Jolyon Palmer must have one of the few people pleased to see rain during the first day of practice at Circuit of the Americas. Not only was this one of the few Friday mornings when the Englishman would not be running, the lack of track action meant news of his race seat with Lotus for 2016 gave the media something to talk and write about.
It's never easy when it tips it down during official practice. As a journalist, you've covered all the gossip and preview stuff in your piece for Friday's paper. The drivers and teams are frustrated because they're all dressed up with nowhere to go. And as for the poor fans, many of whom have travelled some distance and paid through the nose for what is likely to be their first view of a 2015 F1 car -- or possibly any F1 car, they have nothing to show for the day but a thorough soaking and the memory of a F1 car's phenomenal grip in the wet.
It was interesting to see who among the F1 personnel remembered the bedraggled folk indirectly paying their wages and who, when all is said and done, the teams have come to entertain. Since there is not much to be said, the end-of-day press release is a good opportunity for F1 people to show thought for someone other than themselves. Or, so you would think.
Mercedes came off best as Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Paddy Lowe all took trouble to mention the plight of the spectators. They were joined by Daniel Ricciardo, Sebastian Vettel, Kimi Räikkönen, Jenson Button, Eric Boullier and Sergio Perez. As for the rest, it was the usual business of stating the bleedin' obvious: "Not much running/learned a bit about grip/intermediates/set-up/hope it doesn't rain tomorrow/it was really, really wet/it's very frustrating after coming all this way/expected it to be warmer" (delete where appropriate).
That said, Red Bull cleverly used the moment to recognise their 200th race start by asking for outstanding memories from team members present since the first race. There were some interesting and amusing anecdotes but the one that really struck a chord came from Guillaume Rocquelin, the current Head of Race Engineering. Given his close association with Vettel, you'd expect any number of stories about their time together. But this is what 'Rocky' said:
"This moment (Montreal 2008 - David Coulthard's last podium) was a really important milestone in our story on so many levels: The essential contribution of David Coulthard to the team emergence, the success and validation he brought with him, confirmed by another podium - yet also on that day we knew that this would be his last season and a page was being turned. A bittersweet day that stands out for me as I was his Race Engineer at the time. For somebody so outspoken, DC is very modest about his time with us, possibly because the results were not as good as he was used to, but his contribution was outstanding."
I thought that was a touching token on a day when, as it happened, important people standing on the soggy sidelines needed to be recognised.