On The road to new dehli with darshan
Friday
For FP1 as expected it was Karthikeyan, Chandok and the Force India car's to make the first appearances onto the circuit which was a historic moment for Indian Motorsport.
I was sitting near Turn 10/11 whilst also having a view through Turn 9 and 12. The first thing which struck me was the enormous sound of the car it just blew me away as I wasn't expecting such a sound at all but it soon became music for me as I was loving it! The day started with the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso stopping right opposite to me. He got out and sat below the TV screen for about 10 minutes before he left for the pits. |
When I got to my seat on Friday morning in the South Zone, Block F at T10-T11, I didn’t see a huge crowd to be honest. From my seat I could see most of the other stands in East & West zones and most of the seats were empty. But then I thought it’s just Friday morning and only the start. By the end of the day we had a decent crowd for the first day but knowledge wise it was not even close to decent on any day. For the first day there wasn't a very big crowd and I hoped it would change for Saturday and Sunday.
Saturday
On Saturday we took a trip into the F1 Village at the circuit where I spotted Sanjeev Palar (ESPN/Star Sports F1 Director) and also Jatin Sapru (ESPN/Star Sports Presenter), it was nice to catch hold of some big personalities.
I couldn’t buy much as the merchandise were quite expensive . We hung about for an hour and then headed back to our stands for the qualifying to begin, were damn excited. It was all noisy again as the cars crossed the turns for the first ever Indian GP qualifying. There was lot of buzz among people but again knowledge wise, it wasn’t encouraging. The atmosphere was totally different in qualifying, as one by one car went zooming past us. I had to explain the qualifying rules to quite a lot of people in the stands, some listened carefully and thanked- some with a grin but I was happy to help them. For qualifying, it was considerably a large crowd than Friday. It was good to see so many people in almost all the stands. |
sunday
From early in the morning I could see quite a lot of cars on the way to circuit, which was a good sign. In the circuit we met Sanjeev Palar again, this time we had a small chit chat, he seems to be a nice person. While walking a Japanese TV camera guys spotted us with the flags and took some shots of us, hope we were aired on Japanese TV (even if it were for few seconds). Later on we came to know it was the famous Fuji TV guys. Even the BBC camera person was around taking some shots.
The Drivers Parade started at 1.30pm and the crowd was huge! The drivers cam by in the lovely vintage cars with Narain Karthikeyan leading from the front. The loudest cheers were for Karthikeyan, Force India, Alonso, Button and Schumacher. But the most proudest moment was when the Indian National Anthem was played, just after the minute silence for Dan Wheldon & Marco Simoncelli. It was a bit surreal when the anthem was played, truly the best moment. Throughout the race it was very hard to keep track of the standings whilst watching from the stands but I did all of the guess work which was somewhat correct. When Massa retired, I was happy that he was taken to the pits from my corner side, saw him with his helmets on. Even his car was taken from my side and I managed to see the Ferrari pretty closely. The scene totally changed on Sunday as it was almost full, not many seats were empty. The officials later declared that 95,000 came on Sunday. Now, that is a huge number for a first GP in a country which is still developing in motorsport arena. All in all it was a fantastic race, awesome experience and a great weekend. Once again the things which spoiled most of our mood was transport and this time traffic as well, 95000 people leaving at the same time is quite a lot. But I reached my hotel safely in the end. From a fan point of view, two things can be looked after for the next GP: first being the transport. The people with car park ticket & bus tickets were in the safe zone but those without had a tough time. I for one didn’t get a bus ticket and so had to avail the Park & Ride service, while going to the circuit I had no problems but while coming back, it was all mess. There were not many buses first of all and in the limited buses plying everyone was just pushed and pulled each other to get in. It was a sorry state of affairs really, more so for the foreigners. Even the in-circuit transport can be a bit better. The second thing is food, which was on the expensive side. Well, in these events food is generally expensive but I think some items could have been less expensive and even the quality could have been better. |
To ask Darshan more about his experience send him a tweet at @DarshanChokhani .
You can also view more of his videos on his YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/Darckoni12/videos |