Day 12 – Race Day

Today saw us having breakfast by 7am, our intention being to try and beat the traffic queues, however the queues had other plans, and we ended up crawling slowly to the track. Even so, we arrived at the track by about 9.20am, in plenty of time to see the 10.15am Drivers parade….

….except for the fact that we parked the opposite end of the circuit to our Grandstand, so by the time we had found our seats, they’d been and gone! Oh well, coffee time..

We had a good look around the circuit and I dispatched Ben to take a picture of DC with orders not to come back until he had a decent one, no matter what..

….i think he did rather well, and didn’t upset to many people in the process..

During the day, we saw zillions of these, taking off and landing….. after the race there was a continuous stream of them for many hours..

At 13:00 it was time to settle down for what turned out to be a most excellent race, with two appearances by the safety car…

… the second one being due to a nutter running out onto the middle of the circuit when cars were heading towards him at getting on for 180mph – the Marshalls soon dispatched with him, and the race restarted.

Our position for the day was at the end of a very long straight (Stowe) with a tight right hander at the end, so there were plenty of over-taking opportunities to be had here, and also at the next bend. And also a few people ran wide here, making it all the more entertaining.

After the race finished (won by Rubens Barricello in a Ferrari), we made our way to a large stage that had been assembled, for the Grand Prix Party.

This saw Damon Hill and The Six Pistons performing, followed by Eddie Jordan and his band V10, with a special guest appearance by Nick Mason of Pink Floyd fame.

Tony Jardine from ITV-F1 hosted the whole thing, and there were brief appearances by Justin Wilson of Minardi and Ralph Firman of Jordan, also Mark Blundell and Louise Goodman showed their faces, and a presentation was made to Professor Sid Watkins of money raised over the weekend.

After the two bands had done there bit, Status Quo came on to entertain us prior to Tuesdays concert in Jersey, playing a selection of their well known songs.

There was a strong crowd for the after race party….

We decided to leave before the Quo finished to try and beat the rush out of the car park, and so exited what has been a fantastic weekend’s racing at Silverstone.

On the way home, we stopped off for some dinner at a Little Chef. (Again, I hear you cry? Well if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for us!)

Our fleet of vehicles are now all filled to the brim with Optimax for our journeys tomorrow, and after a 7am breakfast in the morning, we’ll be waving bye bye to Ben, who will be getting on his motorbike headed for Poole, whilst Mike and myself are headed to Dover, in order to return to France via the Channel Tunnel, ready to drive over 300miles to catch our boat from St Malo on Tuesday morning. (Trust me, it’s the most economical way of doing it, if you forget about the fuel costs involved…)

So until what will be our final update tomorrow night, its goodbye from Ben, Mike and Garry.