“I may have lied” Kev started the conversation

 

“About what?” Chris replied

 

“I may have lied about us getting together next week to watch the British Grand Prix”

 

“Right!” was the confused reply

 

“We are going to watch it, its just we will be a lot closer than you think”

 

“What?” still confused

 

“I’ve got tickets, we are going to Silverstone, we will be there on race day”

 

“You’re joking!, really?”

 

The above conversation was the end of months of pretending to be getting together to watch the F1 British Grand Prix on TV at our house.  Instead Kev had the tickets bought and paid back in Feb as a 40^th Birthday present to Chris.  Perhaps the most surprising part of the whole thing was that Kerry, Chris’s better half, managed to quiet about the whole thing for so long!

 

After a week of great weather, on the weekend of the race the forecast was rain – with thunderstorms.  So at stupid o’clock on Sunday morning Chris had been picked up, all waterproof stuff, umbrellas, camping chairs and food shoved in the boot.  We were off.

 

The trip down was pretty uneventful, until we saw McLarens Heikki Kovalainen being driven into the circuit whilst we headed to the car park.  Hopes of capturing a great photo faded fast, as realisation dawned that our cameras where in the boot….ho hum!l!.

 

Once in the circuit we decided where we wanted to sit.  Having been before and sat in the stands on the Start/Finish straight, Abbey, Bridge and Luffield and sat on the grass bank at Club, this time we wanted to sit somewhere where we could see the cars sweep left, right, left.  So we headed off to Becketts.

 

 

 

At Becketts we set up camp, got the teas in and waited for the race to begin.  For those that don’t know there are several support races on during the day.

 

 

 

 

Whilst Kev was on a brave mission to fetch yet more tea, Chris got distracted by the Red Arrows and managed to let our beautifully crafted camp blow away. 

 

 

 

A constant theme of the day was rain, strong winds, hot sunshine, then rain again.  We had never seen F1 cars running in the rain, other than on the TV, so the prospect of seeing F1 cars in the rain at a twisty high speed point in the track was pretty good.

 

 

At the beginning of the race, Lewis Hamilton (Note:- Kevs not a big fan, but does appreciate that he is a great driver and likely to be World Champion at some point in the very near future) made an amazing start and continued to be amazing for the rest of the race.  No one ever really looked like catching him. 

 

 

 

Sadly the Renault of Alonso (Kevs current favourite driver) did what it did best.  Didn’t go very fast.  He finished 6^th, one lap down.

 

 

 

The spray thrown up by the cars at speed was incredible.  You could see it hanging over the circuit all the way round.  It was hard work spotting the cars coming towards you so who knows what its like driving one in those conditions. 

 

 

Apparently the drivers use their peripheral vision to see where they are on the circuit.  So in effect that aren’t even looking where they are going.  At the speeds they were doing, that’s just incredible.

 

The conditions meant we did get to see numerous incidents including a Force India being towed away, various people going off the track and a few hares risking their lives for reasons unknown.

 

 

Hamilton won the race and the cheers from the crowd where fantastic.  Seeing a Brit win the British Grand Prix, and one of the last ones to be held at Silverstone for a while was pretty cool.

 

After a wander round the various merchandising stalls, and failing to buy anything, we headed back the for the car. 

 

 

 

 

 

The car park, which was dead easy to get in, was a right pain to get out.  Despite having numerous exit roads to use the car park was jammed solid.  We didn’t move for well over an hour.

 

We did eventually get out, but we wont be going back for Silverstone’s last year hosting the British Grand Prix in 2009.  Instead we decided to wait till 2010 and watch it at Donnington Park.