Saturday morning-Vegas

It is Saturday morning, some time after 7 and it is about to be a beautiful day here at the track. Frankly, not to cheerlead too much but the entire weekend has been spectacular thus far. It started on Thursday at the charity gala and while I wasn’t actually invited inside the thousand dollar a plate dinner, I was working the red carpet, dawning my best Entertainment Tonight cap and asking drivers who they were wearing and how much they looked forward to, well whatever I don’t know what else I did. I did talk to Tiffany Thiessien, aka Kelly Kapowski, and aka my schoolboy crush growing up. That was quite a thrill? Actually it wasn’t a particularly big thrill in the sense that she’s no longer sweet Kelly but grown up Thiessien. We talked about racing and…I forget what else. I never got around to asking her about Kelly, but I did manage to say something to the effect of “you look even prettier in person”, failing to mention that I haven’t actually seen her on television since that shot lived Fox series about stealing cars many years back. I couldn’t remember the name of the series.

On Friday night it was the big street party and boy, what an event. The concerts, the shows, the people, it was quite spectacular. I didn’t stay too long of course, this is a business trip after all, but it was really well put together.

Its very difficult not to sound like a cheerleader when it comes to this event because the track is fantastic. We walked the track on Thursday and took a golf cart yesterday and its spectacular. The elevation is amazing, great passing areas as they made it wide enough in many places and going under the tracks is just a great great sight. This is one of the tracks that will look very very good on television and if my job was to place the cameras around the track, then I would be like a kid in a candy store. So many fun possibilities.

Great for Paul Tracy to have captured the provisional pole and his quote is very funny (watch the video). He did go on the reds though, but good on him to capture a front row start and thus he’ll be able to dictate his own pace on Sunday. One interesting thing was the lack of track time the drivers actually had. I believe its because they wanted to allow the streets to be open as much as possible to the public. Today both series are given more track time and that will help guys like Mario to learn the track and the DP01. Also, the track was very slick yesterday and it should be grippier today, thus making for even greater speeds.

The talk though is of Team Australia. Pagenaud finished in second and Will was on his way to a top 3 had it not been for brief contact on his final lap. I spoke with Pagenaud afterwards and as happy as he was, one of his first questions was “did Bourdais use the reds?” which shows me that this guy doesn’t want to compete, he wants to win. That is confidence my friends. That is the sign of a winner.