life, and I wish Ben had gotten so see some of the better nights.

On Saturday our plan was to have a relaxing morning and then head to the track for qualifying in the afternoon.  Again, we had a huge breakfast (Ben is an impressive cereal eater) before heading down to Albert Park on a tram.  We posted up with our newly-purchased $6.50 camping chairs on a hill at the exit to turn 9, and waited for the qualifying to begin.  Qualifying was three rounds where the drivers compete against the clock to produce the fastest lap times, and their single fastest times determine their positions on the starting grid.

I was (and still am) rooting for Lewis Hamilton, a young British driver for Vodafone McLaren-Mercedes who has one world championship under his belt.  I'm not sure exactly why I like him, and I suppose the main reason is because I don't really know many drivers, but I think it's also because of his role in the BBC's Top Gear tribute to Ayrton Senna.  Ayrton, a Brazilian, was arguably the best driver of all time (unquestionably the best in the rain because of his ability to take his car to the edge and pull of ridiculous lap times), and Hamilton considers Senna to be the best and his idol.  Tragically, Ayrton died in a horrible single-car accident at Imola (San Marino Grand Prix, Italy) in 1994 and the sport lost one of its greats.  Ayrton's nephew actually races in F1 now for Williams Renault, but he is not as good as his uncle was.  Anyways, I like Hamilton, and since I didn't want to be cliche and root for Schumacher or Vettel, I picked him as my man.  The only other logical choice would have been Red Bull's Mark Webber, since he is an Australian and hence the local fan favorite.

Lewis Hamilton 

Ayrton Senna

Anyway, I must be good luck, because Hamilton qualified in first with a time of 1:24.9 (almost a full second slower that Michael Schumacher's all time record there of 1:24.1).  Behind him was his teammate Jenson Button, making it an all-British and all-McLaren front row in the starting grid.  It's really cool how the drivers come back in after each qualifying round to make little tweaks to their cars, so by the third round they are producing staggering times.

Before qualifying there was a V8 supercar race, which was also very loud and exciting, and after there was a classic touring car race.  We laughed because one of the touring cars was a Volvo, and it seemed to be running quite late for soccer practice.  Ben preferred the lower-pitch bark and growl of the supercars, but I preferred the high-pitch wail of the 18,000-rpm F1 monsters.  To each his own.

Saturday night Ben and I headed out to the Fitzroy area to catch the end of the St. Paddy's day festivities.  It didn't really compare to Boston's St. Paddy shenanigans, but there are a lot fewer Irish people here.  Anyway, we didn't find any places we liked too much, so it ended up being a not-so-late night again, which was good because we had another busy day of racing to see.  On our way home we were gawking at an exquisite 1970 Dodge Charger 440 in a parking garage, and its owner came back to get it.  I think we made him nervous from our inspection, because he stalled the car trying to get it out of the parking space.  He stalled it again at the next traffic light, which made us really suspicious that it wasn't actually his car.  Hopefully he's just bad at driving and we didn't witness a car theft.

Sunday was the actual Grand Prix, the moment we had been waiting for.  After a slow morning we finally made it to Albert Park.  Obviously there were a ton more people this time, and the spot we had scoped out for qualifying was jam packed, so we took up another post on a small hill overlooking the straightaway after that corner.  It was really hot, and we were in the sun, but it was a decent view nonetheless.

My attempt to stay cool and not get a sunburn on my face.

After a cool demonstration from a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) F-18 fighter jet, then a flyover by a Quantas 747 (the Grand Prix's primary sponsor), they sang the Australian national anthem.  It was a weird experience because the Australians didn't really sing along, and many didn't stand up or take off their hats.  The DJ at the nearby dance party didn't even turn down his music.  As a person who sometimes gets emotional when they play the Star Spangled Banner at the Garden, or during Hatikvah on Yom HaAtzmaut, it was strange to witness such an unenthusiastic performance.  I can't tell if Australians are not patriotic, if Americans are overly patriotic, or both, but I think the lack of respect for their country's anthem was a bit embarrassing.

The Quantas 747.  Nice plane (but its no A380).

After a single formation lap, the Australian Grand Prix got underway at about 5 PM.  The GP consists of 58 laps of the roughly 3-mile circuit, which took roughly 90 minutes.  Because the F1 rules do not allow refueling, and the cars average only 4 mpg, the cars have very heavy fuel loads at the beginning of the race.  This weight, and the non-ideal conditions of actual racing, leads to significantly slower lap times--roughly five seconds slower--than in qualifying.  But the cars get lighter by about 3.5 kg per lap, so lap times decrease throughout the race and the drivers put down their best times in the final laps.

Enjoy the 18,000-rpm symphony of lap 1!  It's impossible to tell because they just look like a blur (and it's not much easier to see in person), but 1-2-3 are Button, (McLaren), Hamilton (McLaren,) and Schumacher (Mercedes-Benz).

Anyway, this race was a nail biter.  Jenson Button overtook Lewis Hamilton immediately on the opening sprint, and stayed in first place for the duration of the race (this was his third win at Albert Park in four years).  But the other positions shifted considerably.  For the first few laps it was Button, Hamilton, then Schumacher, but Michael crashed out on lap 11.  At around the halfway point, Button and Hamilton pitted for tires, but Sebastian Vettel did not pit until the next lap.  During that lap there was a crash and a caution flag, and that worked to Vettel's advantage as he was able to gain precious seconds to move into second.  The battle for third was fierce between Hamilton and fan-favorite Mark Webber, but my man held it to the end to secure a podium finish.  The final result was Button, Vettel, and Hamilton in 1-2-3, followed by Webber and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso.  This puts Button in the lead for drivers cup points with 25, and McLaren in the lead for the constructor's cup with 40 points (25 from Button and 15 from Hamilton).  It seemed funny that everyone clapped at the end (especially for Webber) because the drivers are going too fast and it's too loud for them to see or hear it, but I guess it's the thought that counts.  Overall, there seemed to be a lot of accidents, and seven drivers didn't finish, but it was a great start to the F1 season regardless.

Ben and I were so glad we got to see this event.  I think I'm going to start following F1 because it is such a fantastic sport from both an entertainment and engineering perspective.  Although it's easier to understand what's going on (and you get a better view) on TV, there's nothing that compares to the feeling of being at the race and watching the cars fly by.

When the race ended on Sunday I went with Ben directly to the train station to see him off on his return redeye to Sydney.  It was really great to see him and spend the weekend together, and it made me even more excited for our Great Barrier Reef road trip in a few weeks.  We're in the process of planning it now.  We also decided that we're going to do a weekend of backpacking this summer, and that I'm going to give Ben some carpentry lessons downstairs in the shop for a few nights because he wants to learn about all the different tools and how to use them.

Now that I'm back at my apartment and have spent the last two hours writing this post, it's probably time I get back into school mode.  Yeah, right...