From the Marbles visits Formula 1 for the first time (Photos)

AUSTIN, Texas – When you’re in the NASCAR garage, you don’t normally hear others being greeted with “bonjour.”

At a Formula 1 race, that’s commonplace, along with “hello” in a myriad of different languages. Even if you didn’t recognize any of the companies with advertisments plastered all over the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, you’d know Formula 1 was a world sport just with your ears.

COTA, as it’s known for short, is a winding 20-turn circuit just southeast of Austin’s Bergstrom Airport. On a day like Friday, a picture-perfect fall day, you could see the jets landing at the airport fly just to the west of the track.

Since the United States Grand Prix is held on Sunday, the same day as the eighth race of the Chase for the Sprint Cup at Texas Motor Speedway, we decided to venture on down to COTA before the Cup race to get a glimpse of a Formula 1 race weekend for the first time.

As soon as we arrived at COTA, there was one thing to do – find a way to get into the tower on the outside of the track.

We dropped our stuff off at the media center and jumped in a shuttle to get over to it. After climbing the supposed 491 steps (We didn’t stop to count on the way up) because the elevator was broken, we made it. And damn, what a view of the track. It makes up for the whole fear of heights thing.

One of the first things you notice about the track is how steep the climb is into turn one. Not long after driver cross the start/finish line on the frontstretch, they climb the hill and brake for an incredibly tight corner.

The garage area – err, paddock – is nothing like a garage in NASCAR. The cars are parked in stalls along pit road and during practice, simply pull immediately out on pit road to go to the track.

Behind the garage stalls is a walkway and each team’s hospitality tents are also right there. And instead of flashing your credentials to a security worker to get from place to place within the race track, you must scan your credentials at a machine to get in and out of the paddock and other areas. Yes, that’s Daniel Ricciardo.

On the other side of pit road from the garage stalls are the monitor bays you see team management stationed at during races. They’re wiped down before each session, too. When was the last time you cleaned your computer monitor screen?