As far as race fans are concerned, a race weekend ends on a Sunday night and another one starts on a Thursday morning. But for a Formula 1 team, the race never ends. Last Sunday night, the Scuderia Ferrari trucks set off on the tortuous roads that run down the hill from Paul Ricard, jammed with traffic, to get back to Maranello in time for the race cars and equipment to be overhauled.
Meanwhile, part of the team headed straight for Austria to set up the garage and paddock facilities. The rest of the crew will arrive in Spielberg over the coming days. It’s now the height of summer and the race in Styria has always been one of the classic events of the holiday season, with the odd exception such as the ’97 race, which was held in late September. It’s yet another reason to expect a good crowd, in an area famous for its natural beauty and the welcome it provides.
There’s enough accommodation in the area, but it’s mainly guest houses, so that the F1 folk are scattered all around the villages in the area. The track has been modified over the years: the original one made use of the local airfield and was only 3.2 km in length and all it had in common with the current format was the very short lap time. Last year in qualifying, cars were lapping in around the 1m 4s mark and one could speculate that this year, with the Soft, Supersoft and Ultrasoft compounds on offer, we will see them crack the one minute barrier: weather permitting of course because at the moment the forecast says there’s a chance of thunderstorms, at least up until Friday.
