The noise has stopped, the dust and mirrors have settled, the smoke has dispersed, the feet are sore .....
I had a ball being in charge of Pit Gate 2 - the gate onto the track in front of the utes/bikes garage ... I was also spotted - on tv - by a whole lot of people - leaping down off the wall to help push Marcus Marshall's car into the pits after it dropped its guts in pit entry after collecting the tyres in the Saturday race. We were also directly in shot behind the trackside tv interview area (the bench with the three seats) but I think we managed to avoid most of that ...
Ashton seemed to like flag marshalling. He looked completely shattered on Friday evening when he trudged past the rugby club (i.e. the bar) back to the car park, but had recovered to simply 'stuffed' by Sunday evening (like the rest of us) and as requested his details have been passed on to Anna, the Auckland Car Club's chief flag marshall. There's no escape now, Ashton .....
Tom was already stuffed before the weekend started and texted in sick so was unable to be a grid marshall. That may have been a good thing because I must confess that with hindsight I didn't describe the job very well. I think I said he'd be working on the dummy grid sending the cars out in the right order. As far as I could see all of the grid marshalls we supplied spent most of the weekend sitting in pit lane under the race control tower watching the big screen, apart from a minute or so with yellow flags at the start or each race all they really did was to stand on the track and make sure the cars stopped in the right places. Must have been hard being stranded out there with those Samsung Pit Girls .....
So a great weekend, great weather, and bring on next year !
Gary
Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 2:21 pm