It’s really on. The United States Grand Prix will indeed take place November 18 in Austin, Texas. Here’s in-car video of Mario Andretti in a Lotus 79 taking a ceremonial first lap of the brand new course.
+ The driver: Mario Andretti, the last American F1 champion, 1969 Indy 500 and 1984 CART champion, and official ambassador to Circuit of the Americas.
+ The car: a historic Lotus 79, the ground-breaking ground-effect racer in which Andretti dominated the 1978 F1 season.
+ The course: Circuit of the Americas in suburban Austin, an all-new facility built for the express purpose of hosting an F1 event in the United States.
“It’s very green, as you could expect,” Andretti told Reuters. “You get offline a bit, it’s a bit slippery. But that’s normal for a new circuit. Overall, my impression is absolutely fantastic.” The video provides a decent first glimpse of the Hermann Tilke-designed, 3.427-mile circuit and the surrounding facility. Of course, we’ll get a more complete look on race weekend.
If that was the first lap who dropped the oil?
*Ceremonial* first lap.
It may be the only lap completed by a 7 cylinder car. That was painful to listen to!
I kinda remember the Lotus as being much faster. Now we’ve had “ceremonial ” warm-up lap.
Despite the oil spill, the engine miss and the seventy-two year old driver, I still would have loved to have been there.
A bigger crowd than at some GPs this year. I hope Mario got few laps in, it seemed the car was just starting to run clean at the end of the lap!