Indianapolis, Racing capital of the world
Hi again, Well my next trip was to Indianapolis...guess for what....For the Formula one race!!! Yeah I went to the US Grand Prix '05 on the 19th day of June of 2005.
It was 5AM all of a sudden I hears some one ringing the door bell, the next second I heard my roomate banging on the wall...after about 5 mins my roomate comes and wakes me up saying the V and K(the guys who came with us the F1 race) are waiting outside...We then realised that the alarm didnt go off when we needed it...quickly we got dressed up and then grabbed on to whatever food we cud and jumped into the car where V, K and S were waiting for us...When the car started to roll out of Sheldrake drive the clock showed the longer arm at 3 and shorter arm at 5...We headed towards Indianapolis with all the excitement and joy to watch Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikonen...Well we didnt have much to argue on who is the best driver as all five of us were the fans of Schumi...except for me...I am a schumi and Alonso fan...Once we caught the Interstate highway the racer(V) in our car was racing Mercury to touch 110 - 120 Mph...Luckily there were no cops around else we would have a ticket additional to the F1 tickets that we already possesed. With a small break at a burger king on the way, we reached the Indianapolis at around 8...
Once we reached Indianapolis we started feeling the excitement and vibration present in the air of Indianapolis...felt like joining all the Tifosi's and paint our faces red...Luckily V had booked for parking online so we did not have much trouble finding a place to park our car...
After parking the car we had a glance at the Ferari's that were kept for display and did window shopping of all the stalls that were kept there...Later we entered the gate which said "The racing capital of the world". It was great feeling to see that board. It was like a dream come true for me. This has been a thing which I wanted to do since I started following F1. Going around all over the place with excitement we landed at the official stores of different teams...with no second thought in our mind all 5 of us entered the Ferari stall.
While the other 4 shopped various merchandises ranging from Cap, T-Shirt to a Ferrai bag I was confused whether I should buy a Ferrari stuff or a Renault stuff...later after taking a look at the price of Renault merchandise I realised I better go for a Ferrari Cap. By this time the other 4 had finished a big shopping from the Ferrari stall for their near and dear ones...Once out of the shop everyone changed to whatever Ferrari merchandise that they had purchased...Then we went running to the gate where the F1 drivers entered...with lot of struggled managed to see Jenson Button at a very close range...We then went to pur benches...the excitement increased even more after going there...Guess what we were just opposite to the podium and pit stop. We all had our fingers crossed thinking if Schumi will be on the podium that day...By then it was time for the inaugaration ceremony of the race...the national flags of all the driver arranged in the order of the pole position was carried followed by a huge US flag and then massive Checked Flag this was continued by a parade of all the drivers seated in open top cars.
I waved at Alonso and Schumi...Later each car zoomed from the pit stop and got aligned at the start line...After some time the cars went for a warm up lap and atlast only six cars returned and when we were waiting for the other cars to return to the start line but the race started...everyone in the crowd were booing....later we came to know that all the cars that used Michellelin did not take part in the grand prix...I was completely disappointed...Later brought the enthu back in me cheering for Schumi and Narain Karthikeyan...After about 3 hours of racing the race came to an end and Schumi stood on the #1 platform of the podium with Barichello at #2...The party came to an end without even a victory champagne fiz...we retrned back to Chicago worrying about the flop show...at around 8:30 PM we reached an Indian Restaurant munched nicely and returned back home thinking about the the tiresome day that we had...
