Formula 1 Adventure
So, last weekend was super awesome. I went over to the UK to meet up with my good friend Chris, who is a fellow F1 fan and was coming with me over the weekend! This was my first ever actual Grand Prix attendance. So Friday night we went for a late night shopping expedition and stocked up on food and drinks for the next couple of days. The alarm was set for 6am!
Saturday
Up at 6, and we packed up all the important things: tickets, Australian flags (OK maybe that was just me), food, chairs, reading materials, and high spirits! We jumped in the car and headed toward Silverstone. When we got there, we accidentally found the perfect carpark for where we were sitting (Luffield Terrace). (Thanks Chris for the spotting and drawing of the parking spots in the picture below! :)
We managed to grab a great spot there (though with only 5 levels of terrace it's not difficult to get a great spot!) and settled in for the day. We saw GP2, GP3, and Porsche qualifying in the morning! GP2 was a bit of a cut down F1, still loud enough to require earplugs but not as quick as their bigger brothers! The later GP2 race was not as exciting as the GP3 race, but still impressive to see the cars whizzing around the track!
Of course, the qualifying for the F1 was the most impressive part of the day (apart from the GP3 race, which was pretty equal in its excitement IMO!) -- with Red Bull coming in first, Vettel with his controversial front wing and Webber in second place on the grid.
A video of the qualifying lap is here.
After the GP2 and GP3 race we headed home, absolutely exhausted, and had an early night ready for the even earlier wake up the next morning.
A lap of the GP3 race is here.
Sunday
Up even earlier and we were much quicker in the car for the hour and a half drive down to Silverstone from Chris's place. I was wearing my brand new Red Bull Racing gear which I'd bought the previous day.
One thing that really helped us wake up was seeing two amazing Bugatti Veyrons (with the numberplates BUG I and BUG II) zooming past us down the M1 south. Nothing quite like seeing them in action!
We got herded into a different car park this time, much further away and behind the Copse corner. It was a much longer walk but we still managed to get a reasonable spot... we were there by 7.30 and the whole place was full!
Still, we managed to get a lovely position on the terrace, near some lovely people who were very supportive about the fact that I wasn't barracking for the McLaren team (the orange/silver are the McLaren colours in the photo above) which has both the British drivers in it.
The first things up for the day were the second two races for the GP2 and GP3, which were much more exciting than the previous day's races. I still think the GP3 is much more fun though, especially since you don't need those earplugs, and they look like toy cars :) You can see a video of the opening lap of the GP2 here!
After these races was a display by the Red Arrows, who were just amazing. You can see a video of them I took here.
But then onto the main event: the F1 race! Of course it was very exciting: from our position we could see heaps of the action. Lap One went something like this.
This is the best picture I could get later of where we were (from the BBC footage):
And I can't even see us, so yeah, don't feel bad that you can't (or couldn't) either. :)
Some highlights from the F1 itself:
Being near the pit entrance. Especially for the Massa slide, but also being able to witness the pitting strategy first hand.
Being at the end of the Wellington straight, we got to see a lot of overtaking just before the Luffield corner. Sutil's battle to keep Vettel at bay was one of the finer parts of the race, as well as the dramatic overtaking of Schumacher.
Watching Vettel catch up to the HRT/Lotus/VR and then work his way further up the field was pretty impressive; same for Button's move up from 14th to 4th, though that was less dramatic and more due to clever strategy.
The safety car lap ended right in front of us, so we got to see Webber make that dash for it that firmly fixed his position, which was great for me! :)
Alguersuari's unfortunate exit was quite dramatic at the Luffield corner, but a bit sad, he was so upset :(
The heroic efforts of the marshal to pick up some debris on the track yielded a massive cheer and applause from the crowd around us, especially given the somewhat spread out formation on the track at the time. It was a very impressive run and one of the things you don't see on TV!
Of course, the atmosphere was electric. Every time one of the British drivers came around the corner, the crowd went wild! I of course waved my little flag for Webber but despite our support differences everyone was very excited for me that he won :)
During the ceremony I stood up and waved my flag for the national anthem in a stupidly cheesy way, but I was just happy! The Pit Straight looked like they were having fun too, especially since a Brit came second!
Afterwards we hung around for the BMW series but it wasn't very exciting, sadly. I think everyone was cheered out after the main event! Then we headed back to the carpark in order to join a huge queue that had formed due to an ambulance needing to get into the area while everyone was trying to leave. Thus it took us ages to get to the exit. However, once we did get to the exit, we found ourselves funnelled onto the A43 ... but on the right hand side of the road! It was rather scary but pretty awesome, especially when we went past a huge traffic jam on the "normal" side of the road, whereas our side was almost perfectly clear, haha.
I put up a silly video of us driving along there here.
Finally we got back to Rugeley, and went on a bit of a Cook's tour due to some road closures. We ended up going along this road, which is hella awesome due to the English Country Lane feel to it. Especially when you're in a nice Toyota Celica with a bit of grunt to it and a driver who enjoys pushing it a bit!
Back in time for the pub quiz and most of the World Cup, but I was just super hungry after a long and tiring day in the sun, and a fantastic weekend. We didn't quite win the quiz (sorry guys, my fault, stupid Oasis/Blur question!) but one of the other participants took home the extra prize which was pretty good (yay Abi!).
As a final note, I wrote up a big set of highlights (including some of the above) and they were included in an article at f1fanatic.co.uk including a link to my photo gallery where there are heaps more pictures. Yay! :D
Big thanks to Chris for looking after me for the weekend and doing lots of tiring driving on little sleep and lots of sun. Also, happy early birthday! :) I'm already looking forward to doing it again next year, but it looks like the spots we had this year are going to be general admission tickets next year, which would mean probably getting up at 3am... or camping there! Hah, yeah not going to happen lol. Anyway, we'll see how things go! :)
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