With my birthday approaching the Co-Pilot asked what I wanted to do to mark the event of turning 21 for the 11th time. After some thought we decided upon the Bahrain GP as I've never been to a GP and it was so close by it seemed daft not to so we put a plan together.
Sadly, owing to prior commitments and boring fartedness, Mrs Bailey and Mummy Dodd (respectively) were unable to make it....and with Mummy Dodd not attending Daddy Dodd was not allowed....although he blames work commitments. And so the Co-pilot, Mr Bailey and myself headed off to Bahrain.
We booked flights in advance with the local sleazy yet provider and bought three days GP passes oon line via the Bahrain GP web page. A few clicks later and we were kitted out with a bundle of e-tickets and a bucket load of excittedness. Added to this Mrs Baileys parents had VERY kindly offered to let us stay in their spare rooms in the Bahrain Mansion (complete with pool and tennis court.....very nice) so we were sorted.
Come the morning of the start of our petrol powered weekend we had a 10.15 flight, therefore allowing the usual 2 hours we planned to get to the airport at 8.15 arrive so we figured 7.30 for a taxi. We called in advance the night before to get a taxi but it being Thursday night when we called all the taxi's were going to be busy therefore Dubai Transport in their usual terrible service had decided the best solution was to ignore the phones altogether.
Unable to book a taxi we decided to play it safe and head out into the street at 7.15 to track down a taxi and hope for the best.........and the best we got, as we walked out, there jsut dropping a fare off was a taxi - happy days, in we jump and off we go to the airport and we are there by 7:45, check in and through to duty free by 8 (Jazeera check in staff are great, quick, efficient). So we then had two hours to kill in Duty Free which I decided to liven up by losing my passport.......but thats another story......which I may tell later....but suffice to say it was a drama and I ended up with a soaked passport.
With time (and money) spent in duty free we boarded our flight and, after a little pray for the flight we were on our way and before we knew it we were in Bahrian, landing 1o minutes before we had taken off.
When we arrived in Bahrain we had been warned in advance that we needed to get an entry visa on arrival (the joy of the British Passport) and that it cost BD2. Now if you have ever arrived at Dubai Airport intending to get a visa you will know how long it can take, how many queues can be required and how frustrating it can feel (while you are convinced they are going as slow as they possibly can). If you havn't then read Page 2 of Peter Wood's excellent book "If the Sun Doesn't Kill You The Washing Machine Will" where he describes the similar process in Qatar.
Anyway, I digress. Back to Bahrain.
Well, despite all my trepidation I was completely amazed, pleased and perplexed when we walked through to passport control and found clearly sign posted tables with the necessary form ready and waiting to be filled out, with lots of pens and then a polite and freindly chap in immigration uniform directing us to numerous desks, empty and ready to help us. The immigration guy at the desk was in good humour (dispite my soaking passport) found a dry corner and wished me a pleasant stay while stamping my passport with a special Bahrain GP visa AT NO COST!!
Once through visas, baggage collection and passports we were in Bahrain and had found Mr Bailey and we all headed off to the circuit in our taxi.
When we got in to the circuit at about 2pm we were just in time to witness the noise explosion that was the GP2 Asia cars starting their first race, and stone me are they noisy!! These were in effect the second billing on the race calender (Lumina, Prosche, GP2 Asia, Formula 1) but they were still impressively load!! With the start of the race missed we went off in search of food and water before finding our seats in the Turn 1 grandstand and setting ourselves up for some great racing action and hopefully one or two good photos.
From our seats in the grandstand you could see all along the home straight
However, I am going to have one more moan here, but only a small one. As you will notice in the above shots, while the human eye was able to see eveything in our view, because of the very high safety fencing it rendered much of the track un-photographable as the camera would either focus on the fencing or if it was able to focus through on the cars then the meshing would spoil the shot.
Still, I am well aware from years of watching GP on the telly that this fencing is there for a good reason as a detectch wheel leaving an F1 car and entering the grandstand does kind of cause a mess. Small complaint over.
So once we had sounded out our grandstand and established that even on practice day when all other grandstands were about 90% empty we were not allowed a look around the other place it was established that due to the saftey fencing there were in fact only three good shots of the cars we were going to get.
The first was over the top of the fencing where we could get the cars leaving Turn one:
On the straight in front of us through a marshalls gaps in the fencing:
but this required lightening fast reactions to time it just right, and a super fast shutter speed as you had little chance of panning with the car to get it in sharp focus. The third option was to combine the two and get a shot of the cars entering turn 2 through the gap in the fence:
So as you look through the rest of my pictures bear in mind that while they may all look the same this is because I had limited shots and angles to work with.
A good day all in all.
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