My trip to the British Grand Prix - Team Juicy Racing's Racing School and Race Series Forums

Charlie25 · #1 07-20-2005

As some of you know but most of you probably didn't, I attended the British Grand Prix 2 weeks ago with a friend. We flew into London on Wendesday and stayed a few days after, untill I had to fly back to race at Lime Rock.

The first part of the trip was a bit of a downer but I was safely asleep in my aunt's flat when everything happened, and we spent the day watching the news.

Things looked up however as we met our tour group (we went with GPTours) at Hethrow on Friday and made our way to the English motor heritage museum. Compared to the places we visited on Monday the Heritage museum was pretty boring, and my one complaint of the trip was that I would rather have seen Friday practice. Oh well, the evening was spent looking for a decent place to eat and getting excited for the days ahead. On Saturday morning we got to Silverstone about 15 minutes before the practice session started, so we found our grandstand seats and settled in to watch the begining of practice. We were in the grandstand on the exit of Luffield, right as the cars hit the kerb on track-out. After watching Raikkonen and Alonso do thier installation laps we walked over to Copse and then to Maggots. We stood right at the apex of maggots for most of the session. The speed they carried and how quickly they changed direction was unbeliveable. After practice we raided the souvenier stands outside the start/finish straight and I added to my collection of team shirts. When qualifying started we went to Copse.

On Saturday evening a bunch of people on the tour gathered in the lobby of the hotel and just talked F1 untill about midnight. After spending 4 years listening to my friends blab on about college football and baseball, march madness and whatnot it was really nice to have an educated discussion about something I actually care about, without having to spell out the differences between F1 and NASCAR.

Sunday was pretty uneventful, we watched the GP2 race from Abby. Scott Speed did well with a strong second place. We then went back to our grandstand to watch the Supercup race and the F1 race. There was a great battle for about 5th place in the Supercup race and supplied us with the only excitement in our section of the track with a pass going into Luffield. The F1 race was pretty uneventful and I went back to the hotel that night feeling the weekend went way too fast. There was a vintage race after the F1 race that we watched from the exit of Copse, and after seeing the F1 cars on rails it was a lot of fun to see the vintage cars slide through in a perfect 4-wheel drift.

Monday alone was worth the price of admission. We started at the museum at Donnington, where this guy had every F1 car imaginable in his own private collection, from early 1960's cars, the Tyrrel 6-wheeler,
Senna's Toleman, and every McLaren ever made. Afterwords we headed to the BAR-F1 factory for an exclusive tour. What an amazing facility that is. I kept having to remind myself that I was in a car factory and not a hospital. We saw Button's and Taku's cars getting serviced, saw the autoclaves where the carbon fiber gets baked, and the machine shop, complete with a carbon fiber trash can... I wish I could have taken a picture of that! At the conclusion of the tour they gave us all free hats, the 6th free hat I've gotten this summer.

To contrast that we went to the Williams conference center to see thier museum with every car Williams has ever run, and we had a very good dinner.

Overall an awesome weekend. GP Tours was fantastic and I highly reccomend them to anyone who wants to go to an F1 race. They take care of hotel, transportation and tickets, and they hooked us up with some awesome tours to top it off.

Pictures to come!

arig · #2 07-20-2005

sounds awesome. funny how you go to england to watch the f1 race and pay all that money for the tour and the only race that was uneventful was the F1 race. i have been to only one f1 race at montreal in 03 and really felt that the race is more interesting at home b/c you have all the tv coverage. when you are at the track, you see the cars go by and if you are lucky maybe a pass, a spin, or a crash. that's it. i think every fan needs to go to at least one race, but after seeing, hearing, and most of all feeling the cars on the track, there is not much more to a live race. glad to hear you at least got to see the other races, which to me seem more fun and interesting to watch in person.

see you at mt. tremblant.

sydude · #3 07-21-2005

Charlie, didn't they organize a dinner with F1 drivers as hosts? I thought that was usually part of a GPT package.

gmg321 · #4 07-21-2005

Sounds like a great time. I've been to 13 F1 races (Phoenix, British, Montreal and Indy) and every time I hear someone talk about GP tours I get the same impression - museums not racing. I most enjoy the cars in action. My advice is to purchase a grandstand ticket at the best passing point but only sit there for the race after you've gotten a close as possible to the start. The other times walk the track. Snippets - V-12 Ferrari through the tunnel in Phoenix, the direction change at Maggots/Becketts, the braking at the hairpin in Montreal, rotation at turn 10 at Indy. Perhaps it's that my mindset is racer first/fan second. There's a lot to be said for the all inclusive, but I don't think I would have had those experiences had I signed up for a tour.

Charlie25 · #5 07-21-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by sydude

Charlie, didn't they organize a dinner with F1 drivers as hosts? I thought that was usually part of a GPT package.

I've seen them say that on thier website, I guess there weren't any drivers available to speak to us.

MJAmok · #6 07-21-2005

I used GPT tix to get amazing seats in Monaco. See my wife's awesome pix looking into the cockpits of the cars elsewhere on this site.

As Deyne Bentt who was with me said... "we don't get this close to Skippy cars during a race!"

Here is one pic...

gmg321 · #7 07-21-2005

MJAmok,
More please!

MJAmok · #8 07-21-2005

Here is the TJR thread about our trip to Monaco. Scroll down and you can see some of Sue's favorite shots. There is also a link there to her Mac account on which you can find 2 groups of photos. The presentation kind of sucks... the pix are too small to give the right effect. But if you click on a pic, you can view it full screen. Enjoy!

http://teamjuicyracing.com/forums/sh...ghlight=monaco

gmg321 · #9 07-21-2005

Thanks. Great shots. I had forgotten about the Star Wars livery on the Red Bull cars. While traveling from Rome to Barcelona I had the opportunity to "drive" the F1 circuit in Monaco. (which I did until the officer at the casino gave me a foul look) Cameras do not depict just how steep the climb from Sainte Devote to Casino really is. Of course that pales to actually driving Alonso's car!

MJAmok · #10 07-22-2005

We drove the circuit that weekend also. It was closed to traffic, but I told Deyne to pull up next to the two French cops. I flashed my badge and asked them to let me in... they moved the barricade, and off we went!

I'm not sure Deyne stopped laughing the whole time... I think he missed half the track!

gmg321 · #11 07-22-2005

That's hilarious! I start laughing every time I envision it. How have you kept yourself from changing the bottom of your messages to "Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!"