Estoril - Day 3

April 13, 2008 - Sunday

This will be a short post, simply because the photos say more than I ever could and we spent the entire day in the VIP Village lounge above the pit lane and the start and finish line. http://s112.photobucket.com/albums/n195/Greater_Basilisk/Estoril/ We left the hotel at 0700 hours in order to beat the traffic jam to the racetrack. The VIP Village only opened around 0830 hours, so we had to wait a bit. But we watched the people come in and listened to the motorcycles warming up. The VIP Village was fancy. There were all sorts of drinks and a delicious buffet for breakfast and lunch. An Austrian company was doing the catering, so we could speak German to the folks working there. We watched the training runs in the morning. The 250s were the first class to race for real. Tom Lüthi ended the 26 laps fourth - his best score of the season yet. He had a poor start but worked his way up. In Qatar he was 15th and in Spain he crashed, so this was great for the team's morale. Cortese, the other driver of the Emmi Caffe Latté team, was placed tenth in the 125 ccm race. Gives him another six points. The big bikes weren't quite as much fun to watch. There was one crash that the TV didn't catch, versus two in the 250 class. I was surprised Stoner didn't rank higher. Lorenzo, teammate to Valentino "The Doctor" Rossi, took first place. When the races were over and the winners honored, we were treated to a stunt man's show on a motorcycle and a go-kart. It was fun to watch. While he burned rubber, the teams were already packing up. Their next stop is Shanghai. The VIP Village closed at 1700 hours, and we were the last people to leave. Günter was in a great mood and wanted to savor it all to the last. Now I'm really tired, but we've still got supper, even though I'm not particularly hungry. Still, the plan is to eat at the Ritz right across the road, so there's no way I'll try to get out of that. Tomorrow we leave on the first flight out. We need to be up at 0400 for that. A nap sounds good...