Colin goes to the St. Pete GP qualifying Photo TR

[TheStig]

Hellllllo TPR!

 

Last weekend I went up to the St. Petersburg Grand Prix qualifying located in downtown St. Pete. I would have gone for the race but it would have just been myself, and as it turned out it rained for the race so it ended up being okay (plus I really wanted to see the American LaMans Series!) I'll let the photos do the rest of the talking, and don't expect anything amazing because its really REALLY hard to take pictures of fast moving objects! Overall I had a blast and would reccommend ANYONE to go see this or a race. Soooooo enjoy!

Here's one of the restarts. I thought they were really cool to watch to be honest.

This is pretty much how the entire race looked. We got into the grandstands which was nice, but this really isn't a popular event. Still I found it interesting.

Awww they are so cute!

The Indy Lights race was up next. They may look small, but they are really fast!

Hell. Yes.

Anyone want a bucket of parts?

I dont know my cars THAT well, but is it a TVR or a Panoz? I think its a TVR, but I'm not quite sure.

They look similar, do they not?

Two at once, wooo.

I think my 190E is louder than this thing! Its a spectacular feat of engineering.

The race ended, and I have ZERO idea who won (I'm pretty sure one of the Audi's got P1) but it made for easy pictures of the cars entering the pits.

Ahh much better shot of that turn!

"Ya know, I'm a pretty skilled race car driver too"

NOOOOOO!!!!! The Austin and the Viper had a big wreck. Both cars were in pretty bad shape, but the Viper got the worst of it.

I snuck around to the bleachers as the race was ending. Nobody really seemed to mind us standing there, so I snapped some pictures...

Oooohhhhh baby.

But I will admit it was a SLICK looking car.

This Ferrari totally killed the Ferrari Killer in the race. The Ford GT ended up way behind if I remember correctly.

And this is the most amazing car of the bunch. Mind the NASCAR fan, but this Audi is a TDI. Thats right, its powered by the fuel of Satan. Diesel.

Mmmmmmm Porsche. It has to be one of the best sounding cars I've ever heard ever. And Porsche IS pronounced Por-Sha as advertised by the Porsche T-Shirts!

Closer shot of the Corvette. Seriously, this car was fast and all, but it was unnecessarily loud and annoying.

This man was obviously deaf as he was completely passed out.

A Dodge Viper, and someone you would probably see driving a Dodge Viper in everyday life.

And once I realized that the fence was getting in the way, I went back to the back straight again.

I moved over to the turns before the straightaway to try and get some better pictures. Word of advice, but bleacher tickets in advance. General admission viewing areas suck.

Excuse me sir, your car is on fire.

Lou will actually come to your house and rape you if you drive one of these things! Love you Lou!!!

"GARGLE GARGLE GARGLE GARGLE SAVE MEEEEE GARGLE GARGLE..."

Here are a few of the cars. I have to admit, I like the ALMS over Indycar so far.

But holy crap, the 911's were absolutely quiet! Even the Audi's were louder than these things!

As opposed to the Austin Martin, which sounded fantastic!

The loudest and CRAPPIEST sounding car in the lot. Seriously, all 3 Corvettes and the TVR sounded like they were drowning.

Oh man, two in a row! Thats soooooo many pictures.

I'm getting better at this!

After cooling off inside the theater (keep in mind this is a road course in the middle of downtown St. Pete!) for a bit we headed back out to watch the ALMS race.

I DANCE WITH TEH STARS!!!!!!!

The Civic Si is also pretty nice. Its definitely a "sports car" that would be easy to live with a drive everyday for cheap.

BUT if I could have any Honda, it still wouldn't be this. Give me the RA108 over this any day!

While extremely ugly, the Element has TONS of space in it. A friend of mine has one and they drive pretty nice as well. If I had to buy an SUVish thing, I would have to pick up one of these for both the space and the fuel economy.

HELLAMENT

This was at the end of qualifying. You had to pay extra to be in the bleachers on the front straight, but after qualifying was over with I ran up there and only this guy was still in the pits. Ah well, atleast its something!

I'm going to seriously call "Smith Fence" and yell at the for ruining the ONLY good picture I took of the IRL guys. JERKS!

You have ZERO idea how hard this is.

And because I know this is what you guys are waiting for, here is a picture of Danica Patrick. I got a chance to meet her but I didn't want to be like everyone else and throw a camera in her face. She was kind of nice, but never smiled or anything when she was talking to anyone...

Some more Indycar guys... The way qualifying works is there are two groups of cars that all go out for 20 minutes. The fastest 6 from each group move on into a third group which then determines the starting grid. I think thats how it works, correct me if I'm wrong.

Same guy that was in the last shot, no idea who it is. The track is really in a great location.

