On Saturday evening after qualifying we went back out again to meet up with one of Ania's friends from University called Imran. He picked us up from the hotel and took us on a bit of a tour around Kuala Lumpur. We parked in yet another shopping mall then then took a walk around the Petronas Towers. Firstly we passed the fountains outside which were impressive as they were lit up in multi colours. We then went to the area in front of the towers and it was only then that we could really appreciate their size. We've seen them from afar whilst travelling to and from the F1 but up close they are absolutely massive! After another drive around town Imran dropped us off back at the hotel and we got prepared for our early start the next morning.
When we woke up yesterday morning we were excited to get up and get going as it was race day and there were clouds in the air which meant there was a possibility of rain for the race!
We set off on our usual journey to the circuit and when we got there our first port of call was to assess the queues for the driver autograph session which was happening at 11am. We were there around 9:30am and by that point the queues were huge so we decided we'd give it a miss as we didn't fancy standing in a queue for 2 hours in the heat! So instead we had a wander around the village again and then we took a seat and got some refreshments next to the stage were the autographs were taking place. When 11am came they announced that the first drivers that would be appearing would be the two Sauber drivers. As most people were there to get either Ferrari, Mercedes or Red Bull autographs there wasn't much interest in the Sauber drivers so they announced that anybody who wanted Sauber autographs could go into a separate queue and go up first. At that point I (Jason) thought well a Sauber autograph is better than nothing so I joined the Sauber queue and got close to the front. Just as our queue started going up on stage all the other drivers started appearing- Red Bull, Mercedes, Williams, McLaren etc. They then realised that they couldn't just let the "Sauber" fans up first so they started rotating 5 people from each of 3 queues at a time- one of which was the Sauber queue and I was about 10th in line. Somehow I managed to get on stage and get the Sauber, Williams, McLaren and Toro Rosso drivers (the Red Bulls and Mercedes had just left) ahead of people who had been waiting for hours in the heat- in fact some were probably queuing before we even got out of bed! The whole thing was a complete shambles so I felt a little guilty- I don't think we'd have been happy if we'd waited for hours in a queue for nothing. I would say about 1% of those waiting made it up. Ferrari in typical fashion didn't bother to turn up at all!
Afterwards we went up to secure our seats in our stand so that we had a good view of the start of the race and the first corner. We managed to get a couple of good seats as we could see the start as well as various other bit of the track in the distance. At around 12 o'clock (3 hours before the race) the rain clouds appears and it started pouring it down- just before the Porsche race was due to start. This was when we discovered there was a hole in the roof not far from where we were sat and the people underneath were getting absolutely drenched. We escaped relatively unscathed- although we still put the ponchos on to protect us from the spray.
The Porsche race eventually got under way behind the safety car and the rain clouds cleared. Unfortunately the shower came just slightly to early as by the time the race started at 3pm the track was dry. The race itself was actually pretty eventful and we seen quite a few overtakes at our corner- including Verstappen overtaking Hamilton for the race lead! There were also a couple of collisions in front of us- Palmer not disappointing us! Ania was obviously very distressed as Raikkonen didn't even start the race and was wheeled off from the starting grid! It was good to see someone other than a Mercedes win though!
After the race we made it onto the track and tried to make our way up the start-finish straight in time for the podium but a combination of heat and excessive sweating (mainly by Jason) meant we just missed the podium. We did manage to see into the pits though and seen all the teams packing up their kit ready for the race next weekend in Japan. We were wanting to walk around the track a bit but they weren't letting us so we sat up in the stand opposite the pits and watched what was happening- including seeing the Red Bull team celebrating their win. By this point we were so sweaty and exhausted we didn't take many photos of ourselves!
So that's the Formula 1 (and initially our main reason for travelling) over. We now have a couple of days to explore some more of Kuala Lumpur as we haven't really been able to see too much of it since we arrived on Thursday.
