28th August 2006: Day 1 at the track

The weather was great, the sun was up all the time and we have a light breeze from the South. Temperature was around 71 according to weather.com, but it sure felt a lot warmer.

There were 150 drivers and Sander had 180 frequency and PT number changes, it was quite a nightmare. At the end of the day, there were actually about 5 seats available. A list was up for about 15 drivers to fill up and they were given 15 minutes of track time after Heat 15. Tomorrow they will slug it out ahead of the rest during lunch time with a race. They will then be ranked and the last available seats will be given out.

The track didn't change much, just improvements, very good improvements in general. Kudos to the organizers for all their hard work.

Unofficially, the fastest lap time was by Vray with a 49.207s followed by Daniel Reckward with 49.343s and third fastest was Joseph Quagraine (hope I spell it right) at 49.576s. It is not definitive because most of the drivers were still dialing in their cars.

Met up with the Chief Referee, Dallas, the man himself. He impressed upon the organizers that the Marshals safety is NUMBER ONE over everything else, next is the cars on the track and then finally is the one that made a mistake. Should any driver scream their heads off, Dallas says he will deal with them personally.

Hmmm.. quite a day. Our Singapore boys did okay, Sam was running in his brand new RB C6, Kenny had a battery problem and I think Ah-M had some minor issues. On the whole it was a good day.

Tomorrow would be the Official Practice for seeding, it should be a lot more exciting. That's all for now.