The Silverstone round of the British GT marks the mid-way point of the season – which is slightly scary as it doesn’t seem two minutes ago that I was making plans for how to attend each of the seven championship rounds.
In terms of Silverstone, I had been quite excited about this one as I was going to be attending with two very good friends from University. Given that it was going to be a special occasion, it only seemed right to make a bit of a weekend of it, and so on the Saturday afternoon – to break the journey up – we called into the recently refurbished Gaydon Motor Museum. If you’ve not been to Gaydon before, it is well worth a visit. The collection of cars is vast and quite eclectic – ranging from old Rover’s and concept MG’s, via the Pink Rolls-Royce from Thunderbirds and the Back-to-the-Future DeLorean, a massive selection of Jaguar’s past and present (Gaydon is right next door to the JLR factory), and even includes some cracking motorsport cars, including the Le Mans Jaguar XJR 9 in full Silk Cut livery! Having had a few pints in a local pub, putting the world to rights (and reflecting on which of the Gaydon collection we would most like to have as a daily drive), we awoke the next morning bright and early and made our way to the home of british motor racing. I’ve been lucky enough to attend Silverstone a number of times over the years, having watched F1 there as a teenager, then moving onto Touring Cars, and now more recently the GT’s . Unlike Oulton Park and Snetterton, car parking for the general public is outside the circuit – and so you have a fairly long walk into the heart of the circuit and the old Paddock area. Given that this particular round was a blue riband event, the Silverstone 500 had attracted what was easily the biggest crowd of the championship yet – and whilst this was, I am sure, due to the prospect of a thrilling 3 hour race, the promise of a super-large supercar display was clearly not to be missed either. As we made our way to the Paddock, we soon stumbled upon the supercar display, and it really didn’t disappoint. There was just so many examples of all the top marques. It really was very, very impressive. Whilst we could have easily spent more time there, salivating over McLarens, Ferrari’s and Lamborghini’s, we headed to the BRDC grandstand to take in some of the support races. The location of the stand really is very good, and gives you a chance to watch the cars breaking hard into Brooklands, sweeping round Luffield and Woodcote before getting the foot down for the home straight. In the interests of collecting the latest Jake Yorath masterpiece, we made our way down to the Paddock area for the lunchtime pit walk. But just before doing so, I went in search of Jonny Adam – as my son who couldn’t make it on this occasion, had made Jonny a good luck card for his adventure at Le Mans. Jonny seemed genuinely touched by the card – and I just hope it brings Jonny a little bit of luck next weekend! Underlining my suspicion that the Silverstone crowd was on the particularly large side, the pit walk was rammed – which is of course a great thing. Thankfully we had met many of the drivers at the previous rounds, and so the pressure was off trying to get to each of the garages. None the less, I still took the opportunity to check out some of the awesome GT machinery on display as it would surely be churlish not to! Before the race started at 1:30 – we took a tactical decision to grab a bite to eat before then locating ourselves at Copse for the start of the race. Now my only small complaint from the day was the seemingly short supply of burger vans….we had wondered around infield and only managed to find three locations for buying food. Judging by the 30minute queue that we were in, that really was all the choice available – and under a hot sun, we waited patiently for what also turned out to be a rather expensive burger at that….but anyway – back to the track. So as mentioned, we made our way to Copse which is the first corner to watch the number 31 Bentley of Rick Parfitt Jnr make a very swift and clean start. Now I know there has been a lot of talk about Balance of Performance, especially given the recent successes/strong performances of the Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini’s – and I’m not sufficiently up-to-date to know whether or not the Bentley had been given additional boost to compensate – but the Bentley really was on fire and destroyed the rest of the grid. The pairing of Seb Morris and Rick Parfitt is certainly very strong – and I think they will definitely be in the fight come the final round at Donington. Given the duration of the race, we moved around a bit, checking out the various locations to see if we could find a ‘preferred’ viewing spot. On balance, I think the Woodcote grandstand was probably our favourite as it gave a good all-round view of Brooklands and Woodcote, including the cars powering across the start/finish line, as well as overlooking the paddock. It is worth noting, that unlike some of the earlier rounds, the podium is above the pits and looks out across the track. To therefore be a part of the celebrations would mean getting actually into the pits themselves – which I don’t think we were going to be allowed to do. Coupled with the need to make a sharp exit to travel back up north, we decided to watch the final few laps from Luffield. Having watched Seb Morris take the chequered flag over a lap in front of his nearest rivals, we duly said our goodbyes to Silverstone and left. All in all, that was a really fantastic weekend – which was, in all honesty, a bit of an indulgence. Seeing so many fabulous super cars, sports cars, and epic racing – all in the company of great friends – was special. Can the next round in Spa be as special?? Time will tell!
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AuthorHi I'm Jon - an almost middle-aged motorsport fan - blogging for the first time.... Archives
September 2017
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