The Indy guys were out qualifying for the next days race. Its pretty interesting to notice the similarities and differences between Indycar and F1, but it looks like the IRL is catching on.

Yes, I'm still not used to taking pictures of these guys at close range. Keep in mind they are doing 100+ right here.

If you look really really REALLY close you can see a tupperware container. This is used to house official race sanwitches to keep them from getting stale. Oh, Tony Kanan is somewhere in there too.

Here is a better shot of the other car. Notice the wheel and suspension damage.

Uh oh, somebody had an accident! Sorry for the crap photo.

I spy with my little eye some canary yellow short shorts.

...to take picture of fast moving cars at close range! These were only the Indy Lights too.

Holy crap, it is really difficult...

Seeing how this is the "Honda Grand Prix", Honda had a booth set up with all of the 2008 models on display.

If you want to sleep with Lou then buy this car!

"One of these things is not like the other, one of these things doesn't belong..."

Some of the flag waver guys. Dig those pants.

At the track you have to cross this bridge in order to enter the race grounds. Its directly over the race course and while you can't see them, you can definitely hear the cars going directly under you!

The day started out by heading up to St. Pete at around 8:30am. We got there at about 9:15 and parked at Tropicana Field where we could catch a bus over to the track.

[TheStig]

Just a few more....

qualifying.wmv

Here are a few videos clips I took. They are of the IRL, ALMS, and Indy Light respectively. See if you can hear the Audi as it passes at :28.

That guy won, hooray! Apparently he's good enought that if he does well this season he will move up to the IRL next season.

[TheStig]

^Yeah she wasn't a total bitch, but then again when you're swamped by a sea of people its kind of hard to be nice to everyone! I caught her walking into some drivers meeting and was pretty much said hello, I like what you've done for the sport, I'm enjoying my first GP, and that she needs to drive in F1. She pretty much said "I have a meeting to get to but enjoy yourself, thanks for the support, and if I'm lucky I'll make it to F1 but I'm happy where I am now!" And that was it, kinda cool I guess.

[RCFreak]

Nice TR, I have no idea what any of it means, but the pictures were pretty (I'm only half kidding, nice TR though)

[SharkTums]

Are those chain link fences supposed to stop the cars from flying into you or you from getting to the cars?!?

 

Either way they didn't look that effective, the only thing they were good at was ruining pictures!

 

Oh, and I'll take the 'bucket of parts'! It's probably worth more than all of our cars combined!

[65skylark]

Where were the pictures of John Force?

[Jew]

Looks a lot like the Long Beach Grand Prix. I always enjoyed going to that race when it was Indy. Stupid CART. Glad it's back to Indy!

[Scaparri]

^I like your ways, Joey.

 

Colin, BEST. TR. EVER!!

 

I'm still really jealous. Part of me wanted to road trip down to the race, but common sense prevailed.

 

Am I pushing your buttons, Scott?

 

Ha, no, I've learned not to care 'cause I know you just try to get under my skin. Now I just enjoy reading/listening to your verbal diarrhea.

 

Again, sweet pics dude. I miss ALMS. Those things are amazing. Not F1 amazing, but still amazing. However, I am, and always will be, an Indycar fan first and foremost!

[hansrubens]

Great pictures.

 

I like any kind motorsports.

[ParkTrips]

Unless TVR also uses BBS's, which is possible and something I don't know, that looks like an Esperante to me..

 

(yay Georgia)

 

Cool stuff dude... I can't stand to sit and watch racing around a circle, but road circuits are fun!

[TheStig]

Are those chain link fences supposed to stop the cars from flying into you or you from getting to the cars?!?

 

Either way they didn't look that effective, the only thing they were good at was ruining pictures!

 

Oh, and I'll take the 'bucket of parts'! It's probably worth more than all of our cars combined!

 

Yeah they really don't look like they would have done a whole lot do they?! And yes, I'm sure those brake disks alone are worth more than my car!

 

Where were the pictures of John Force?

 

He was there, but didn't realize it was a road course and ended up in the wall coming out of the straight. Oh well, atleast he was fast in a straight line =]

 

I'm still really jealous. Part of me wanted to road trip down to the race, but common sense prevailed.

 

Again, sweet pics dude. I miss ALMS. Those things are amazing. Not F1 amazing, but still amazing. However, I am, and always will be, an Indycar fan first and foremost!

 

You should have! I would have gone for the race had that been the case. And yes, the ALMS is pretty amazing!

 

 

Unless TVR also uses BBS's, which is possible and something I don't know, that looks like an Esperante to me..

 

(yay Georgia)

 

Cool stuff dude... I can't stand to sit and watch racing around a circle, but road circuits are fun!

 

Yeah I looked it up and you are right, it is a Panoz Esperante which sounded equally as bad as the Corvettes. And ovals are rather boring compaired to the road courses. Hopefully those Cart guys do alright...