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April 6 to April 8 gave us the most appreciated opportunity to watch the best next thing to a full-blown Formula One race: the annual Long Beach Grand Prix!

To warm up, there's Toyota's Pro/Celebrity race, Dayton Indy Lights, the Toyota Atlantic Championship, and the most exciting Trans Am Series, the oldest road racing series in the country; finally, as a highlight, there is the FedEx CART Series race!

And there were lots of goodies to see, exotic cars, such as the Mercedes GTR, Michael Schumacher's '96 Formula One Ferrari, or, more pedestrian, a twin turbo-charged Lamborghini Diablo for the folks with plenty of cash to burn.

One of the best aspects of the Long Beach Grand Prix is that visitors (with the right pass) can walk around in the pits, hereby looking at anything and almost everything upclose.
That, my friends, would be impossible at any Formula One event, where they even cover the tires from view, anxious to keep the team's set up a secret!

True 200mph cruising on Long Beach beautiful Harbor Promenade is exactly what we like: reminding us of the freedom on Geman Autobahns, we never loose perspective on how slow even the highest highway speeds in our free country are!

As another highlight, there were lots of good looking ladys presenting the latest from the auto industry!