A fan who went to see the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix describes his experience:
Having followed Formula One for many, many years, we took the opportunity of flying to Montréal this weekend to watch the Grand Prix there, the only one on the North American continent. It was a mixed success.
We delayed the decision to go until almost the last minute. The hotels jack up their prices uniformly to about three times the normal cost. But we did find one hotel that advertised a sale, and the hotel price was lower if we stayed an extra day, which you don't really expect! So we booked from Friday night to Tuesday morning, instead of leaving the day after the race.
The second surprise was after we had booked the flight and hotel, then the race tickets were no longer on sale! Then we did find some on the Internet, but they were priced considerably higher. Not good. Then we did find a site that was still selling the race tickets at the original price, and were very happy with that. We booked and paid for the tickets, and on the confirmation it said that they were sending the tickets to our home address, and there was absolutely no way that they could get them to us in time. What to do now? We found someone we could e-mail to, and he assured us that this was not going to happen, and that they would be e-mailing us a voucher the next day, which was the Thursday. So we sweated it out, and sure enough the voucher was there first thing on Thursday. And the reason was that this website came all the way from Australia.
We had an early morning wake up 3:30 AM Friday morning, so we could go to the track in the afternoon. That would let us take advantage of the three-day tickets that we had bought. Leg one took us to JFK airport, and we were happy that the connecting flight left from the same gate two hours later, and that it was shown to be on time. We went off to Au Bon Pain for some breakfast, and then found a nice place to sit and wait. But we were both listening for the local announcements.
So we were absolutely shocked to hear that the flight had been canceled when we are asked why it was no longer on the schedule board. American Airlines claimed that they had made an announcement, and the reason for the cancellation is that they could not get a crew together. So they re-routed us on an American Airlines flight to Toronto, and then Air Canada on to Montréal. That would not get us to Montréal until after seven. There was a tight connection in Toronto, which we later found out was pretty stupid as we had to deal with both emigration delay and having to change terminals on a monorail.
It was probably fortunate that we decided not to check any bags. If we had, no idea when they might've reached our hotel. Because we were flying on small commuter planes only small bags would fit in the overhead bins. As a result we had very little room in our luggage, and we had to bring umbrellas, rain jackets, things to sit on in the metal bleachers.
But wait, that American Airlines flight was delayed when the incoming flight was delayed. So now we went back to the airline, and now they scheduled us on a nine o'clock flight on Air Canada. So then we had over an hour's delay in Toronto, and would get to Montréal around 10.
No, that was not the end of it. Now Air Canada announced a delay, so that they could replace one of the tires. No new time for departure. It turned out that the 10 o'clock flight to Montréal came and left, and our flight was still waiting for the tire change. They led us on the plane about 11, but the plane did not take off for a least a half hour. We had planned to take the bus into the city, which only cost one third of the taxi ride but we decided that was not a good idea so late at night. We were pretty happy when we got to our hotel around 1 AM that they had not given away our hotel room. We were not up for 24 hours, but it almost felt like that by the time we got to bed.
We liked our hotel room, and chose that with a sofa and a queen size bed, rather than the two queen size beds. The kitchenette-in-a-closet gave us a stove which we didn't use, and a decent-size mini refrigerator which we did. It also gave us plates and knives for our breakfasts, and glasses for our bottle of wine. The heating and cooling was quiet and worked well. Unfortunately, the low flow toilet did stopper up, so we did have to send for help and tip him when he fixed it with a plunger. Just one more annoyance.
We were on the 17th floor out of 28. On the 28th floor the hotel had a swimming pool, and we went up there on the last day. It was too cold even for Canadians to be swimming, but it was quite some view from up there.
We had inquired at the desk whether there was a local bakery, and yes there was less than 10 min. away. That turned out to be one of the high points of the trip. Our room had a coffee maker, and every morning we got fresh croissants and butter to go with a pot of apricot jam. They also had lunch packages and sandwiches, which was our lunch on race day. We also sampled a couple of their dessert creations. So we thoroughly enjoyed our breakfasts.
Then it was time to buy our three day Metro tickets, and make our way to the racetrack. We have chosen the hotel to be near a Metro stop, and we only had to make one change to get to the station near the racetrack. The box office where we had to change our voucher into the tickets for all the races was right next to the Metro stop. There were three lines at the box office, and little indication which was the one we should be in. When we got to the head of the line, it turned out that was the wrong line, and the next one would give us our tickets. So we waited quite a while in that line, and presented our voucher. But they could not find tickets for us, and we were holding up the entire line. Finally they did produce some tickets for us, and we could get going.
