I went to the race Yesterday and it was awesome. We didn't have any traffic getting in or out of there. I thought it would be a complete cluster but they pulled it off. The whole time I was there it was hard to believe I was in Austin. I've watched this thing being built from the beginning and it's amazing what they have done. I also did the fun run out there a couple of weeks ago and that was cool to be able to run around the track. I also took my kid to the fan fest on Saturday afternoon and it was ok. Not sure why they wouldn't let you walk around with alcohol.
Last night at Pete's was by far the biggest night of the week for us. Some of the McLaren team had reserved upstairs and were out celebrating. Eddie Jordan who is apparently big in the F1 world came up and played drums with us. (many people booed him when we announced his name) Damon Hill (WC in 1996) came up and played bass with us for a song. He seemed very popular and was very cool with us. He tipped $100 which was nice considering the crowd overall were not very good about tipping. Later, Johnny Herbert who was a driver back in the day came on the stage while we sang Go Johnny Go. Anyway, it was a fun crowd and by far the most fun night for us of the week. I'm looking forward to next year.
Was tipping poor all weekend? I'm curious if the influx of foreign fans created a financial disappointment since automatic tipping is, from what I've heard, an American cultural oddity.
Tipping for us was up and down all week. I'm sure that it was bad for the wait staff. For the piano players, we have different ways that we can get people to tip (like not play the songs that they want), but mostly we just tried to play a good show and not put too much emphasis on having to tip. On Saturday though, tips were really good and some hundred dollar bills were flying around, so the wealthier ones kind of caught on to the system. For the amount of people that we had out last night though, we should have made at least twice as much in the tip jar.
