Fast Friday

Okay, so this is did not happen on a weekend...

The San Jose Grand Prix gave away free tickets to the Grand Prix on Friday. I am not a race fan, but had always wanted to experience race day for myself.

I had printed out the coupon online the day before and went to the ticket booth in downtown San Jose at 8am to exchange coupon for tickets.

After getting the free tickets, I went to work. Drove back downtown at about noon for the actual race. When we enter the race track, the stock car race was going on. Our entrance was near San Pedro square and that part of the circuit was particularly tricky. There was a U-turn in the track and we could clearly hear all the cars jamming on their brake to make the turn, then stepping on the gas to gain speed.

We walked from the entrance to the grand stand. Along the way, the organizers have put up billboard to discourage people from standing around and block the view of most people. However, it was still possible to get a glimpse of the action from nearby office building parking lot/lawn area.

The stock car time trial ended rather uneventfully. After a brief track clean up, where a truck carrying a giant leaf blower type device blew dust into the pedestrian, we were treated to the Indy car time trial.

Watching a race in person was definitely quite different from watching it on TV. There were time where no car was in sight and the only action was on the big screen TV setup for the grand stand audience. Personally, I always felt auto racing is boring until some car crashes and watching the race live helped enhance that perception. However, when the cars came roaring in front of us, the loud noise made the event strangely exciting. We saw 2 passes, but no a lot of the fighting for position that I was expecting.

After about 20mins of time trial, we saw a minor collision between a car's front wheel and another car's back wheel. The red flags were out and we moved around the grand stand to see if we could spot the crash. It was at this moment the checker flag came out and the race was over. A somewhat let down to the event.

I must admit I am still not interested in auto racing, but at least now I know what it is like to be at race day:)