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Rick's
Race Report: Canada 2000
Friday,
16 June dawned sunny and very warm...I arrived at Le Circuit Gilles
Villeneuve at around 7:30 AM, and found that many people had already
arrived...The weekend promised to be full of racing: The Grand Prix,
Ferrari Challenge, New VW Beetle Cup, Player's Toyota-Atlantic and Formula
Ford races, presented a mixed bag of racing for the spectators...Friday
was to prove to be a very nice day for Johnny as well...
In
the first practice session, I was standing about 100 yards past the exit
of the hairpin, at the far eastern portion of the track. The first cars
out were the Minardi's and the Benetton's, followed in short order by the
Prost, Arrows and Sauber teams. As the first session progressed, the major
teams started to come out, first Williams and then McLaren, Jaguar, BAR,
and Ferrari. Johnny really seemed to be happy with the handling of the car
on Friday. In the first session, he was never lower than sixth fastest,
and seemed to put in many more laps than Eddie, who seemed to struggle
with the car all weekend long.
As
the second session began, I just sat there with my fingers
crossed...hoping Johnny would be able to maintain the sixth fastest time.
As the session progressed, Johnny was wavering between 6th and 8th
quickest time, with Eddie, again unhappy with the car, using fewer laps,
and going slower than Johnny. As the final seconds ticked down on
practice, Johnny reeled off a few good laps, and when the times were
announced, He was only .562 behind fastest time set by David
Coulthard...In fact, the only other cars faster than Johnny, were Michael
and Rubens in the two Ferrari's. Hakkinen was fifth, and Eddie was eighth
fastest...In a TV interview after practice, Johnny mentioned that the car
felt much better, and that he was confident going into qualifying on
Saturday.
Friday
night, Johnny was the guest speaker for the group of fans from Grand Prix
Tours...From what i was told, he was happy and having a great time...Next
would come qualifying...the scariest one hour in racing.
Saturday
dawned cool and cloudy...I made my way to the track by about 7:15 AM local
time, and found a good spot at the hairpin The crowd was filtering into
the circuit very early...We were unsure if there would be rain for the
qualifying session. As the cars came out for the morning warm-up session a
few passing sprinkles dotted the track. However, there wasn't enough rain
to leave any wet spots on the track, and the session was run completely on
dry tires. As on Friday, Johnny appeared to put in more laps then Eddie,
and looked much cleaner going into the hairpin. I wasn't able to see or
hear the times from this session, but I was able to get some fantastic
shots of the cars entering the hairpin, thanks to professional
photographer Bruce Miller, who was in the same location, preparing to
shoot pictures of the Ferrari Challenge qualifying for the Ferrari
publication "Forza". Bruce and I had the same camera body, and
he was kind enough to offer me his $7000.00 400 mm telephoto lens to
shoot with. I was able to shoot about 40 shots with this lens, and some of
the pics came out very nice...A big thank you to Bruce for his help!
Shortly
after the warm-up. the skies started to brighten, and by the time 1 PM
came around, the skies were blue and the temperatures had risen to the mid
80's F. As usual, the first cars out onto the track were the Minardis and
Prosts, as well as the Arrows and Jenson Button in the Williams-BMW.
Johnny first appeared about ten minutes into the session, and quickly went
back into the pit lane. He returned about five minutes later, and reeled
off a few quick laps. Unfortunately, all of the usual frontrunners were
going faster than they had on Friday, and although Johnny had improved his
time by nearly a second, he had fallen to eleventh on the grid. Eddie
really seemed to be having a horrid time all weekend, and eventually
qualified sixteenth, nearly a full second slower than Johnny. I did miss
one good shot during qualifying...Johnny went VERY deep into the hairpin
on a hot lap, and lit up the inside front tire under braking. He barely
made it through the corner, but apparently did not do any damage to the
car. All in all, U had mixed feelings about qualifying...Johnny was faster
than Eddie, but was still nowhere near the front of the grid...
The
highlight of the qualifying session for me, came about halfway through the
session, when the All American Racers Formula Atlantic team pulled up
next to me to catch some of the session... I got into a conversation with
team manager Justin Gurney, and after the session was over, he invited me
down to the F-Atlantic paddock, where I met brother Alex Gurney, the
driver of the number 48 Swift 008-Toyota. If the name sounds vaguely
familiar to any of you, Justin and Alex are the sons of one of our most
popular drivers form the 60's and 70's...Dan Gurney, who won the Belgian
GP at Spa in 1967 in his Eagle-Weslake, and three other F-1 races driving
for Brabham and Porsche. I was able to get a number of pics of the car,
which was painted to simulate the Belgian GP winning Eagle, and I also got
some shots of Justin and Alex. They were very pleasant, and eager to hear
of the races I attended so long ago, in which their father raced. I
accompanied the team to the staging area for the F-Atlantic race, and took
several more pics before returning to the track to watch the race. Alex
started seventh, and finished sixth, after having briefly been up to fifth
during the race.
Sunday
again was cool and cloudy. The weather reports seemed to indicate that the
race would be a dry one...All the cars were out in the morning warm-up, on
dry tires, but I didn't think the race would remain dry... The clouds were
getting thicker and greyer as the morning progressed. The New VW Beetle
Cup race was run, with a lot of fender to fender action, and the Ferrari
Challenge race followed I was amazed at the amount of fender to fender
contact between all those VERY expensive cars, but it was a blast to watch
them race. The cars were all Ferrari 360's and 355's, and there were over
thirty of them in the race.
Next
came the F-1 drivers parade. All of the drivers were perched on the rear
deck of Austin-Healey 100-6's or 3000's... as Johnny approached, I yelled
out GO! JOHNNY! GO!, and he looked right at me! Completely unaware of who
I was...But, at least I got off a few good pics of him. The race started
cleanly, although several drivers opted to start in the spare's, from the
pit lane, and Eddie started from the pits as well, as they could not fire
up the car on the grid. Johnny got a clean start, and only lost one
position at the start. he was in 12th spot, right on the rear wing of
Fisichella, on lap one, and remained there until the gearbox started to go
away. Behind him was Ralf Schumacher, and for the first 8-9 laps both
Fisichella and Johnny were pulling away from him. On lap 13, Johnny didn't
come around, and I immediately knew the race was done. On the previous
lap, he had fallen from Fisi, and was passed by Ralf. Up front,. Michael
was pulling out a huge lead...35 seconds by the time Johnny's car broke,
and Villeneuve was holding up Rubens and Mika Hakkinen. As the retirement
of the Jag was announced, it began to rain, and at that point I decided to
leave, and head back to the States. As soon as I had gotten into my car,
the skies opened up, and the remainder of the race was quite wet!
At
least I was able to beat several hundred thousand fans out the door,
and I also set a new record on the trip home...360 miles in Five hours,
ten minutes, including a stop for fuel. The weekend had it's ups and
downs, but I was able to see that Johnny was there all weekend, giving his
all for the team. The cars are definitely the problem, so I believe that
any change in drivers will not help Jaguar at all. The cars have got to be
properly sorted for any major improvement to occur. Johnny himself pointed
this out after qualifying...He mentioned that although he was more than 1
sec. faster on Saturday, than he had been on Friday, he had slid seven
spots on the grid, which indicates that he had found the limit for the
car, while others continued to improve... I was very glad I went though...
I picked up a few presents for Lady Susie, which are now winging their way
across the Atlantic. I have scanned a few pics into my PC already, and ask
that anyone interested in getting one by e-mail, contact me at richardelkin@msn.com
This
page was prepared 30th June 2000.
With thanks to Rick Elkin
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