Shambolic organisation messes up big occasion

None of that was seen at a packed Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE) Road on Tuesday morning.

For starters, the security presence was far from enough to curb a restless crowd of more than 20,000 young and old people, clad mostly in the Vodafone red/ orange. Agreed that, much like Lewis Hamilton himself, the security in charge wouldn’t have been able to predict a turn out as such, but that’s no excuse for putting on a shoddy show.

The fragile, flimsy barricades in place to avoid people from running on to the driving area couldn’t have held even had only the estimated 5,000 people had turned up. At several points across the 500-metre stretch of grand stands, the barricades gave way and people rushed to stand by the tyre barricades placed no more than a foot from the track.

With nearly 1,000 people standing close to the car, and many more sitting on a wall separating the road from the Gottigere lake, it became increasingly risky for the Briton to drive the Mercedes convertible, incredibly forcing him to use the horn on several occasions!

Whilst this ruckus was hard for Hamilton to fathom and harder for the police to keep a tab on, one fan ran up the road to the car and tried to shake hands with the champion, who fortunately was not driving the MP4-23 Formula One car at that point. Once the ecstatic fan was shoved off the track, Hamilton drove in to the pit garage with a smile and geared up for the press conference scheduled for 2.00 pm.

More than thirty photographers, made to share a small stage like set-up next to the track with random people with cameras right through the show, were forced to stand in ‘restricted locations’, and that spurred trigger-happy VJ Ranvijay to make a snide, unnecessary remark which understandably didn’t go too well with the lensmen.

At the media centre, a make-shift tent with no ventilation that could accommodate no more than thirty people, around 50 people sat while another 100-odd print and TV journalists were left to stand, waiting for Hamilton to arrive for the press conference. In keeping with the all-round shoddiness, water bottles were callously tossed into the media ‘enclosure’ by the organisers, perhaps smug that their job was done.

Hamilton’s team did a brilliant job of getting things done on schedule, but after Ranvijay’s banal conversation with Hamilton lasting more 10 minutes, there was barely any time left for the media to pose question. After no more than seven queries, the champ was ushered out.

And to think that Hamilton had only just lauded the crowd and the organisers for an awesome show!