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Motor Racing Nirvana


BigJag

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Monkee is the only poster who's posts make me ragingly jealous due to all your motor racing escapades. Damn you!

 

She's obviously worked very hard to get to the places she has been to. Good luck to her. Very envious.

I went to the British GP I think ten years ago. It was when Arnie was doing the grid walk, I believe he was promoting Terminator 3. Barichello won, plus that idiot invaded the track. We were sat in the grandstand on the start finish straight. Fantastic seeing the start and the pit action. Haven't been to a GP since. My sister has become a big fan over the last few years. Getting her organised though is nigh on impossible. It's also become very expensive. I'm sure the tickets are atleast a hundred pounds more than when I went with my dad and my cousin.

I have been back to Silverstone since. This was for the D1 event about four years ago. There were all sorts of Japanese competitors there, and we were allowed into the pit area and met various drivers. Also got to take a picture on the start finish line. Very cool experience. The track surface seemed quite rough from what I remember.

 

Whose going this weekend?

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It is indeed. It has been a fairly interesting season so far. Only Alonso has won more than one race. Looks like it will be monsoon conditions on Sunday. So it will be eventful. Live on the BBC too.

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Yeah, it's terrible news, and to receive an injury which automatically destroys your chosen career is unbelievably harsh.

 

It does serve to remind us that F1 remains an exceptionally dangerous sport, but then that's where the thrill comes from!

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Mayhem at Silverstone yesterday, it's completely ridiculous. The BRDC have spent so much on improving the track in recent years with the track expansion to include the new arena section and the new Silverstone Wing (both of which are admittedly brilliant), and they've installed two or three new grandstands to cope with demand for tickets in the last few years, but they've done fuck all to improve the parking. It seems they thought that continuing to use grassy fields would be a suitable way of trying to fit thousands of cars in the nearby area. Surprise surprise, when we get a decent amount of rain, then it all falls to shit as cars are unable to park and people spent hours queuing trying to get anywhere near the circuit. Not helped by a car breaking down and a lot of people attempting to get into campsites without pre-booking, something that fails to make sense to me, but it's still carnage. Surely if you are expecting record crowds and rain to be a part of the weekend, spend some money on improving the parking situation on the land that you own, even if that's just putting chipping down or those mass foam jigsaw style pieces which I've seen elsewhere to help save the grass and prevent muddy carnage.

 

People have been told to stay away today in the hope of saving what's left of the car parks for tomorrow's race. We'll see how successful that is. Silverstone need to have a major look at their system after this race and find ways to try and prevent this happening again. They may have a long-term contract for another 15 years, but if the fans can't get into the track then it means nothing.

 

Rant aside, the weather still looks like it'll play a role in this weekend. I think the forecast is still for a wet race tomorrow and there's a good chance we'll get rain just in time for qualifying. The GP2 guys were showing just how little grip there was out there in the heavy rain during their practice and qualifying session yesterday but to their credit, there were very few incidents with only one or two major incidents that I can recall.

 

If we get a wet race, I think it's Hamilton's to lose. He's been committed from the first lap in the rain yesterday and although Friday means very little, he seems to be more willing to push the car in heavy rain and go towards the limit of the car. Not that it'll make much difference. If we see rain like yesterday, the race will spend a long time under the safety car.

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Helicopter seems the best way to get into Silverstone. I remember when I went the sky was full of choppers. Amazing to see. If your going tomorrow look out for that.

 

Regarding the fields. I don't think they actually own them. They have to remain as green field sites. Chucking a load of tarmac on them is not allowed. When I worked on the railway. We had a site that we used for storage. Once the contract was finished it had to be returned to green field land. I think LariatTom suggested this with his chipping idea. Whether thats possible at Silverstone. I don't know.

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You're right that the BRDC don't own most of the fields around the circuit that are used as parking, it's all privately owned by farmers and the like which is why I wouldn't have suggested tarmac. Then again, chipping might not work either. A lot of it isn't feasible since you can't predict weather like we've been having over the last few weeks.

 

Bit of a delay for Qualifying since the rain returning in epic fashion. As things stand, the crowd are going crazy for Bernd Maylander doing few laps in the Safety Car to judge track conditions. By the sounds of it, we've got another 40 minutes or so until the FIA reckon we can get Qualifying underway. Amazingly, there's nothing in the Sporting Regulations for a solution to this if they're not able to restart the session. If the session hadn't started at all, I think it would have been based on Championship standings but since the session officially started, it's a tricky scenario whereby I think they need to complete the session, run it tomorrow morning or find a solution that the teams can agree on. Whether that means that the remaining 17 cars start based on their current positions or in championship order is up to the teams. Hopefully we get the session completed...

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Monkee is the only poster who's posts make me ragingly jealous due to all your motor racing escapades. Damn you!

 

 

It's really not that expensive depending on the track you go to and where you stay. Turkey used to be so cheap (about

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General motorsports thread I believe. No one seems to use the F1 thread.

Just finshed watching DTM from the Norisring. It seems BMW forgot to fit any rear view mirrors. They left massive gaps at the same corner. Allowing the Mercedes to barge through. Good fun!

 

Sexy top on the presenter too. Something about women who wear their ponytail through a baseball cap. Wow!

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I know ESPN show the full DTM races live (most of the time), so do Sky have some sort of highlights package or do they show the races in full but delayed by a few days? Never knew they showed it, so I'm genuinely interested to know. To be honest, I watch the races through German TV on ARD since I've got a satellite that picks up most German channels and I find it useful for my degree in a mildly geeky kind of way. DTM's been cracking so far this year. The new cars and the return of BMW to the series has added some excitement to a championship that had become...well, a bit dull in recent years. Norisring always throws up a great race because of the 'point-and-squirt' nature of the layout (and it's just a really cool setting for a race), so that's always one to catch.

 

ELMS at Donington Park this weekend for the 6 hour race if anyone's interested, and Formula Student is on at Silverstone for anyone in the area. Only 18 entries with12 LMP2 entries and just two entries apiece for Prototype Challenge, GT Pro and GT Am classes which is a bit of a shame. Not sure if there's TV coverage of it, possibly on Motors TV, but Radio Le Mans will be doing full coverage of the weekend on their website.

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