2011 Honda Indy, Part II

My photo of Dario Franchitti winning driver of 2011 Honda Indy Toronto (practice round).

After visiting the Support Series Paddock at the Direct Energy Centre I went outside. The Indy cars were doing their practice laps. All the stands were open so I headed over to the Gold section by pit lane and found myself a seat.

There were multiple sets of protective fences just about everywhere. It made it tough to get a decent shot. Another problem I had was that the cars were just too darned fast. The first few attempts I tried ended in failure. Either I'd cut the front half of the car off or the back. I had to pull back a little to give myself a better chance at success. After awhile I got the hang of it.

The practice was alright. After that I wandered around a bit more to see what else they had there. I got a few samples of Dr. Pepper and some Schick razors. There were some booths set up for various other promotional things and to sell food too.

I found an area set up for an autograph session for 12 of the Indy drivers. I wasn't interested so much in getting autographs as photos. So I skipped the long line up and just stood in front of the table waiting for the drivers to come out. I have to say I hardly know any of the drivers. One of the few names I knew was Danica Patrick. So I stood in front of her spot.

When she came out and sat down I took a few shots of her and Marco Andretti who sat to her right. She didn't smile at all. And she had dark sunglasses on. Oh well. I made my way around the table. The friendliest guys seemed to be French driver, Sebasitien Bourdais, and Japanese driver, Takuma Sato.

After the autograph session I thought I'd try to look for wherever they kept the Indy cars. I asked one of the volunteers there and he told me where the Indy Car Paddock was. It was a bit west of where they were signing autographs.

It was pretty cool to be able to get that close to the Indy cars. I got a few decent shots of them I think. As well, after the 12 drivers finished signing autographs, they came back to their trailers in the paddocks. By chance I managed to get a few shots of some of them there.

I even got an autographed shot of Sebastien Bourdais in front of the area where they kept his car. They had a few extra ones that he didn't give away. One of his team managers put them in a stand there, so I didn't have to wait an hour or two to get one like everyone else. Nice.