iWitness in Brazil: Saturday

Posted on Sunday 27 Nov 2011 and tagged with iwitness, brazil.

The final group run of the year took place this evening, with more than 200 people from the F1 paddock turning out to raise money for the Make a Wish Foundation. UBS paid $300 for every complete lap, taking the total for the year north of $200,000. The race was won by photographer Matt Kingston-Lee in 15m13s, but it was a fantastic effort by everyone involved. Well done! (Where were you, Claire Williams?!).

AT&T Williams team manager Dickie Stanford reckons we have about one fifth of the garage space at Interlagos compared to some of the newer tracks on the calendar. So it was with some relief that news filtered through today that the circuit is planning a new pit and paddock area on the run towards Turn 4. “It should be ready by 2013,” says Dickie.

Interlagos is a magnet for ex-F1 drivers of all nationalities. Excluding the TV pundits who are at every race, iWitness spotted Jacques Villeneuve, Nelson Piquet, Emerson Fittipaldi, Jackie Stewart, Ricardo Zonta, Karl Wendlinger and Mika Salo today. Gil de Ferran was here as well, but he only tested an F1 car, he didn’t race one!

There were confused looks at Force India this morning when the valet service at their hotel delivered one of their hire cars to the front door covered in mud. It had been completely clean when they dropped it off the night before! Is Friday night rally night in Sao Paulo?!