Silverstone Sunday 3rd June 2012

No mistaking where I was on Sunday with a trip to Silverstone for Round 2 of the Blancpain Endurance Series which is a European based championship for GT3 cars with each race being 3 hours in length. This was a strange day with one of the worst timetables I've ever experienced along with some of the worst June weather I've ever experienced! First of all the timetable, with the meeting consisting of a 50 minute Lamborghini Super Trofeo race at 9.00am then a near 3 hour gap to the Blancpain race getting underway at 12.45 then the 2nd Lambo race starting at 4.10pm and that was that. Thankfully the main race of the day lived up to it's billing with a fantastic grid of 50 cars lining up, which made for a very entertaining race won by the 1st round winner, the Marc VDS BMW Z4 of Markus Palttala/Bas Leinders/Maxime Martin, pictured below taken in the Pit Lane walkabout on Sunday morning....

The weather was appalling for most of the day with the glorious sunny skies of the weekend before a very distant memory. The rain did stop for the last hour of the race but the track was never dry just greasy.No safety cars were needed which indicates a very well driven race by all drivers and as a spectacle it will last long in the memory. However 1 good race doesn't make up for the fact that this was not a proper meeting. SRO organise this series and surely their other series they promote such as British Formula 3 & British GT should be on the support bill as they were in 2011. The other downside of the day was the fact that Silverstone didn't open many Grandstands around the circuit. I did a lap of the track during the race and 90% of the stands were closed. The new "Arena" GP circuit is nearer to 4 miles in length than 3 but large areas of the new circuit are in effect out of bounds if there are no stands open, as viewing at ground level is non existent in most cases. They must spend a fortune on padlocks in the local DIY stores.....
Admission was £19 (bought in advance which saved me a grand total of £1 on the day!!) and the programme was £3. And finally-not sure which car to buy in the future so I took a photo of my 2 choices.....

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