Down Under Diary

After a day of rest yesterday for nearly everyone (some of us were rolling cars on their roofs… more on that later), it was back to work for the Champ Car Community. The teams were getting their garage areas and pit boxes ready for the weekend and the drivers, with their engineers, were busy doing their track walk.

The rookies however had the chance to see the track for the first time aboard a different kind of vehicle: the Adventure Croc land/sea vessel. That wasn't the only treat, a "track" commentary was provided by Jason Bright, a V8 Supercar driver who also ran a Champ Car in 2000. The rookies sat attentively listening to Jason all while taking in the sites around the track. With a lap complete, the "Croc" then headed to Southport to take a quick dip in the water before taking its passengers to Marina Mirage for lunch with some media members.

After judging the sportswear part of the Bartercard Miss Indy (BMI) competition in Brisbane on Tuesday, Bruno Junqueira, Nelson Philippe and Simon Pagenaud were back with the BMI finalists today. This time, they were at the beach and accompanied by Dan Clarke, Mario Dominguez, Oriol Servia and Justin Wilson testing their volleyball skills in a friendly match up between the girls, the Champ Car drivers and some V8 Supercar drivers. The story doesn't really say who won… but if a winner were to be declared it would have to be the heavy winds that made playing beach volleyball quite a challenge! The drivers did enjoy it though.

To end the day, more than half the field attended the Premier's Welcome Reception tonight at Conrad Jupiters around the pool area and tomorrow they will kick things off with the annual Drivers Breakfast. The drivers don't know it yet but they are in for a special treat in the morning.

Sorry, but you will have to wait until tomorrow to find out the surprise too! The news story of the day was Bourdais' misadventure with a rally car… The real reason behind it was Sebastien claims he rolled the car to avoid hitting the cameraman, who along with Sebastien made the front page of all the newspapers here. So in the end, "Seb" was just looking out for the media…