Attended the Bahrain Grand Prix . . .

My ears are still ringing with the glorious sound of the 3.0-liter V10s and gear shifting that sounds like shots being fired!!! And, oh, the smell of those cars zipping past . . .

Schumacher is absolutely unstoppable at this point. It looks like his 7th title is coming along smoothly.

The town is small and pleasant, its quite green for a desert area with sidewalks lined with roses and palm trees, etc. The people are very warm and friendly and (surprisingly for an inaugural event of this size), the Grand Prix was extremely well organized, be it the roads to and from the circuit or the airport, etc.

Sadly, I couldn’t find a single hotel room in the country (even though I had bought the tickets last October and had been looking for hotel rooms since!). All 5-star, 4-star and 3-star hotels were fully booked for the Grand Prix weekend since last fall, as were all furnished apartments, etc. In fact, hotels in neighboring countries were also fully booked for the entire weekend with dozens of charter flights taking people in and out daily!

Since I live in Kuwait (an hour’s flight from Bahrain), I opted to fly to Bahrain in the mornings and out in the evenings back to Kuwait for all 3 days, which was quite hectic, but well worth it.

On race day, I estimate the circuit (capacity 45,000) to have had a seat occupancy rate of over 95%. And the dominant color was (of course) red .

Here are some pics from Bahrain, obtained from the web site. I will try to post some of my own pictures of the circuit soon:

 

No, I got them off the Bahrain International Circuit website (www.bahraingp.com.bh).

I will try to post some of my pictures soon.