If anything, 2014 was the race season of rain. I can’t remember any other season in which so many of my track visits ended in me getting soaked. Admittedly, most weekends were doable. But some were so bad I’ll remember them forever. Take the GT Masters weekend at Zandvoort, for example.
I knew in advance the weather wouldn’t be good. I’d read all about the “chance of showers” and the “possible winds”. But it wasn’t until I got off the train in Zandvoort on Saturday morning that I began to realise what I was really in for. The sun had risen some hours earlier, but the clouds were so numerous and dark that its rays could barely reach the ground. It was basically still twilight. When I stepped onto the platform, I got caught out by a nasty gust of wind. I stumbled and nearly dropped my bag. “I don’t like this weather,” I told the friend who was waiting for me outside the station, “Why are we doing this again?” “For love of the sport, of course!” she laughed.
We jumped into her car and soon arrived at the track, where we had a ridiculously easy time parking. We soon discovered why: hardly any spectators had shown up. The track was as good as deserted. Even the paddock looked empty, because the teams tried to stay inside the pit building as much as possible. Not long after we’d found the third member of our party (huddled against a truck for shelter) the first raindrops started to fall. We slipped into our water-resistant gear and swore we’d brave the shower like the true fans we were. But then the rain turned torrential and we decided we were cowards, really. So we ran into Mickey’s, the paddock bar. “Why are we even doing this?” one of my friends mumbled as she hung up her dripping coat. “Ehm… love of the sport?” I replied.
We spent most of the Saturday darting in and out of Mickey’s, trying (and failing!) to avoid the worst of the rain. When we left the track late in the afternoon, with water sploshing around in our shoes, we were convinced the weather couldn’t possibly get any worse. But when we returned to the track on Sunday morning, we were proved wrong. The wind had gotten so strong I couldn’t even get out of the car. The door simply wouldn’t open. In the end I had to crawl out on the driver’s side. A parking attendant who saw me do so shook his head. “Why are you girls doing this to yourselves?” We hesitantly told him it had something to do with liking fast cars.
That day even less spectators showed up. As a result, there were more drivers present during the pitwalk than fans. It got to the point where people literally looked surprised to see us when we showed up at their garage. We stayed out in the open for some time after that, but when the GT Masters race finally came round, me and one friend had had enough. We decided to watch the race from the relative dryness of the main grandstand. But our other friend decided to head to the dunes, to take some last pictures. She was already drenched anyway, so how much worse could it get? She returned to us an hour later, water running down her face and seeping out of her clothes. “Why are we doing this?!” she huffed as she dropped down in a seat next to us. “I think there’s only one true answer,” I sighed, “We do it because we’re crazy.”