Silverstone Sat/Sun 13th/14th April 2013

The first "big" meeting of the year in the UK took place at Silverstone with the opening round of the World Endurance Championship headlining along with 3 races for the European Formula 3 championship and more sportscars in the form of the European Le Mans Series....
Since the revival of the 1000km/6 hour endurance format in 2004, the UK round has always taken place in either August or September but the calendar this year placed Silverstone in the middle of April. It would appear that in the corridors of power in Paris that they haven't visited the Northamptonshire/Buckinghamshire border at this time of year!With many international categories, sun chasing is part of the deal (Monaco in November would be interesting) so you could argue that by holding the race in April the WEC holds no fear of the cold....
The Spectator spectated on the Saturday & Sunday of the 3 day meeting and Saturday was a busy one with Free Practice and Qualifying for the WEC, 2 races for F3 and Qualifying and a 3 hour race for the ELMS. Highlight of the day was easily the second Euro F3 race with Swede, Felix Rosenqvist pulling off a couple of excellent overtaking moves at Brooklands/Luffield to win the race. The 28 car grid of young hotshoes in Euro F3 put on some good racing over the course of the weekend with 3 races being won by 3 different drivers. Italian Raffaele Marciello won the Sunday morning race and leads the series by quite a margin already. A Ferrari junior driver, he is one to watch for the future.
Qualifying for the WEC demonstrated one of the most confusing ways of forming a grid I've ever seen. In one 20 minute session each car had to be driven by 2 drivers whose 2 best times each were added together to create a 4 lap time which was then divided by 4 to get a final time.......Not surprisingly there was long delay before a grid was announced as Stephen Hawking was out of the country.The pole position Toyota's final time turned out to be \frac{1}{\pi} = \frac{2 \sqrt 2}{9801} \sum_{k=0}^\infty \frac{(4k)!(1103+26390k)}{(k!)^4 396^{4k}}
The weather forecast for Saturday said rain for 3.00pm and it sadly proved true as the 23 cars in the European Le Mans Series took the green light at 3.00pm to start their 3 hour race, the rain arrived on cue. The rain continued to fall steadily for the next 2 hours and it seemed as though all 23 cars fell off at some point. Grip seemed to be non-existent for several cars and a decision was made to halt the race early after 2 hours 15 minutes after 50 minutes behind the safety car. The final straw came when a GTC Audi R8 hit the wall at Chapel while under the safety car.
Thankfully it stayed dry on Sunday and by 12 noon it was fully dry for the start of the main event. This was billed as Audi v Toyota for the overall win and despite the 2 Toyota's occupying the front row it became apparent in the first hour that this was to be Audi's day. Which Audi was to win meant that the race held some interest thankfully and it wasn't until the final 5 minutes of the race when Allan McNish passed Benoit Treluyer for the lead on the Wellington Straight was the race settled. 31 cars took the start and I feel that that as a spectacle we could have done with 10/15 more cars. The saving grace with the WEC is that the sheer performance of the LMP1 cars is such that you can forgive a few less cars and marvel at the speed and cornering ability of these prototypes.
All in all an enjoyable meeting and good to see some fantastic sportscars and some very good racing from a healthy grid of Formula 3 cars. Weekend admission was £35 and a very colourful 96 page programme £5

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Donington Park Sunday 29th September 2013

Image
Another Sunday, another visit to Donington....This time for a Motor Sport Vision Racing organised meeting where the headline event was the finale of the BRDC Formula 4 championship. 12 races on the bill included 3 for the Mini Challenge, 2 each for Production BMW's, F3 Cup and Radical SR3 Challenge along with the aforementioned Formula 4 plus a 1 hour Lotus Cup UK race. The BRDC F4 championship has been one of the season's highlights. Pitched against the newly winged Formula Ford at the start of the year for drivers wanting to start their climb on the single-seater ladder, the series can quite easily claim to have "won" the battle with grids hovering around the 20 mark for most of the year. 18 cars entered Donington as those drivers who'd got no say in the title race left for pastures new or ran out of money. To have 6 drivers in with a mathematical shout at winning the championship going into the final 3 races says much for the competitiveness of the series...
Read more

Donington Park Sat/Sun May 19/20 2012

Image
Back to Donington this weekend for the visit of "Superstars". No, not the famous BBC show of the 70's and 80's where top sportsmen of the day competed against each other in squat thrusts and Kevin Keegan falling off his bicycle... These Superstars are an Italian based championship for mighty V8 powered saloons, 18 of which were present. They made an impressive spectacle on a dry track as their first session on a damp Saturday morning made the cars look the unwieldy beasts they are. A star studded entry list with former British Grand Prix driver Johnny Herbert driving a Maserati Quattroporte, plus former GP drivers Gianni Morbidelli (Audi) & Vitantonio Liuzzi (Mercedes). Indeed Morbidelli was the star of the weekend as he won both races very easily in an Audi RS5 that was the class of the field. Fellow Audi driver, Johan Kristoffersson, (who started from the back in the first race due to competing in the Scandinavian Touring Car Champinship on Saturday) finished 2n...
Read more

Silverstone Saturday 5th September 2015

Image
After a 3 week "Summer" break, or should that be a 3 week Autumn/Winter break given the less than Summery August weather, The Spectator ventured to Silverstone for the first day of the World Series by Renault meeting. Starting at Donington in the mid 00's and then moving to Silverstone in 2008 the "Renault Weekend" was always a highlight in the calendar. Free tickets were given away in their thousands and huge crowds turned up every year. Featuring the core Renault championships of Formula Renault 3.5, Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup and a Megane based saloon series the UK saw a round each year until 2011. After a 3 year hiatus the Renault weekend was back . No free tickets this time around though but a very reasonable £10 on the gate each day and a weekend ticket for £12 if bought in advance. The enormous crowds of yesteryear were not in evidence on Saturday and a crowd figure of 20,000 was quoted for the weekend which would appear to be that 19,500 turned up o...
Read more