After a very sleepless night and a kerfuffle in the morning with my room, we did not leave for the circuit until after 11.30am. Along the way we picked up a Subway to take with us and have for lunch, then hopped onto a tram to Albert Park.
When we arrived, we found our way to the hill on corner 10 and set up camp. It was much busier than the day before, but we could still see the track well enough. We saw the Mini Challenge race which was quite entertaining, then the RAAF Roulettes doing their aerial display. Next up was the third and last F1 practice session and again everyone cheered a lot whenever Webber, Schumacher, Button or Hamilton went past, but it was more or less silent for everyone else.
It was spitting with rain which again caused some problems for the cars. Having had no sleep, I was struggling to stay awake, so after about half an hour of the start of the F1 practice, I curled up on the blanket and fell asleep! I was woken up by a big 'Ooooh' from the crowd and when I sat up, I looked at the screen and saw a big smash - but not with F1 cars, it was the GTs! It turned out I'd been asleep for over an hour and had somehow managed to remain asleep with the F1s whizzing past just a few metres away from me and I wasn't even wearing ear plugs! I had also missed the 2seater F1 Minardis. The crash at the start of the GT race was quite significant so they had to red-flag the race.
After that, I had a bit more of a doze, saw a few bikes go round the track and then couldn't help but watch the RAAF F/A18 Jet display, which was deafeningly loud but also just as impressive as it was yesterday. It continued to drizzle and was quite chilly.
Next up was qualifying. It was quite an electric atmosphere - people getting very excited! Again, there were lots and lots of cheers for Webber whenever he went past. He got some good times too which caused much cheering! Cheering too for Button, Hamilton and Schumacher. When Hamilton got knocked out of the final 10, leaving him in 11th place on the grid, there was also much cheering - so people are obviously quite fickle! However the cheering for Webber's final starting grid position (2) achieved even more cheers than that!
Once qualifying was over, the V8s started racing again so we watched that for a while, then took a walk and headed to the V8 paddock, where we saw them bringing the cars into their bays after the race, for the mechanics to start working on them. We continued walking, had a look at the Minis, then mooched around and headed to the concert area. The first band were slightly underwhelming, so we carried on walking and went to the Fabio stand. Seeing as the racing was over for the day, it seemed that we were ok to go into the stand and take a look at the views - the lucky (rich!) people with tickets for this stand have great views of the pit lane and starting grid. We could see mechanic-type people milling about in each of the pits and some of the cars under their covers.
We then meandered back to the concert area and watched the main act for a couple of songs - Powderfinger; apparently a very popular band in Australia - they certainly pulled a big crowd. Again we were slightly underwhelmed (plus a bit cold and wet), so decided to head back on the tram. Once back at the hostel, I had to move into my new room (now on the top floor), then grabbed my computer and headed out for a bit of late-night Maccas wifi.
When I got back to my new room, the other occupants had also just got back - two old Aussie ladies called Linda and Nolene. They were really sweet and told me all about their exciting night out seeing Mamma Mia, chatting to me like we'd known each other forever! Sweet!
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