Forced to Shop

Given the strength of most European currency against the Canadian dollar and the fact that the Montreal circuit is very near the city centre, shopping has always featured heavily for F1 visitors.

This year, the shops must have thought they were experiencing an early Christmas rush and they owe their good luck to an airline which managed to lose no less than 400 pieces of luggage! By the time the first rush of visitors had flooded the shops with requests for clothes, shop assistants were actually asking which flight they had come in on.

A fine mess

According to a Montreal newspaper, Mika Hakkinen’s wife Erja was recently caught speeding in her native Finland. As is the custom in that country, the amount of the speeding fine is based on the speeder’s earnings. Mrs. H quite rightly described herself as a housewife and was fined 150 Euros. It has been calculated that if her husband had been up for the same offence, the fine would have been a hundred times bigger.

Panis gets his hat trick

Congratulations to BAR-Honda driver Olivier Panis, who has just become a father for the third time. The happy event took place last Saturday, when wife Anne gave birth to a little girl Lauren.