Melbourne, Australia, Australia

Today was the big day I’ve been waiting for, UCONN in the Elite 8!! I found out last night that the game was not going to be on at the Casino Sports Bar where I’ve been watching all the other games. Not a big deal, NCAA.com streams every game of the tournament live and for free. I decided to go to the restaurant downstairs for breakfast and use their free wifi to watch the game while I enjoyed some banana pancakes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until after I ordered breakfast that I found out that their wifi was slower than dial up and there was no way anything was going to be streamed here. I shovelled down my pancakes and got the heck out of there.

I went down the street to the Melbourne City Library where I knew they also had free wifi. One thing I had not considered was that today is Sunday, so the library doesn’t even open until 12pm. This was no good considering it was now 10:15am and the game had already started a few minutes ago. I ended up having to run home and just watch the entire game on my iPhone. Luckily it is a really good feed that NCAA.com put on, so it was bearable to watch on the small screen. At least I was able to see UCONN beat Arizona and make it to the Final Four!!! Seriously, Kemba Walker is just the man!

Lisa and I headed down to the track at around 1pm and watched a few other races in preparation for the big race at 5pm. We saw the Lexus Celebrity Challenge, where both of us had only heard of one of the “celebrities” in the 24 cars and I have no idea who the guy is that won it. After this race was a speed comparison involving a Mercedes sports car, a V8 supercar and an F1 car. They set the Mercedes first, then 17 seconds later they send off the V8 supercar and then 30 seconds after that they send out the F1 car. Sure enough, the F1 car caught up to the other cars and passed both of them to complete the lap faster than either of them. It was pretty cool to watch as the F1 car caught up to both cars on the main straight with the finish line in view and pulled outside and blew by both of them like they were sitting still.

We also got to see the drivers all come together for a big group photo before heading out on the track in convertibles to wave to the crowd. We were very fortunate that today was the nicest day out of any of the four days the GP has been on. I have a feeling this all would have gone a bit differently if it was pouring like it was on Thursday.

Before the race kicked off there was a Qantas 747 that did a low flyover over the track a few times. It was weird seeing such a big plane flying so low in a city area. I have to say it made me feel a bit uneasy, but it was cool seeing such a big plane so close. Even ten years on, I just couldn’t get 9/11 out of my mind. It’s a shame that had to be going through my mind for something that was so cool.

The race started promptly at 5pm and Vettel got off to a flying start. Button stayed dropped into sixth pretty quickly and was fighting with Massa for fifth place when Button was pushed off the track and gained an advantage and was forced to take a drive through penalty. He ultimately finished in sixth place anyway, but I was hoping for a better showing from him. Barrichello also pushed Rosberg off the track and finished his race for the day, and he was also only given a drive through penalty. Besides that, the race was pretty tame.

Vettel kept the lead for the whole race and was never really even challenged by Hamilton who started and finished in second place. Petrov came in an impressive third to round out the podium. The end of the race was pretty mental when all the fans were allowed to run out on the track and get near the pit lane where the drivers got out of their cars and went up to the podium. I am not a fan of big groups of people so I decided to stay back in the stands and get a a few pictures of the goings on.

After the award ceremony I hopped on one of the thousands of trams going back into the city and was back at the apartment within 20 minutes. I was very impressed. For as unorganised as so many parts of this weekend were, the city of Melbourne did a great job of getting people to and from the park.

I met Lisa for a drink at a bar next to our apartment when she got back from the park, and strangely enough I ran into one of my roommates from Airlie Beach. I hadn’t seen Will from Birmingham in over a month, but sure enough he was staying at the YHA just next to our apartment building. Small world…