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| The view through the WTCC garage area |
Telephone calls from Wietracon and DHL inform us that our containers would be in Macau,at 0900 hours on Sunday. The Macau paddock and garage area is actually the main bus station car park but this is transformed over a four week period before we arrive. Then the containers are brought into the paddock, taken off the lorries and put in front of our garages. A small army of local guys will unload your container and put everything into your garage in a very random manner. This option is ok but it just means that you have to move everything back out of your garage before you can start setting up. It is far better if you are there so you can supervise the unloading and save yourself the extra work. This is the option that we chose to do. The local guys have been doing this for many years are are very competant at their job. Although, when you are watching them, it can seem like organized chaos, accompanied by alot of shouting in Chinese. Health and safety is not something they consider here as you can see in the picture of the man, holding onto the crane, as he is about to hook up the chains to a container.
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| RML about to get one of their cars from the container. |
Despite the lack of space available to the crane and lorry drivers, all the work is completed over a couple of days and the teams can start to make maximum use of minimal space. Macau has always been about the F3 race and the motorcycle race but the WTCC seems to have found a very good home here for the last race of the season. Some of the newer teams have many questions about how to set up the garages, where to order nitrogen for tyre inflation and even where and how you can order food so that it is brought to your team in the paddock. We all help out with useful advice and help each other as much as we can. It is quite hot here and whilst the paddock area has a nice breeze blowing through it, the garages are guaranteed to get you hot and sweaty, as no wind can cool down and the metal roof just seems to get hotter and hotter throughout the day.
The combination of jet lag and the sampling of Macau,s infanous nightlife and casinos has left some Truckies and their team mates feeling less than 100%. But in true motor sport fashion, we all get our jobs done.
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| This is what your garage will look like when you are not there to unload your container. |
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| Local guys help unload the containers |
Despite my promises to post you some video, I am forced to delay this once again. I took some very good video in Shanghai and when I went to view it on my laptop, I accidently deleted it. My attempts to recover it from the memory card failed. Inbetween my work, I will be running around with my camera to compensate for my stupidity.
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| Chevrolet Truckie playing around on a forklift. |
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| Please repair me !!!! |
The teams will now spend the next few days, repairing the cars after Shanghai and ensuring that all is ok before we start practicing on thursday.
