Fosters British Grand Prix
Silverstone 9th & 10th July 2005
All 26 of us arrived at 7am outside school on Saturday
morning, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Eventually Miss Guerrini
and Mr. Evans showed up, bleary eyed, at 7.15. (It’s all lies we
were on time!)
We waited eagerly for our coach to take us to Silverstone,
which arrived just 5 minutes later than expected. During the
course of the journey our driver decided she would rearrange
some traffic cones that were preventing us from getting into
the slip road easily. This created much amusement and mess!
We arrived at Silverstone for the day’s qualifying at around
11:00am just in time to watch the Formula 1. We were given
our tickets and “let loose” to find a place to view the spectacle.
We settled down to watch qualifying. It was painfully loud, so
we were all grateful for our
earplugs, supplied free, with many
thanks, by Bournemouth Kawasaki.
Despite all the noise Mr. Evans managed to fall soundly asleep
next to the racetrack watching the Formula 2 race!
The excitement rose when Jenson Button recorded the second
fastest time in qualifying, giving him a great position for
tomorrow’s race! The cheers ran around the stands as he
coasted back in to the pit lane closely followed by “Schumi”.
Amusingly for most he only qualified 8th and was cheered and
jeered around the circuit as he made his way back into the
pits. Job done!
Raikkonen would have
been in second had
he not blown an
engine on Friday! So
Montoya on pole,
Button second,
Shcumacher 8th and
Kimi 11th. Fantastic!
During the rest of the weekend we got to see two races with
the Formula 2 cars, the Porsche 911GT3 Michelin Supercup,
Maserati challenge race and classic car racing, which included
cars dating back to the 1950’s that slipped and slid their way
around the track with their front wheels pointing in a totally
different direction to the rest of the car. One of the
highlights was a 1950’s Cobra having a huge rear wheel blow out
right in front of us, not to mention the Maserati driver who
Tom reckoned he would have beaten in his 1.2 Clio with phat
alloys!
We left the track at 6.30pm to travel to the hotel where we
showered and fed, played some pool and then found our beds!
One Year 12 decided to try and beat Mr. Evans’ record for
eating 12 Cream eggs – he did, and only took 16 minutes to eat
them all without a drink! Looked a bit sick afterwards though!
After only a few hours sleep we crawled out at 4.30am! Mr.
Evans assured us an early start was a necessity! We had a
great dawn breakfast, then back on the coach to return to
Silverstone. We arrived at the track at 7.15am, only to find
one of the students had lost his ticket. Miss Guerrini and Mr.
Evans spent an hour with Police and circuit officials sorting the
problem out for him! Although he was first led to believe he
would have to buy a new ticket at £130!
We had thought the place was packed on Saturday when we
couldn’t find a meagre piece of grass to watch from, so it was a
bit of a shock when the Sunday was even worse! Despite this
we battled our way around to find places to watch from. As the
temperature rose to 30oC ice creams and sun cream were
needed!
We were provided with a spectacular performance from the
Royal Air Force’s Red Arrows just before the main race. They
wowed the crowd with twists, turns, dives and breath taking
stunts. Some of which involved 400mph fly by’s, 800mph dives
into turns that required the pilots to cope with 7 times the
force of gravity.
When the time came for the main event, the cars out-did their
previous records of noise and yet two Year 12’s still slept
through most of the race!
Finally Juan Pablo Montoya became the 2005 winner of the
British Grand Prix! Jenson Button, Miss Guerrini’s favourite,
disappointingly only managed 5th after such a promising start.
After this the vintage racing continued, cars that were so
prehistoric in comparison and yet brilliant to watch!
We left Silverstone, exhausted, dishevelled and dusty at
4.15pm. The journey home was long and hot, although Mr. Evans
and Miss. Guerrini kept us entertained with a little karaoke
(the less said the better!) but we were still left feeling the
effects of a fantastic weekend at Silverstone. Thanks Mr. E!!!!
Student comments:“The Red Arrows display was amazing! We have decided it
is the perfect way to be proposed to. Write it in the sky
guys!”
“..and then we saw this drunk guy walk into the side of an
ice cream van!”
“Sir I’ve lost my ticket!”
“£130 for another, really!?”
Written by Katherine Kenyon and Laura Hiscock, Year 11.