Friday 7th May - Friday Practice at Circuit de Catalunya, Montmelo

We caught the 8.30 train and was in Montmelo the small village beside the circuit about 30 minutes later. The walk up to the circuit was a bit up hill but plesant, we just followed the crowds!

We walked round the track today. Although we just have a general admission tickets, on the Friday a general admission ticket also gets you in to the grandstands. It was great to be able to watch the cars from different points, and we took the oppertunity to sit in the pit straight in the afternoon watching all the prep in the garages and people watching! We spotted Ted Kravitz (the pit lane reporter) and Jake Humphrey (BBC presenter), and also saw a few of the drivers too. Alonso was the only one to wave up at the grandstands, but the majority of the supporters at Barcelona are understandably Alonso fans! It was a great atmosphere in the main stand, there were a couple of men a few rows in front of us who had bagpipes, so they had the crowd going, and they were greatly received.

We couldn't get the English commentary on our little radio, so it was a bit more difficult to know what was going on, we did see Button hit debris coming out the pitlane in the morning though, which damaged his car and he seemed to go backwards from there. So we are hoping for better things for him tomorrow! The red bulls seemed pretty immense, if things are dry this weekend it may be a very uneventful red bull 1-2, but the forecast is still for rain, which will make things a bit more interesting.

Nico Hulkenburg had a bit of an 'off' at the other side of the track which resulted in a red flag for 10 minutes or so, here is his car being recovered back to the garage, it all looks very sombre being covered in the black covers, his mechanics will now have a long night rebuilding the car, but thankfully he was not injured.

Jenson coming back to his garage after a run, he seemed to try a few different things this afternoon, but didn't seem to be make him go any faster!

We avoided the crowds leaving after the F1 practice by watching the GP2 qualifying, then headed back to the station, got back on the train in about 10 minutes and headed back to Barcelona, it was very easy although I am sure things will be a lot busier tomorrow!

The forecast for today was just about right, mostly cloudy. The forecast for tomorrow and Sunday is showers/rain, so we will go prepared with our rainy day attire and look forward to some unpredictable action!