Caragh B from King Alfred’s Academy in Wantage spent a week in the Sporting Agenda office.
We asked her to write about her day at Silverstone…..
Firstly I understand everyone’s experience is different but this is mine. I really enjoyed my day but there were things that the organisers could’ve done better to help me and my dad feel more comfortable and safe. I love all kinds of racing, put two things in front of me and tell me it is a race and I will love it. My dad, maybe not so much. You will start to understand very quickly that there are many things I put my poor dad through on Sunday that I feel bad for.
To start my dad’s day of horror, I woke him up at 4am. We talked extensively about it and decided that we would get a park and ride from Hinton Airfield into Silverstone to try at avoid the traffic. We arrived at the airfield with plenty of buses lined up to take us to the track. We got on the bus and we started to think “ We are geniuses, look at all the people stuck in traffic, they clearly aren’t as smart as us”- more on this later (turns out they were the smart ones).
We arrived at the track at 8am and decided to get some breakfast. We walked through all the food stalls outside our grandstand - I got a lovely sausage butty but my dad had nothing at all because none of the stands we could see offered vegetarian options. Luckily my dad had packed a lunchbox so he had that for breakfast. I would recommend to everyone to bring snacks especially if you have dietary needs or, like me, get hungry during the races. We found our seats very easily and waited for the F3 race to begin. We were in the Vale Grandstand, from our seats we could see all the way down to Stowe Corner and up to Club Corner and the start of the pit straight. In my opinion these seats are the best on the track because Stowe Corner is at the end of the Hangar Straight, which is a DRS zone, meaning lots of fights and overtakes happened in front of us (we often saw cars race past us side by side). We could also see the cars go down the pitlane and at the end of the races we saw the winning drivers climb on top of their car in Parc Fermé to celebrate and of course everyone at Vale can run onto the track and stand underneath the podium at the end of the race. Throughout the morning all the grandstands were pretty much empty. There were only a handful of people during the F3 and F2 races. So, if you do not have a teenage daughter to wake you up at 4am you can always arrive at lunchtime.
THE HEAVENS OPENED ( AND NOT IN A GOOD WAY )
We were told before we got there that our grandstand would have a cover over our heads. So imagine our shock to see 90 % chance of rain the whole day and no cover. When the rain did come at about 11, I discovered my coat was not waterproof.
Despite the weather being miserable and my toes turning to ice, I was still excited to see the historic Formula 1 cars. I love history and I love Formula 1, so this was perfect for me. I had annoyed my dad all day about this, telling him all about James Hunt’s 1975 Hesketh or Mika Hakkinen’s 1998 Mclaren. They did two laps. Two laps. They decided to stop after someone put Fittapaldi’s 1978 Ford into the wall. In hindsight probably not the smartest decision to drive ancient artifacts in the rain. But as someone who was really looking forward to it, I was very disappointed. It chucked it down with rain for about an hour before it finally stopped and that entire time there was nothing out on track. It is understandable they want to keep drivers safe but by this point my dad was starting to get restless. Everyone was cold and soaking wet and the nearest place to us with cover was the other side of the track. My coat had entirely soaked through, my jumper had turned into a sponge and was now three times heavier than it was before the rain, my toes were frozen and I could barely move them. It was at this point my dad threatened to take me home because my lips were turning blue. But I convinced him to let me get a poncho, but of course they had all sold out. So I went to the bathroom and took my jumper off and put two tshirts on underneath.
Now, I have never been to a festival before but I have seen some grimey toilets in my life. These were the worst toilets you will ever lay your eyes on. Surprisingly, queues are not that bad throughout the day, but if you want to go about an hour before the race, expect long queues. I walked in and a very kind lady told me every single toilet around the track had been blocked for hours. I thought, “ Oh that’s what that smell is!”. The floor of these toilets was indescribable. It was covered in a layer of a lumpy muddy puddle. Which of course I slipped in and fell on. My luck didn’t get much better, I dropped my phone and lip balm in the muddy puddle. We left the toilets as quick as possible and got back to our seats and a very lovely man offered me his spare poncho. The man, his son and the people sat behind me all helped me put it on.
