Right then, post-British GP debrief time, now that I've recovered fully and have uploaded my best pictures to Flickr. Here's some of my thoughts and experiences from this year if anyone else was considering doing it in future.
For the second year in a row I did the full 5 nights of camping with three mates at Silverstone Woodlands, which in terms of value for money, ease and comfort, is hands down the best way to go. All in the tickets were a little over £240, that is a three day General Admission ticket to the circuit, and the camping as well. It might sound steep, but for five nights of camping plus three full days of on track action and plenty of stuff around it, I have to say, we F1 fans have it better than I think we like to make out sometimes. Yes the food is over-priced and let's not get started on the merchandise, but if you plan it properly, buy as much of your food and booze beforehand from your supermarket of choice, then you don't actually have to spend that much more once you're in.
First of all - Silverstone Woodlands. I haven't camped anywhere else when at the GP so can't compare different sites, but I have to say the organisation, facilities and services and entertainment on offer were superb. The pub does pints of Carlsberg for £3-something, there's a shop that whilst expensive, sells everything you might need whilst camping, and there's a load of food vans, merchandise stalls and entertainment too. They have a big screen outside the pub which showed both Wimbledon, and the World Cup matches that were on, with plenty of room to either sit on the grass or on the picnic benches provided. They have live music on most of the nights, as well as screenings of films like the original 1969 Italian Job and Rush as well.
Race to the Finish had a stand there, where I got myself a Spyker wheelnut to add to the Williams one I bought last year and which still had the grease inside it. If you don't fancy the £50+ prices of the current team merchandise, they are a great place to pick up slightly older stuff, in particular reject teams - they had Spyker, Super Aguri, Virgin/Marussia and Caterham stuff all there in good supply, and a t shirt or polo would set you back around £15 I'd say. I went and bought myself a brand new Williams top which was £65 but I'll get onto that later...
Last year we were able to sneak into the circuit on the Wednesday afternoon and watch the team trucks being unloaded from the comfort of the pit straight grandstand! This year we weren't so lucky, but it didn't matter as the circuit was officially open on the Thursday for the pit lane walks. There were two sessions, one from 10am and one from 4pm, both lasting for two hours. We did the first one as the later one overlapped with Sky filming their F1 Show and we wanted to be in the stand for that too. We got to the gate at about 8.30am and there were already about 60 or 70 people in front of us queueing to get in. By the time they started letting us across the track at Abbey to walk up the pit lane backwards, the queue must have been at least half a mile long. If there's just one thing you have to keep in mind when doing the British GP, it's to make sure you get yourself to things with plenty of time in hand otherwise you'll miss out. That goes for arriving at the campsite (we aim for early Wednesday morning so you're not miles away from the toilets and showers), and then anything that will involve a queue.
Back to the pit lane walk though, and the access was really good - no screens in front of any of the garages, you could see all the cars being built up, the bodywork out in front of the garages, and the Williams drivers all made an appearance (yes, I saw and photographed Susie dr-baker!) - emerging from the garage to do their track walk I believe. You'd be lucky to get an autograph, even less so a photo with a driver, but nonetheless the access was great and something I'd definitely do again. We spent about 45 minutes working our way up the pit lane and got loads of photos. It was harder to get the shots at the more popular teams' garages but being towards the front of the queue meant it wasn't too rammed so there was still enough space. I suspect if we'd been at a later time in the session it would have been nigh on impossible to get any clear photos of the garages.
Lotus Pit Garage by
Crackers250, on Flickr
Caterham Pit Garage by
Crackers250, on Flickr
Later on in the day we went and attended the live filming of the Sky F1 Show on the pit straight again, though didn't get on the telly this time! The atmosphere is great with loads of banter and chanting flying about, and to be fair the Sky staff and presenters were really receptive to the fans and joined in. It's great for a good laugh, and we got to see loads of the drivers being interviewed and then taking penalty kicks as part of a feature relating to the World Cup. It was noticeable that during the BBC's post race show in the pit lane that they were far less receptive to the fans than Sky were. There were some acknowledgement but I felt it was far more uptight and serious than Sky's effort which was a bit of a shame. Again, we got to the Sky filming over an hour before it properly started at 6pm, and even at that point most of the seats were filling up.
