This weekend we took advantage of the generous Birthday and Christmas presents for 2008 from my brother – both Mrs H and I went to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix (along with my bro and the missuses sister)
The summary of the weekend – Sunburn and Hypothermia… rolled into one… but huge grins through the tiredness that results!
Yup – the British summer well and truly reared it’s head at the weekend with Friday being roasting hot and us all catching a bit too much sun, Saturday being wet in the morning but OK-ish in the afternoon, and Sunday being a soaking, freezing day which was *really* uncomfortable at points.
Along with the weather were the early mornings – Friday was OK, with us departing at just after 7… sadly a major incident at Northampton caused the journey to take 3.5 hours which was really annoying… but Saturday saw us all up at 3:30am and on the road at 4:15 to be at the circuit (SECOND IN THE QUEUE!!!!) by 5:30am (gates opened at 6am) – Sunday was worse still… up at 2:30am and on the road at 3:15 to be at the circuit for 4:45 with the gates opening at 5am (and no, we weren’t second in the queue that day!)
But it was a superb time. Yeah, sure it got a bit depressing at points when the rain was lashing down and the wind making sure that every part of you got soaked and frozen, but the race and the atmosphere more than made up for it as we all got to enjoy what is being dubbed as one of the best ever races in F1.
The race had it all – rain, overtaking, crashes, spins, drama, idiotic driving, and sublime driving. It also had the huge emotions of seeing a Brit win his home Grand Prix – being there for that was unbelievable.
When I get a chance I’ll be going through all the photos that were taken and will post some up for you all to take a look at – but if you didn’t see it I would definitely recommend trying to catch any re-runs or looking on the ITV F1 website as it is well worth catching!
Huge thanks, hugs and love to me bwo for the tickets! We wouldn’t have gone without his gift and I am soooo glad we managed to get to that one.
On a related note – DONINGTON. Yup, the announcement was rather churlishly made on Friday morning that Silverstone had lost the GP to Donington and that, of course, led to the bad sportsmans response from Damon Hill along with quite a bit of bluster and huffing and puffing. Is Donington currently capable of hosting the race – NOPE! But they have the plans, they have the money and, unlike the BRDC, they appear to have momentum. Personally I have hugely fond memories of the European Grand Prix in 1993 at Donington and I am so looking forward to seeing Hamilton et al bombing through the Craner Curves (so long as Tilke doesn’t castrate the circuit). I am also hugely relieved that we should have a British Grand Prix for 10 more years… now surely that’s gotta be worth celebrating?