Of all the races on the Formula One calendar, the Italian Grand Prix at Monza possibly generates the most buzz, not because of the very energetic and emotional Italian fans (Tifosi) but also due to the heritage and history of the race track itself. The grand prix is held in one of the oldest tracks in Formula 1 on the outskirts of Milan in a small town named Monza .
As I had planned on arriving in Milan early
Saturday, I had bought only the race day ticket instead of the usual 2-day ticket ( qualifying + race).
My plane touched down in Milan around 8am. Compared to my last F1 race at Montreal, where the entire city including the airport was immersed with F1 fever, there was absolutely no buzz about the F1 in Milan, except for the Ferrari store in downtown Milan which was all about F1, but I guess its like that all 365 days. I was a bit surprised by this but my hotel concierge explained to me in a sentence," Italian Grand
Prix happens in
Monza, not Milan". Well, that
actually made sense.
The grand
prix takes place in
Monza which is about 10 miles or a 20 min train ride from Milan center. On Sunday there are special trains for the F1 fans to get to
Monza from Milan central station. Even though it
wasn't raining that day, the sky was grey and there was a continuous faint drizzle. It had rained heavily the previous day, so the track was still wet, and we all had come to terms that this year its going to be a wet race. I arrived at the Milan central station on time to get on the 9:30 am train and was greeted by herds of fans wearing the Ferrari red and also tons of
Mclaren fans who had
travelled from England. The train ride to
Monza was slow and took about 30
mins. I got off the train at the
Biassono-
Lesmo station around 10am which is close to the track itself.
The race track (
autodromo monza) where the the grand
prix takes place is inside a park (
Parco di Monza). Depending upon what kind of tickets you got, the walk for the station to your grandstand could be anywhere between 15 - 45 mins. Since I had to pick up my tickets from the voucher exchange boothat the paddock entrance, I had to walk all the way to the entrance of the park. The actual entrance to the
Monza park was on the other side of the train station so I ended up walking a good 45-60 minutes . Its also confusing if you don't understand Italian, but most the Italian police who were guiding the crowd spoke english, so its better to ask them rather tahn trying to figure out on your own.
The entrance was very crowded with thousands of fans trying to get inside and also lots of vehicles transporting the F1 personnel, media and paddock deliveries were arriving at full force. There were lots of fancy cars entering the paddock too, I presume these were the VIPs & celebrities.
I picked up my ticket, entered the park and went straight to the F1 village. I personally think the highlight of going to a F1 race is visiting the F1 village. This is where all the sponsors and F1 teams display their cars and all other cool F1 stuff which you rarely get to see anywhere else. This year they had Ferrari, Mclaren,Toyota, Honda & Red bull f1 cars on display and many stores selling official F1 related merchandise. There was a long line in the Mercedes Benz booth since they were allowing fans to actually sit inside the cockpit of a Mclaren F1 car, usually we can't get very close to these cars.
Since I had general admission ticket I walked around the race track to find a good place to watch the driver's parade. I always prefer getting a general admission ticket rather than a grand stand ticket, because you get a chance to watch the race from different parts of the track, if you are sitting in a grandstand you will end up watching 90% of the race on big television screens anyway. I also felt that sometimes with a general admission ticket you can find a much better spot to watch the race than the grandstand itself, if not its three times cheaper than the chapest grand stand ticket, so ts a win-win. I was in a bad spot of the track during the drivers parade so couldn't watch the drivers very closely. I walked around awhile and ended up finding a good spot when the race began. Unfortunately I forgot my ear plugs so it was very uncomfortable for the first few laps, till my ears got used to the screeching sounds of the F1 cars. Watching the race with the Italian fans was very different experience, they are indeed a very passionate Ferrari fans as they were booing whenever Hamilton passed and they never stopped booing until the last lap was over. Even though Ferrari did not finish at the top, it looked like all the tifosi went home very happy since the other Italian team, Torro Rosso ended up winning the race.
If you have a General admission ticket, then head down to the
Lesmo curve of the race track, they have free stands from where you can sit and watch the cars pass by at a very close distance. Once the race is over you are allowed to enter the track. Everyone ran to the track and were walking around trying to find bits of pieces of the cars that might have dropped during the race. Anyways after everything seemed to end I walked back to the train station, there were Italian police everywhere to control the crowd. We took the same train back to Milan.
Even though the weather was not that great, it was a great and fun
experience.
Checkout the pics at;
http://picasaweb.google.com/vaishak77/F1ItalianGP08#
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