Twas a cold and drizzly morning when we left Boston at 08:30 and set off towards Silverstone. It rained pretty much all the way there but the journey was pretty uneventful, the most exciting bit was pulling in to a petrol station to get a bottle of water and finding that they actually did 2 sizes, each one being a different price. I think that tells you just how uneventful it was.
Malcolm had sent tickets to our phones so getting through security was nice and easy, there was plenty of room to park right outside the garage.
We had taken Fiona Leggate's - Malcolm's daughter - car down, it was a Vauxhall Astra coupe that was campaigned in the early 2000's and the sister car to the one that Jason Hughes was set to be racing later in the morning. Unfortunately events conspired to mess things up somewhat and the race he was set to star in got cancelled.
He had competed in two events on the Saturday, the first one started great, he was well ahead of the two Nissans, which were the only two other cars in the super tourers group. Shortly in to the race both had failures. This left his car the only one in the group so he had nobody to race. The track was very wet and it was deemed unsafe to be racing on slicks, especially as he had no chance to get any heat and therefore, grip, in to the tyres. Given the value of these cars and the pointless nature of racing by yourself it seemed sensible to not risk it, there were quite a few weather related offs going on about the place. You can't nip in to Halfords to get bits for these cars, and anyway they can't help if you don't have a registration number.
So we decided to load Fiona's car back on to the trailer and leave it outside so anybody that wanted to see / photograph it could do so and we could go for a wander. We had to fire it up so Malcolm could steer it, that drew quite a crowd - it's loud at the best of times but in the confines of the garage it's ridiculous.
While were were at it one Colin Turkington had popped in for a chat with Malcolm and Jason, the 3 of them are old buddies. It seemed like a great opportunity for Russell - who has more neck than ET but is a really smashing bloke with it - to ask him if he wouldn't mind having a photo while holding one of the fliers for the grand automobilia day we are organising for the 16th July. Because the guy is an absolute diamond and a legend, he agreed without any hesitation. Rather splendidly Jason photo bombed the shot so we got a kind of two for one sort of deal, or maybe even 3 for 1 if you count Malc, who raced BTCC back in the 1960's.
We went for a good wander round the other garages, got some footage from the pit wall, had a coffee then wandered through the tunnel to the stands. We watched for a good while, it was cold and wet but the stands are pretty well covered so it was ok.
it was a fantastic day out, I feel rather privileged to have been there, I will definitely help out again if asked to do so. I still have to work out how to glue together the dozens of video clips that I have, as soon as that is done I will put the vid on youtube.
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