Lewis Hamilton, 2014 British GP Sky Sports F1 Show by
Crackers250, on Flickr
Martin Brundle, 2014 British GP Sky Sports F1 Show by
Crackers250, on Flickr
Friday saw the start of on-track action, and we made the most of our General Admission tickets which allowed us into most of the grandstands on the Friday only. The only two that I knew of that we weren't allowed in were the main covered curved Club grandstand and the covered Abbey stand at the end of the pit straight. We sat in the pit straight covered stand for FP1 which was pretty full by the time the session got going, and got a great view of the cars squirming on the exit of club, putting the power down for the straight. You can also see plenty of pit lane action from there as well, and I snapped both Massa and Wolff's cars being returned on the back of trucks during the red flag period after Felipe's crash.
Susie Wolff, Williams-Mercedes FW36 by
Crackers250, on Flickr
The Result of the Williams Team's FP1 Session by
Crackers250, on Flickr
Giedo van der Garde, Sauber-Ferrari C33 by
Crackers250, on Flickr
Over the rest of the day we moved around to different places and sat in the Village B grandstand for the GP2 practice session. The wind was particularly strong there, although it was a fairly windy day in general, and at Silverstone, with it largely as flat as a pancake, those conditions can be quite exacerbated!
Jolyon Palmer, DAMS by
Crackers250, on Flickr
And for the F1 FP2 session we parked in the covered Luffield stand where I was able to get some more good photos, including when Grosjean took a trip through the gravel. Again, by the time the session was underway, the grandstand was pretty much completely full. Try getting attendances like that Abu Dhabi! Or China! Or Bahrain! etc etc...
Nico Hulkenberg, Force India-Mercedes VJM07 by
Crackers250, on Flickr
Romain Grosjean, Lotus-Renault E22 by
Crackers250, on Flickr
Max Chilton, Marussia-Ferrari MR03 and Valtteri Bottas, Williams-Mercedes FW36 by
Crackers250, on Flickr
For the remaining sessions we worked our way down to Copse and up towards Maggots and Becketts. At Copse I bought my Williams top, as I said above, for £65. This turned out to be £10 less than my mate paid for an identical top at a stall by the gate where we entered the circuit between Stowe and Club (Gate 15 for those that know). We had a think about this and came to the conclusion that whilst all of the official merchandise stands are all made to look the same, they must in fact be run by different operators who each request a set number of stalls and then select the merchandise they want to sell in those stalls, at which point they set the prices for it all - hence why there were discrepancies between different stands. This theory also might explain why there was a dearth of Marussia, Sauber and Williams gear, and why there was hardly any Caterham, Force India or Lotus stuff as well. Even the F1 Fan Village didn't have the full range which is very poor in my eyes. 95% of the stuff on sale was either McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull or Ferrari. In 2010 and 2011 I remember the Fan Village having every team's merchandise on sale, with the exception of HRT who clearly didn't have any! It is a big shame that the smaller teams have been virtually excluded from what is a lucrative market, despite the often astronomical costs - a Caterham cap was £30 for example and their jacket was well over £100.
Saturday was, as we all know, a bit mixed in terms of the weather - it had rained heavily from Friday evening all the way into Saturday morning, but from there it was just patchy showers across the day, and by Saturday evening, it had brightened up and wouldn't rain again until Sunday night! Unable to access the grandstands anymore, we tried out a few different vantage points - standing in front of the Abbey grandstand on the pit straight for FP3, and choosing to go between Copse and Maggots by the old pit exit for qualifying, where we were stood right next to a big screen so we could make out what was happening during the session. I've had quite a bit of success with this area when it comes to getting close to the action over the years - there was plenty of room for us to spread out and get an uninterrupted view of the track, and likewise at the MotoGP last year, there was barely anyone at all even watching from there! For the F1 race I'd imagine it was quite a bit different but it has to be one of the closest points to the actual track anywhere around the circuit which is nice. Suffice to say, those that were around us watching the action, including the marshals, were well aware of my delight that both Marussias made it into Q2! I didn't really take many pictures during Saturday or Sunday, a different tactic to last year, and I found it meant I could keep track of the action far more easily and increased my enjoyment of it all too. So I'd recommend getting the snaps in on Friday, leaving you to enjoy the rest of the weekend!
