Up at 5:30am this morning and looked out the window to drizzle. Not really what we wanted to see as Liam’s rain experience in open wheel cars is very limited. So lets see - first standing start in an open wheel car and first race in Europe - not the best conditions, but he will survive as he is a smart driver.
We drove to the track and didn’t talk at all about the rain as I could tell that he was a little on the nervous side. Once we got to the track the rain let up and you could see the clouds clearing a bit. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that it keeps clearing off. The Polo Cup series is out before us so hopefully they dry the track.
Liam is into his car after some great coaching on driving the rain and more importantly how to just survive! The team had him on dry tires and it was looking like it might be the way to go as there was a dry line developing. About 5 minutes before they pulled out on track, Otto the team manager told the guys to go to wet tires and what a call that was. Yes there was a dry line, but not very dry and off line in any of the brake zones it was still extremely wet and that is where the guys on dries really suffered.
I watch the race from the outside at the entrance to the Motodrome and the first lap by Liam was in 8th position and from there he was mister consistent and finished a good solid 7th. Liam drove to a top ten in his first race over here and everyone here is very happy.
Liam’s teammate Marco Sorenson started on pole and won the race quite easily. He actually drove one of the best wet races I have ever seen. He was extremely smooth and really made the car do things in the corners instead of letting the car do things to him. Boy, I hope we can get his data from the race. The team has been very hesitant to let us see Marco’s data as they feel it would be insulting to him. Oh well it is their decision - I am sure Liam is better in some parts of the track and Marco could learn something too.
6:00pm
Back at the hotel nice and early tonight hopefully we will get to bed early also, there have been some very long days this week. Our race was over by 9:30am but we hung around the track all afternoon - not sure why. There is something about a racetrack that makes you just sit and/or walk around for no reason at all.
We went out and watched the F3 race today and it was a bit of a snorer and then watched some of the DTM practice which wasn’t much better. The DTM cars are no where near as good as I thought that they would be. They are not really quick down the straights and they park them in the corners. I always thought that they were basically an F1 car with bodywork.
We went t-shirt and souvenir hunting and were totally bummed with that adventure also. They need to take a page out of NASCAR’s book. They had no event t-shirts - all they have are shirts from the manufactures. Who really wants to wear a Mercedes or Audi t-shirt? You can buy a Michael Schumacher t-shirt everywhere if you want.
The weather forecast for tomorrow is for a 10% chance of rain so hopefully that will happen later in the day and Liam will have a dry race. We have gone over a ton of data and picked him apart pretty good so if everything sinks in I think that a good finish will follow. The race tomorrow is even earlier than this morning so it will be another early one. It is the last day at the track for “Liam and Gord’s Big Adventure” (that’s what we have been calling it) so in a way we will both be sorry it is over, but we are both looking forward to coming home - it has been a long week.