I went to see the final race yesterday.
It was utterly insane.
We spent most of the day walking around, but by race time, good spots were hard to come by. We started watching the Fujitsu development cars down at the first half of the dogleg around the train station. I admit, it was a little scary because there were one or two guys - Rodney Jane and the driver of car #98 whose name ecapes me - who never seemed to be able to get the right-hander right and they often looked like they were dangerously close to crashing.
For the twenty-minute qualifying session, we got a spot on mound inside the final few corners, which wasn't too bad. The cars did tend to burble a little slowly, but we quickly realised that in order to get a good time, the drivers had to treat the entire complex as one bend. After McNally's engine gave up, we found another spot nearby, on the exit of the first bend of this little sequence, the right. That was pretty good, because we got to see the drag race from the previous corner. And somewhat naturally, Jack Perkins screwed it up and found himself going the wrong way.
Good spots were hard to come by in time for the race proper, but we managed to get one that happened to be at one of the best turns on the circuit, if not in the country. It was at the bottom of the circuit, at the far south-western corner; about as far away from the start line as you could be and still be within the circuit perimeter. I'd have liked to have been on the outside, but that was all grandstands and corporate boxes. Still, we could see a giant screen on the outside of the corner, so we could follow it - without the commentary, we wouldn't have known what was happening after the first round of stops. At one point there, Tim Slade was leading, but I wouldn't have known if you hadn't told me.
Now, the corner: the cars came blasting out of this bus-stop chicane, and the level of the road actually dipped dow so much that we were standing above the cars. They came charging up the hill and took on the double-apex left-hander, which crested shortly thereafter and began the run down to the Novotel. We figured it was the one place they stood a genuine chance of passing, and we were right. Alex Davison was particularly brutal about it; we counted no less than six passes - including one on his brother - in the space of a few laps. There was a lot of carnage there, too; a lot of people ended up in the barrier on the outside of the corner, especially if they were on the outside of a pass. We think the camber might have dropped away, pitching the cars into the wall. It's something they'll have to look at for next year, but I like it the way it is. The race was defaintely one of attrition, and if yesterday was anything to go by, the Sydeny 500 is going to get a reputation as one of the country's most difficult races.
My brother and I did a walk-around early on in the race, and we found a few good places. The bus-stop chicane before our corner was slow and a little fiddly, but it was also really fluid. The cars came charging down this fast and narow chute around Acer Arena, and then they'd weigh anchor and serious shave off their speed for the corner. They'd kind of bounce through it, getting a few inches clearance as they pitched two wheels into the air, and then cross over to the other corner and do it again. It was oddly graceful to see them dancing about like that. We also climbed one of the bridges and had a great view of the cars as they climbed the hill to our corner, but we moved on pretty quickly because there was already a crowd in place there and the police didn't look too happy about it.
We also made in the direction of the Novotel after one of the re-starts heading back down to where we had started the day. It wan't too bad - there was a lot of jeering when Dean Fiore showed up with a crumpled front end - but there wasn't much passing. If they drivers couldn't make it stick, they generally couldn't follow through down the bottom. Still, it was great to hear them open the throttle wide out of that corner, since we'd hear them before we saw them on account of the crest.
Speaking of the sound, it was incredible. My brother is training to be a surveyor and engineer and he does work for my uncle up in Queensland in the holidays. Right now they're doing some work at Amberly Air Force Base nears Ipswich. He has F-111 fighter jets taking off right next to him all day, and even he was impressed by the sound of the cars. For some strange reason, they don't down each other out when you get a gaggle of them nearby - you can actually pick out the individual cars. The effect is doubled after a re-start; they have the time behind the safety car to psych themselves up. They were so noisy, they drowned out the commentary, which was broadcast over hundreds of speakerphones, though by the end of the day I could hear it word-for-word as the cars went past. But maybe I was used to it by then.
The only real disappointment of the day was the way TeamVodafone had sold out of team shirts early on. I really wanted to get one and had the opportunity to do so before they'd sold out, but passed on it because we needed to work out a way to get my brother in because he came in by train wereas we went in by bus (which, by the way, was really well organised). Nevertheless, I've already decided: I'm going to Bathurst next year. I'm even going to try and get a teaching prac in town over the Bathurst weekend.
Also, there is just one point between Vodafone and HRT coming into Sydney, this round will decide the Team Championship.
But it's an aspect of V8 Supercars anyway (the teams championship), so should be interesting. I suspect that's what HRT and Vodafone will be looking for now that the championship is wrapped up too.
You don't see much at street circuits. But yeah, I got a bit of video footage that i'll upload to youtube tomorrow and over the coming week. Turn 5 (round the back of Acer Arena) is just scary to watch. So I took some footage of that. 
I was really looking for a GRM win there.
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