For Sunday, we replicated our successful formula from the previous year, only we changed the location that we chose to watch from. Last year we sat at the Vale chicane before Club, but this year chose to go on the pit straight itself. That meant queuing at Gate 16 rather than Gate 15, and we got there a little before midnight and with plenty of layers and a bit of alcohol inside of us, tried to sleep through the cold. The gates open at 6am and by that point the queue was ridiculously long. If you'd been towards the back you wouldn't have had a hope of getting a seat at the front of the fences. Fortunately, being one of the first through my specific gate, I pegged it across the short stretch to the track and bagged us a front row spot from which we stayed for the whole day. When you're on General Admission, on the Sunday you pick a spot and you stay there, otherwise you might as well just turn up at 10am and spend the whole day looking at the backs of other peoples' heads! We got to spread my flags out in front of us on the grass bank that ran down to the catch fencing, and were able to see both the grid and the entrance to Abbey, as well as lots of pit lane action. We also had a big TV right in front of us to keep tabs on the action as well which was handy. As you can probably imagine, the best I managed was about an hour or two of sleep whilst we queued through the night, so once we were in and settled, and the temperature started to come up, we were snoozing quite regularly when there wasn't any action. I even caught about half an hour's sleep in the red flag period after Kimi's crash, so thank you stewards for delaying the restart for an hour!
At the start of the F1 race, the sound, despite what Bernie and the journalists might have you think, was bloody impressive. Totally different to the V8s obviously, but I much prefer the new sound. Coulthard and Prost drove an RB8 round during the 50th GP parade and the screaming that made reminded me of the old sound. At a live event it starts to give you a headache after a while and Christ knows what the start would have been like with all of those kicking off. Over a two hour race it can become quite unpleasant and you end up hoping the race will end soon! So to have the deeper engine note and new sounds was a welcome reprieve as far as I was concerned, and they're no less impressive, they just have a different sound, and they're still bloody loud too! I don't know what all the fuss was about! The race itself was really great, and I'm sure the self-declared purists here will scoff at the fact that the entire pit straight erupted in a cacophony of delight when Rosberg retired and Hamilton took the lead, in the same manner as when Vettel packed in last year. The fact is though, that both Button and Chilton had just as much support as Hamilton, and when Max unlapped himself from the Caterhams we were all cheering. And what you need to remember is that it's the British GP, attended mostly by British fans, wanting a British winner. If you find that sort of patriotism offensive then I suggest any national sporting event probably isn't for you, because a reaction like the one when Rosberg retired is inevitable.
At the end of the race we grabbed our stuff and waited to be let onto the track - unfortunately the marshals were a bit dozy and didn't open the gate until the British anthem was playing so we had to leg it up half the length of the pit straight to get to the podium at the far end. No doubt you've seen the pictures so you'll have seen the track rammed with people - it was great to be within all of that. Once the podium ceremony is all over it's a great opportunity to get photos on the track - we parked our chairs down on P2 on the grid and got a group selfie in, at which point attention turned to the BBC post-race show that I mentioned earlier. And as the heat took its toll and tiredness properly kicked in we made our way back to the campsite and enjoyed our last night there. In the morning we packed up pretty sharpish and were away by about 9.30am - this has the added bonus of missing the vast majority of post-race traffic which leaves on Sunday night. Even excluding the fact you'll be knackered after the whole weekend, the last thing you want is to be snarled up trying to get away late into the night. Better to get a good sleep in and leave in the morning when the queues have gone and you're not as tired!
Anyway that's probably the longest post I've ever made on here - I hope some of you find it useful and it serves as a good advert for the race. I honestly highly recommend it to anyone thinking about doing it. Take four days off work and make it a race to remember! If you plan it and maximise your time, you won't regret it, I can promise you that!
For my full album of Flickr photos, visit this page:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/crackers250/sets/72157645173311738There's a few in this post that you won't find in there - I added them quickly to Photobucket as I felt they weren't good enough for Flickr but were worth including here!
