FIA GT Bucharest - First Impressions On Friday
© Janos Wimpffen

This is the first international motor race to be held in Romania and for nearly all team members and journos (including this one), their first visit to the country as well.

Traffic in the city is more chaotic than your typical Italian scene, but certainly nothing compared to Turkey. The parallels to Italy come across repeatedly as the Romanian language is the “purest” of the Romance languages. It is the closest living language to Latin and does indeed sound like a cross between what you might hear on the street in Naples and at a solemn old style Catholic Mass.

The architecture is an odd mix of glorious but crumbling inter-war and 19^th century classics—bit of a Parisian feel there, interspersed with hideous Commie era blocks of flats. But nothing quite prepares you for what is now called the Palatul Parlamentullui.

Considered the world’s second largest building (I suppose the Pentagon is larger), it is massive on a jaw-dropping scale. Built of the finest marble and granite it is some 12 stories below ground and more than that above. The men’s loo is considerably more cavernous than most millionaires’ homes. It is a frightening testament to one man’s megalomania as Nicolae Ceacescu literally bankrupted the country to build it. Fortunately, the post-Communist government has made it the center of the new democratic Romania and it houses all the government offices. The media centre is located in the Parliamentary press centre, putting any such facility anywhere else to shame. It’s a little like having half of Buckingham Palace to file your practice session report. The only inconvenience is that since we’re in a working government building we have to go through a metal detector after each visit to the paddock.

The street circuit is a daunting combination of concrete walls (as David Lord showed you yesterday), a 90-degree first turn, and a fast chicane, the curbs of which have been regularly launching F3 cars into wheel crushing meetings with the wall. The chicane is followed by a 110-degree right and then a set of surprisingly sweepy bends back to a lap-finishing right that skirts a temporary roundabout.

The GT3 cars have also been tagging the walls quite regularly. This morning a couple came to grief with extensive damage. In the afternoon the No. 43 Matech Ford, No. 38 Kessel Ferrari, and No. 28 Damax Ascari all had significant “offs” but damage was light and the session was not stopped.

The second place car from the first round at Silverstone, the No. 15 Lamborghini, was first this morning while the recovering Damax Ascari led initially in the afternoon. The schedule also includes the British F3 Series and a local club race for identical Dacia Logans, but the taxis outside the circuit seem quicker than the quasi-Renault looking Dacias.

A spot of rain during the last 20 minutes of GT3 practice caused a few more harmless excursions. May is the rainiest month of the year here in SE Europe. Just before it got wet one of the Hexis Astons set the session standard, right at the end. Makowiecki?