Ken Hensley

We left the hotel at 7:30 so as to pick up our parking pass and to have breakfast at the Williams centre. Traffic was a little more difficult today too. Today is the first day of official practise and it will be the first time I see these cars at work close up…. VERY close up as it happened!

The whole atmosphere was different today… a little more intense as the teams prepared for their hardest work and the big bosses began to arrive. At this point the world championship is close and there is a major legal issue going on between Ferrari and McLaren so there is a lot of “chatter” about that. As a fan I hate it, but it did make me think…. fans do see things differently and this experience has brought me squarely on that side of things. As I said before, most of this is hidden from the fan in the “cheap seats” at home so I was like a sponge, learning so much and asking as many questions as I thought was polite.

And then, amidst the chit-chat I heard….. IT!! The first engine being fired up and warmed up!! NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING in the world sounds like this. It is a sound so full of mechanical emotion and it carries with it the promise of so many things to come. It is the “heart” of an F1 car and it must be made to work in perfect harmony with all of the other elements that create speed and movement management to get the car around the circuit as fast as possible. That’s what F1 is essentially about to us fans…. speed and power…. a bit like rock & roll really!

Peter had arranged a tabard for me. It is the vest that you see the course marshals and other officials wearing around the track and it meant I could go anywhere I wanted to watch the cars in action.

We decided to go to the first chicane which is at the end of the long main straight. The cars approach it at 350 kph (about 215 mph), lift off at 100 metres and brake at 80 metres before turning into the slow right hand first part of the chicane.

All throughout this experience, I found the sounds to be the most fascinating thing. At this point on the track you hear the cars approaching from a distance and it sounds for all the world like a fighter jet, then it gets deeper and more complicated as the driver decelerates and finds the right combination of braking and gear-changing to position himself for the important corner. Going in right is vital to coming out at maximum possible speed and it was interesting to see who got it right and who didn’t!

But, no matter who was driving what, these guys have balls!!

There is a thing in F1 called “traction control” and it is basically a way for the electronics to prevent the car from over-revving and creating wheel-spin. From next year this will go away and the control will, once again, be the driver’s responsibility… as it should be. Traction control has found its way into road cars in one of the more relevant elements of improving road cars through the development of racing technology. This is appropriate. What is definitely not appropriate is applying road car technology to racing cars! But more of that later….

Anyway…. traction control means that the engine is held back at exactly a point when it is screaming to be set free. On TV you hear the high end of the engine sound but “live” there is another dimension that I found so exciting. It is a low, angry growl that says “let me go” and you can hear the engine fighting with the electronics until, at last, it is allowed to do its thing and screams away into the distance. I know, I am strange, but, believe me, when you get this close, you realise that these things are alive!!

I watched both practise sessions from the same spot…. mesmerised! And I must mention a special gadget that was given to me to use during the whole weekend. Kangaroo is a company that provides these little TVs that not only receive the standard F1 feed but also allow you to access timing and other data at the touch of a button. This is especially useful if you are watching from the track and want to see what’s going on elsewhere. They were available to the public to rent and they really provide the best of both worlds. The sound and “feel” of the race live and a way to watch TV at the same time.

After second practice I was introduced to Peter Bürger, the man responsible for the Arai helmets worn by many of the drivers and he in turn introduced me to Mike Negline, the Team Logistics Manager at McLaren Mercedes. Mike is one of the busiest (and, by all accounts, one of the most efficient) people in the paddock but he still took the time to show me around parts of the garage.

The cars are electronically connected to both their pits and to the factories, in whatever country they may be in and this telemetry and data acquisition in general are a vital part of the teams quest for maximum efficiency. This aspect was amazing and fascinating enough but then we went into the pits where the guys were cleaning and inspecting the cars and preparing for pit-stop practise. Repetition is a form of learning, especially when every hundredth of a second counts!

Now I had a helmet guru I decided to ask him a couple of questions…. F1 helmets cost around $5,000.00 each and the drivers have as many as 12 available to them during two seasons. They are all numbered. It is the only thing they keep. All of their other race wear belongs to the teams.

I asked if any of the drivers were superstitious…. Fernando Alonso prefers to use #4 in his races. The helmet shell is made of carbon fibre so they are super strong and as light as possible.

As things settled down and the noise of the support racers (the opening acts) practising faded away, we relaxed with a beer at Red Bull before going to dinner with Credit Suisse, a principal sponsor of BMW Sauber. Ann signed me in for this too and it was a nice way to end a long and exciting day.