We were seeing many people with ticketholders, but those cost $10 each. When we didn't spend the $20 the seller pointed out you could put tickets in back and front for only $10. So then we could buy the official program, and, yes, that cost $10 as well.
Now we had to walk to our grandstand seats, which was perhaps three quarters of a mile. We had to cross a bridge over part of the river, and they had flags for each of the drivers on the bridge. Our seats were at the hairpin turn at one end of the track, and were perhaps seven rows up. The better seats were perhaps 30 rows up, and a good deal higher than we were. There was a giant television screen some distance in front of us, but too far away to read names and numbers, and the people behind us were even further away. But they also showed the racing pictures that were being shown on television, so we could see the action in some of the other parts of the track. And we managed to leave our binoculars at home, or we could have seen things more clearly on the television screen.
One thing about being at the hairpin bend is the stupendous noise from the Formula One cars as they accelerate from first or second gear. You really need ear protection, and even with that, it really is loud. However, that's really a part of watching a Formula One Grand Prix.
The city really got into celebrating the Grand Prix. Just one street down from us one block was roped off and on the Friday, we were told, they had a collection of Lamborghinis. Sorry we missed that, but on the Saturday they were replaced by a whole bunch of the Minis. On Sunday, we had a collection of Porsches. And on Crescent Street, which was only a couple of streets further on there will racing Fords and a couple of tents with music. So many spectators on this street that at times it was impossible to make any progress at all. On the Friday night when we were coming to the hotel by taxi there were boisterous crowds out in force at one in the morning. There was also exotic cars being driven around, and sometimes you would see them, and at others times just hear them. But by far the most exotic was a white Bugatti, which we saw at least three times. That car may cost over $1,000,000, and there it was just parked in the street, or just burbling up the street.
The last night I did not sleep well and we got up a half hour earlier. I was concerned that we did not know our way through the Montréal airport, and did not know how much extra time we would need to go through emigration and passport control. We had found out that these operations were done in Montréal, so that we did not have to rush for the connecting flight when we arrived in LaGuardia Airport. When we got there, we found these operations were being done right in the American Airlines terminal. We had no information had we taken the bus how close to American Airlines we would have been dropped.
We were certainly glad we were not booked on Air Canada for the return flight. Although their planes were flying, the ticketing staff went on strike midnight Monday, and we saw quite large crowds with their picket signs at the airport.
Our journey back turned out to be completely normal. The planes were all pretty much on time we had plenty of time to make the connection in LaGuardia. We were the only people on the bus that took us out to the long-term parking lot, where six dollars a day is what they charge for parking. When we emerged into the parking lot we were back in 85°F temperatures. So now we are back to wearing just a T-shirt, and Canada is just a memory.
Well now, you notice we didn't write anything about race day. We got there quite early, before the big crowds. We had heard that it took some people four hours to make it out after the race, and when you saw how many people that were in the stands, it was not surprising. On the Saturday not all the people left that once, as many watched the supporting the races. Before the race the competitors were driven over the course in old Austin Healeys, sitting up on the back. That's the time when it really began to rain, but they started the race anyway for four laps behind the safety car to try and dry the track out. They did race off and on for a total of 24 laps, sometimes racing and other times behind the safety car again. Then they stopped the race entirely, and it was unclear whether or not they would be able to stop restart the race. Many of the people left at that point, and after a while we joined them as we were getting pretty wet. It was pretty mobbed in the Metro, but not all that bad or slow. Perhaps it took an extra half hour over above the 45 min. that it took on the Saturday.
So we went back to the hotel and took off our wet clothes and watched television. Then about five the rain had stopped and I went out. And now the part that really, really hurt. They had TVs showing in one of the tents on the street where they had the Minis parked the day before. There they were congratulating the winners of the Grand Prix! They had waited two whole hours and then restarted the race, although they did not run the full 70 laps. And it all was shown right there on television, and we could've watched it from the comfort of our hotel room. But we will watching some stupid film on television and never imagined we could have been watching the race! We really were upset about that. We bought the paper next day, and we still have to read about what happened during the race that we went to see.
That was our attempt this weekend to watch a Formula One Grand Prix.
But not the end of the story. We had set the DVR on our television to record the race, as we always do. But the part of the race that we missed would not have been recorded, because our recording would've ended before the race re-started. By chance this race was on the Fox channel rather than on Speed. After we got home we found out that Speed had shown the entire race, but it was on the Tuesday before we got home. Had we missed the race a second time? No, it turned out that our DVR had instructions to record the race series, and when we looked on the list of recordings, there it was, recorded! And we enjoyed the action-packed race last night, and Button’s surprising race, going from last place to Victory over Vettel on the very last lap!
Tom W
Here is "End of the Story" - A fan's experience
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