Silverstone Day 2 - F1 Qualifying

Again I was up at 4:30. This time we used the Park and Ride from Northampton.
The buses get priority in and out of the circuit, and the trip in took just 20 minutes. Into the circuit at 6:30 and not many people around - time to browse the stalls and displays and generally lounge about and relax. We took our place in the Club stand at 7:30 and stayed there all day. The weather was wet and cold - it had rained overnight, and this picture is of part of the view from the stand onto a wet, but drying track. The F1 cars came on for the 1 hour practise session at 10:00 with the track still wet. Such fun to see the cars feeling their way around the corner and twitching under acceleration. As the track dried, the drivers were able to go hell for leather rehearsing their flying laps for the afternoon. The start of the corner is the second-slowest on the course, no angles from the TV cameras can convey the exhilaration of seeing the cars run flat-out from Stowe and slam on the anchors at this corner, going from 180mph down to 50mph in the blink of an eye and then accelerating around the right-hander up to Abbey curve.
Qualifying was brilliant. By this time we could tell the difference between the Red Bulls and the Torro Rossos just by the sound of the engine, and could guess by the way the drivers negotiated the corner whether they were on the pace or not. It was very difficult to tell Vettel and Webber apart, though The Red Bulls and the Williams wrere awesome and the Brawns were average. Not a good omen for Button. