Much has been said about the empty grandstands at Indianapolis last weekend, for the US Grand Prix. Little has been discussed about the sheer entertainment offered those fans who journeyed to the Speedway, leaving behind every care in sight. Emily Wheeler, a gifted writer and long time contributor to Atlas F1, offers a spectator's viewpoint on a fantastic weekend of exciting racing and newfound friends. This is what you missed if you weren't there!

It seems odd, now, to sit at home in California, listening only to the quiet outside my back window. I sit on the sofa, alone; the sun is going down, its golden light filtering through that back window, and only a few birds twitter nervously before bedding down for the night. I imagine the sun went down the same way a couple of hours ago at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Hard to imagine that the scene was so different a little over a week ago, when my husband Andrew and I - and about 139,998 other people - gathered together at the Speedway to worship at Formula One's noisy temple. Panoply of screaming engines and chanting fans and bright flags and determined drivers converged as one; competition hung in the air, dripped from each flag, painted each face within the pits and without.

For four days, within the steel confines of the grandstands lining the legendary oval, nothing else existed. America's conflict with the U.N. didn't matter; the lack of WMD in Iraq didn't matter; the acrimony between the United States and its tenuous European allies was nowhere in sight outside the garages of Renault or McLaren-Mercedes or Williams-BMW. All that mattered was the racing - to the fans, to the crews, to the drivers. Democrat or Republican, Labor or Tory? Pshaw. Williams or Ferrari? Kimi or Michael?

The F1 world's attempt to lure America to its breast began on a sunny Thursday morning, when the race organisers graciously opened up the pitlane to anyone holding a race ticket for Sunday. When Andrew and I arrived at around 8:30am, some exiting fans warned us that it was too crowded to see anything.

It was crowded. But it wasn't the usual pushy, angry crowd that one encounters at baseball games or football contests. Everybody seemed in a good mood. The biggest part of the throng heaved in front of the Ferrari garage - inconveniently, the organizers had placed the fan entrance at this end of the pitlane, causing a bottleneck - and of course there was nothing to see through the sea of red hats waiting for their Teutonic hero. Instead, we focused on the crowd itself: a few thousand people determined to be kids for the day. Some of them were kids, dressed up by their partisan parents in red overalls or blue caps or black jackets.

There was some good-natured shoving, but most faux pas were followed by sincere apologies while the gaping in front of quiet garages continued. One small, fit-looking mechanic, impeccably turned out in his smart blue Renault team shirt and pressed grey shorts, walked up to the crowd massed in front of the blue and yellow nosecones that poked out before the French team's garage. He laughed, hands in pockets, and said, "This is very strange for us."

Down the lane, Jaguar mechanics opened their doors to a green-clad horde; one Jaguar employee visibly started, and the rest grinned sheepishly, blushed, and waved, while further up, the Williams mechanics gamely started their V10s and revved them repeatedly to the delighted screams of the crowd.

A few minutes later, Jenson Button swaggered past the Pagoda with a couple of BAR team members. "Hey Jenson! Do you miss Frome?" my husband, also from England's West Country, shouted at him.

Jenson laughed, genuinely. "No," he answered, through a giggle.

In the meantime, all three Renault drivers emerged from the back entrance of their garage to the delight of fans lining the barriers. All three signed autographs, chatting easily with everyone - we were all just people, then; the line between hero and fan, rich and not-so-rich, adult and kid, seemed to disappear. "And what made you leave the glories of Glasgow for this place?" Allan McNish joked with one Scottish fan, handing my just-signed magazine back to me after I had accidentally dropped it at his feet in the excitement.

"Hey Fernando!" someone next to me shouted. "Are you gonna go out and get pole today?"

The young Spaniard's brow furrowed, his felt-tip pen poised above someone's ticket. His face then relaxed into a broad grin. "No today. Saturday, maybe."

The crowd laughed, one burbling happy bubble. Cameras clicked in unison. Professional photographers watched what shots the crowd was taking, and copied them. Magic. All of it.

The sun had gone by Friday morning, and a very damp, chill wind was whipping through everyone's team t-shirts, which were soon covered by team jackets. A knot of pitlane faithful hovered around the paddock entrance; as soon as a Mercedes or BMW or Jaguar arrived, the throng would heave across the road to the parking lot; waving pens and cameras and programs at the tinted windows. Usually, they came back empty-handed upon discovering that the car was full of anonymous team personnel; but occasionally, a Marc Gene or a Ross Brawn would smilingly reward their efforts, determined to get to the paddock, but not really hurrying.

The IMS security staff indulged the crowd as one would little children, gently waving us back behind the infamous yellow line. When we didn't listen, as kids sometimes don't, the staff blew their whistles so that the next Euro-mobile could get through. Generally, though, we complied, smiling and waving at our surrogate parents in their yellow caps and windbreakers.

Andrew and I met up with Tom, an R&D engineer for American Honda, who had waited patiently with us for Michael to come out of the FIA press conference the day before. With him was Jim, a slight New Jersey native who peered out through his glasses and told us war stories of Grands Prix past: how he got a pair of gloves from a Jordan mechanic at his hotel, or how he met Gerhard Berger rushing through an airport to embark on the same plane. "I think he wound up in first, though," he commented wryly.

Jim is a successful art metal worker, but that day, he was 10 years old, running about on the mounds overlooking the Esses in the infield, calling his kids on the cell phone to let them listen to the cars. Tom towed all three of us to his favorite photo spots; he and Andrew traded shots and promised to exchange pictures through email once we'd all returned home. The lens-laden men at these "secret" spots were much the same, considerate and smiling, big kids with big toys to catch their heroes braking through the Esses.

Saturday produced some reluctant sunshine; this is the first real day of competition in F1 under this year's rules, and the competition among the faithful followed suit. In the stands early Saturday morning, as the teams revved their engines for real, drivers wandered to the front of their garages, overalls pushed down over their hips, to stare at the chanting multitude in the grandstand.

A knot of enthusiastic Colombians waved their tri-colored flags and chanted in rhythmic Spanish: one cheer when Juan Montoya appeared under the Williams emblem, and quite a different one when Michael Schumacher ventured into view. The cheers repeated themselves throughout practice and qualifying; over by the photo slip across from Turn 4, away from video screens, it was obvious who was on track by the tone of the chant wafting over from the stands.

I chanced to hear a gentleman next to me mention how fierce the wasps are at Laguna Seca during the mid-summer bike races. I asked him if he hailed from California. "Berkeley," he answered through mirrored sunglasses. "But born in Salinas."

I laughed, hard. "We're from Santa Cruz."

He waved his Foster's can and guffawed. "Hey!" he shouted toward his flock of friends behind. "These guys are from Santa Cruz!" It turns out all of them had grown up together in Salinas, and had met up at IMS for the race; one large, imposing fellow still lives in Watsonville, and asked if we wanted a deal on tires (he owns a local shop) in exchange for some of the photos Andrew was taking.

Duane, my Berkeley friend, noticed my blue Renault cap with Alonso's number 8 on the back. "Hey," he whispered confidentially. "Know why my buddies have to keep buying me beer?"

"No, why?" I whispered back.

"Because I knew there'd be a Renault on the front row yesterday, and they laughed at me." He guffawed and raised another Foster's can. "You know, that car don't make those same nasty traction control knocks as everybody else - listen when they downshift through that corner." A motorbike racer, he then spent the rest of qualifying alternately admiring Andrew's photographs, and teaching me how to listen for downshifts and upshifts as each driver went through the corner as a clue to how their cars were handling. Renault's Alonso braked later than just about anyone; the gears then thunked neatly at the apex of the corner. "Fucking great," Duane enthused, "just fucking great, man."

When he went off to collect another beer, I telephoned my friend Stacy, back at home, to exchange live car sounds for the sector times she could see on the television, and her delighted, convulsive laughter. Later, on the way out, we made way for the zealous Colombian contingent heading back to their cars, flags waving and cheers intact. The exiting crowd parted like the Red Sea; for a moment, it was hard not to be a Montoya supporter.

Sunday morning, from our parking space, we watched the dawn light up the Speedway's Pagoda. More damp, grey cold; rain threatened. The buoyant sun of optimism, though, remained in the grandstand as we found our seats in the penthouse, in view of both the podium and start/finish. I echoed Duane's sentiments from the day before. We were also pleased to discover that the Colombian contingent's assigned seats were just to our left, infecting us with the bright warmth of their love for one Juan Pablo Montoya. My husband, an ardent Schumacher fan, even cheered with them when JPM approached to take his place in the drivers' parade.

The grid girls, in their short skirts and halter tops, looked much colder than we felt, and the drivers didn't look much warmer as they climbed into their antique cars to be ferried around the track to wave at their admirers. The casual community of Thursday had given way to the familiar royal spectacle; this was once again a pageant of gods instead of a laugh among mortals. But it was the right thing for the day, just like Thursday had been the right thing for that day.

The drivers' chilly hands, soon to be clad in fireproof gloves, poked out of their fleece sleeves to wave at their subjects; a hint of Thursday's one-on-one magic glinted in their smiles as they scanned the screaming crowd, and all of us - plebs and gods - ate it up.

In another flash of kismet, the gentleman sitting next to Andrew was also a British ex-pat, from north London, who was very familiar with Andrew's hometown of Bath - oddly, he had also lived in California when he first emigrated. They exchanged tales of homesickness and adjustment to the American way of life as the excitement built to a fever pitch in the stands. First, the grid parade: the national flag of each driver adorned the painted markers at the start, the grid girls still looking rather shrammed in their scant outfits.

