Crazy Italian weekend

You will often hear F1 people say they love Imola because the atmosphere is crazy and we have discovered there might actually be a very good reason for that. In the past, Imola was famous for having more than its fair share of Lunatic Asylums and after the first race back in Europe, with all the madness that involves, it looked as though they would do good business if they opened up a new hospital somewhere near the track.

Was Toyota’s former Technical Director Mike Gascoyne on a secret visit to Imola? The little Englishman who left the Japanese team after the Australian GP is known by his nickname of “The Rottweiler” because of his somewhat fierce and aggressive nature. It seems that whoever was running the Toyota merchandising stall in the public area at Imola has an excellent sense of humour. At night, every company’s stand was protected by a security guard and a German Shepherd dog: all except Toyota that is, where the German Shepherd had been replaced by the biggest Rottweiler in the world.

There are supposed to be ten Formula Una ladies at every race, competing to see who is judged the winner to go forward to a grand final at the last race of the season. However, here in Imola, it seemed as though there were only nine for much of the time. It soon became clear that one of them was madly in love with Honda driver, Jenson Button and she spent all her free time hanging around outside their motorhome, begging to be introduced to the Englishman. We don’t know if she succeeded.

Earlier in the week, the race organisers had been jokingly accused of re-writing history in that the poster for the event featured a drawing that depicted Michael Schumacher in the Ferrari just ahead of Alonso in the Renault. That never happened, but the promoter obviously felt a Ferrari had to be in front to draw the crowd. Then, as this year’s race drew to a close, it seemed they had psychic powers after all – Schumacher in front of Alonso.

After this race, it’s been suggested that the arrival on track of Super Aguri driver, Ide, should be accompanied by the scary music from the film “Jaws.” The poor lad certainly seems out of his depth and on the first lap of the race he managed to tip the MF1 of Christijan Albers into a frightening series of rolls. Then he appeared to have retired in the pits only to reappear a few laps later, like a shark returning from the deep ocean.