Yesterday, I went to Silverstone race track to watch the Forumla 1 practice sessions. I had free tickets for the Friday practice sessions. I watched the practice races for the Formula 1, GP2, and Porsche cars. I had a wander around the track and village area at Silverstone and saw the classic Formula 1 race cars up close; they had a parade lap around Silverstone later in the day. A Hurricane and Spitfire (World War II planes) also made a fly-by during the day. This year is a special one for Silverstone as it marks the 50th anniversary of Formula 1 at the Silverstone race track.
I've been to Silverstone a couple of times before for events, and the last time I spent the full day there was for MINI United, the largest MINI event worldwide. I covered that here: MINI United! Car Design and Individuality - Jenikya's Blog.
The first stop of the day was to walk inside the track to see the classic Formula 1 cars that were driven by famous drivers that won the British Grand Prix. These were later driven around the circuit (three laps) by famous drivers. I paid extra to see the historic cars up close. Photographs of them are below. Some of the cars displayed were driven by Prost, Senna, Hunt, Mansel. The older cars were my favourites.
Classic Formula 1 cars
I went to watch the first practice session at the grandstand in front of the pits. I was sat in front of Massa's pit stop, and this was also close to Lewis Hamilton's and Vettel's. People were cheering for Lewis Hamilton whenever he came around the track and for Susie Wollf, a female test racing driving for Williams-Martini. Unfortunately, her car had some technical issues and did not last long during the first sessions of the day and it was stalled outside the pit lanes. Also, Massa crashed his car on entry to the pit lane, but I was sat too far around the corner (in front of the pits) to see this.
Silverstone
The camera crew rushed to Williams-Martini pits when both of their cars were taken out of action. I also got a couple of photographs inside the garage area, but I was not sitting up quite high enough.
Williams-Martini
I got some decent photographs of the Formula 1 cars in the practice race during the first and second sessions of the day. I walked to Luffield grandstand for the second session. The photographs below are taken in front of the pits and from Luffield grandstand.
Formula 1 cars
Red Bull
After the practice sessions for the Foruma 1 cars, it was time to get some lunch. I opted for a pizza, but they had every type of food available. The pizza was actually quite good; I've never been impressed with food at mass events, so I was impressed. The pizza kiosk had stone-baked ovens behind it, so it was fresh with good ingredients.
Silverstone - various photos
After lunch, we watched the parade lap of the classic Formula 1 winning cars that we saw earlier in the day. They drove around the Silverstone race track three times.
Formula 1 clasic race cars
After the parade lap, the Hurricane and Spitfire came out to fly. As Luffield grandstand is covered, we had to leave the grandstand to see this. (After watching the planes, we went to Silverstone village inside the middle of the track, and they had some games and rides there with more areas to get food and snacks and souvenirs.)
Silverstone planes
I watched the third practice session of Formula 1 cars at the Village grandstand. This was a good place to be because a couple of incidents happened here.
Silverstone from Village grandstand
The first incident that happened was that Lewis Hamilton stopped his car on the side of the track in front of Village grandstand. Apparently a warning light had come on, so he stopped the car to prevent it getting damaged for driving it if something was really wrong with it. He got out of his car, but he did not take his helmet off. A lot of people from the grandstand decided to leave to go and see if they could get closer to him. We were on the top row, so we managed to look over and see him get into a minibus and leave.
Lewis Hamilton - practice session Silverstone
Another incident shortly followed with Jean-Eric Vergne's Red Bull car. As he approached the straight area in front of the grandstand, something happened to his front tyre and he got off the track to the side directly in front of us in the grandstand. He got out of the car and he did take his helmet off and waved to everyone. We watched them recover the car.
Redbull - Jean-Eric Vergne practice session Silverstone 2014
In between the Formula 1 practice sessions were the practice sessions for GP2. The race cars were louder, and we stayed to watch them at Ludfield grandstands where we had a good view of the track. We watched them later on and also caught a little bit of the Porsche Supercar races.
GP2 practice race
GP2 practice race
Porsche race
Unfortunately, we did not stay for the Beatles tribute band (Cheatles). I would have liked to have stayed, but we did have an early start the past two mornings.
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