This is something I really did want to mention - the sense of community. Even though it was raining, or we were all being crushed, or we were waiting in unending queues, people were always kind and optimistic, often making jokes and playing games to keep spirits high. Even though we were stuck in some pretty stressful situations, you felt you were all in it together.
THE F1 RACE
Before the F1 race, the Red Arrows performed. I never thought I would be interested in something like the Red Arrows but I was happily surprised. It was very entertaining and I would highly recommend you watch it.
When the race started, the entire grandstand clapped and cheered every single time a car went past. As a Verstappen fan, I was expecting some booing and I thought I would feel too uncomfortable to cheer him on out loud. But I loved to see everyone was supportive of all the drivers and I wasn’t afraid to cheer him on.
After the race, we returned the borrowed poncho and headed for the podium. Well no we didn’t - there was a lot of confusion about that. We had to walk down the stairs of the grandstand to get to the general admission area so we could get onto the track but even that was a struggle. People were pushing each other down the stairs, there was an elderly lady in front of me that I was being pushed into and again my poor dad was clinging on to my coat and trying to pull me back so he wouldn’t lose me. People were piling up to the gate and we were in a sort of crowd crush. They did briefly open the gate but then shut it again causing everyone to be even more crushed. People were still laughing and making jokes about it but nobody knew if we were going to be let out or what we were waiting for.
We were stood there for 5 or 10 minutes and we missed the drivers celebrating and the post race interviews. They only opened the gate after the winning driver, Lewis Hamilton had already lifted the trophy. Despite this I sprinted across the track, dragged my dad along and made it to the podium in time to see the third place driver, Lando Norris lift the trophy and we saw the Champagne being sprayed. We saw the drivers wave to the fans and walk inside.
Afterwards, people were stood in front of the podium and the garages not doing anything and refusing to move. My dad had to lift me up over people’s heads so I could see the cars.
We walked down the pit straight, which was incredible - to actually be on the track, to see the lights, the grandstands and the garages. I think the only bad moment of the day was when I tried to take a picture of Max Verstappen’s garage and a woman stood up against the fence doing nothing, headbutted my phone and then told me to stop touching her. We decided to stay away from the crowds gathering outside the garages after that.
We were told that, after the race, we would be allowed to walk the whole way round the track. But after we walked down to turn 1, the police said no one would be allowed to walk along the track. So we sat down at turn 1 and had a lovely picnic. It was that time of the day where the sun is giving everything a nice golden glow, the weather had finally warmed up and we could hear the music being played from the paddock club. I tried to get my dad to dance to some Whitney Houston but he’s not really a dancing kind of person. This was one of the best parts of the day and if you are able to, I would strongly advise you go down to that area. Sadly this only lasted for 20 minutes or so, before the police said we needed to clear the track.
BUSES
I never want to see another bus in my life. Because the park and ride was so great in the morning we assumed it would be the same for the evening. We had no idea how wrong we were.
On our way out we queued for 1 hour and 45 minutes and when we got to the front of the queue there were no buses left. We had to wait another 45 minutes just for a bus to arrive. There was another park and ride there called Sixfields and that place had at least 15 buses turn up. They had so many buses they didn’t have anywhere to put them, so they parked these 15 buses up while other park and rides like ours, had been waiting so long for one. We waited 2 hours and 30 minutes in total for a bus and then the bus was packed full of as many people as possible so we were forced to stand for another 30 minutes. Even though the queue was very long, the atmosphere was great. There was a big game of football going on in the middle of the queue, with a coke can and people were jokingly booing every time we saw yet another Sixfields bus.
Throughout the day, we were soaked and crushed but there is nothing in the world that would have made that a bad experience. If you love racing like I do, I would urge you to go to the British Grand Prix because that feeling when the cars go past you, when you see a big crash or that feeling of cheering on your favourite driver right in front of you, is not one that leaves quickly.
The memories from Sunday will stay will me for a long long time. If I had the chance to go again, I would in a heartbeat but like I said, I will never take a bus again.
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