Then, the prayer and the national anthem, which everyone dutifully respected, in spite of national origin or political bent.

And then the cars began to start, engendering an ever-louder hum in the crowd; the Renaults out first, inspiring a huge scream from the stands, like a premature orgasm; the Spanish cheers reached a fever pitch as Montoya emerged from the Williams garage; Michael, ever the master of drama, made us all wait on the edge of our seats, emerging last of all, circling the track slower than his rivals as he made his way to his midfield grid spot.

The grid cleared, gradually, as carts were pushed back to the garages one at a time, and engineers passed on last-minute instructions to their helmeted drivers, laid nearly flat in their needle-nosed machines, heavy gloved hands gripping those funny high-tech steering wheels.

Then, only the cars remained.

There was a momentary silence as the lights went red. 139,999 people and I held our collective breath. Nothing else existed. Only this was real; only this mattered. The world stopped inside those big steel-girded stands.

The lights went out.

The crowd exploded in a maelstrom of camera flashes and screams and waving flags. A Ferrari, beached on the infield grass, flashed onto the video screen; Andrew's new English friend, wearing a Montoya cap, hugged him and said he was sorry. Later inspection proved it was not Andrew's Teutonic hero; suddenly, though, for reasons we did not realize until later, Montoya was over 20 seconds behind. Our English pal, however, leaned over and patted my hand when Alonso blew up on lap 46. "I'm sorry, love," he said, "I guess it's not a very good day for either of us!"

The weather alternated between wet and windy and dry and cold; a clash of pitstops and confusion, BAR leading the race, Saubers in podium positions. We all felt sad when the Colombians to our right went quiet after Montoya's botched pitstop; we all cheered when Michael punched the air across the finish line ahead of everyone else.

The boos of Saturday were long forgotten when the German bounded up onto the front of his car to salute the crowd, and cheers exploded - even from the Colombians - when he leapt three feet straight up on top of the rostrum. We were all German for a couple of minutes during Michael's national anthem; then, we were all Italian for a couple more minutes as Michael daringly conducted a few bars of his team's anthem before accepting his trophy.

We filed out of the stands, onto Georgetown Road. The cheers and flag waving continued in the parking lot, and out onto Crawfordsville Road, and even at the Starbucks near our hotel, where I commiserated with another disappointed Alonso supporter, and showed her my prized autograph. Andrew exchanged laughs with a few guys in Ferrari caps.

The atmosphere carried on at the Indianapolis airport the following morning; even at 4:30am, fans milled around in their team gear, carrying their baggage, buying breakfast, sharing their race day tales. At the table next to us, we saw the same neat, tidy Renault gentleman who had proclaimed the pitwalk "a weird experience" on Thursday, this time looking rather hip in dark jeans and denim jacket. I approached him from behind, put my hand on his shoulder. "Too bad about the engine," I offered.

He put his coffee down, and turned to smile broadly at me, then winced. "Yeah - it was a real bleedin' shame."

"Jarno did well, though," I said, feeling bad to bring up what was obviously a sensitive subject.

"Yeah, it all came right in the end I guess," he smiled broadly again.

Andrew explained that we recognized him from Thursday. The mechanic grinned some more. "Yeah, that was really great. Did you enjoy yourselves?"

We enthusiastically affirmed that we had.

"I'm glad. That's just great." He went back to his coffee, and sparked a discussion about that engine failure with the other four mechanics at the table as we made our way to the crowded security checkpoint to catch our flight back to California, with other folks going back to New York or London or Milan or, I'm sure, some team personnel already heading to Osaka for the final race of the year.

We felt strange in San Jose, our bright team logos conspicuous among business travelers in their neutral colors. As we sat on the bench outside baggage claim in the welcome California sunshine, three Ferrari fans walked past, waving solemnly like members of the Masonic order. We replied in kind.

"Seems odd it's over, and everybody scattered to the ends of the earth," commented Andrew, after our F1 compatriots had passed.

"Yeah, I know," I answered, fingering the embroidered number 8 on the blue cap latched on to the handle of my carry-on bag, imagining the empty stands at IMS, the silent asphalt of the starting grid under the grey Indiana sky, the pitlane devoid of colored emblems, the white and yellow tape lifted up from the garage floors and the pitboxes. I imagined carbon fibre bits being loaded, clean and orderly, onto big FedEx freight planes bound for Asia, and other fans in other cities sitting on benches like mine.

I looked up at the newsstand across from our bench, and read the dour headlines about some CIA agent's name being revealed by the Bush administration.

"Only nine months till June," I said to Andrew.