Michael Banovsky's best and worst moments

REUTERS FILE PHOTO

Interviewing Michael Schumacher, above, was a childhood dream come true for Michael Banovsy.

MICHAEL BANOVSKY'S BEST

My fondest childhood memories go back to Sunday mornings, watching Formula One with my dad. I favoured Alain Prost's style of racing: calm, cool and methodical.

But in 1991, I was in awe of the new kid on the block, Michael Schumacher.

To my 7-year-old eyes, he was everything a future champion should be. It was fun to watch him get better and better. Yes, albeit slightly flawed, to me he's the greatest racer.

This summer, a call came in to the magazine where I used to work, asking if anyone was interested in interviewing Schumacher the next day.

It was a good interview and a good story, too – I didn't tell him I was a fan until afterwards, when he asked me if I watched F1.

I replied, "I've seen every single one of your races." Schumacher laughed, and we chatted about his future plans, including his love of two-wheeled racing.

I still need a lock of his hair, though.

... AND WORST MOMENT

The Canadian Grand Prix weekend is my favourite. Not only are the streets littered with beautiful people, thousands of things to do, wonderful restaurants and history, but the action on track usually eclipses what happened on Saturday night.

Usually.

This year, nine of us carpooled to Montreal in a 12-passenger Dodge Sprinter van. Some of us hadn't been to Old Montreal, so on Saturday night I braved the traffic and took them to the old port.

I parked, we walked to dinner, and were pretty chuffed that, unlike most years in Montreal, we hadn't received a single parking ticket from the usually overzealous Montreal parking brigade.

We returned to find the ground covered in glass, the van wrapped with "Danger" tape, and a medicine ball-sized hole in one of the rear windows. A vandal had broken the window, likely looked inside, and left us with a problem.

How would we secure the window, park it at the race track and drive it back to Toronto?

Thankfully, we had engineers in our group, and with a few ingenious solutions nixed (including epoxy, aluminum screws and fibreglass), we created a watertight and Hwy. 401-capable barrier for the rest of the trip.

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