Despite his team's cash crisis leaving him on a race-by-race basis, 250cc racer Chaz Davies battled on during the Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai and French Grand Prix at Le Mans - before heading for a well-earned weekend off at the Monaco F1 GP, with Casey Stoner...
After the Turkish Grand Prix we had the best part of a couple of weeks at home before we headed to China. It was a pretty long flight out there. My dad and I left from Birmingham airport on Monday afternoon, flew to Paris and then a couple of hours later met up with the team and got the 11 hour flight to Shanghai which arrived on Tuesday morning. In China, nobody from outside that country is allowed to drive, so the team had to hire a big 38-seater bus to cart everybody around in.
On that Tuesday we battled to stay awake all day, sunk many a coffee and in the afternoon headed into central Shanghai. Our hotel was on the outskirts of Shanghai but the place is so big and the traffic so manic that it takes 1 ½ hours to get right into the centre. But it was ideal to get to the circuit, only 10 minutes and that is with the taxi drivers that drive incredibly slow and are constantly on their horns. One morning I counted how many times my taxi driver beeped his horn from the time we left the hotel to the time we got to the circuit, a total of 28 times! Not bad in 6 miles!
In Shanghai we went for a look around the electronics plaza and that was pretty cool. I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to gadgets so I was well in my element! After that we headed into China town which is also pretty cool. It’s huge in China, much bigger than the market in Malaysia and the quality of stuff seems to be getting better and better. I bought a good stock of DVDs and a few other bits and bobs.
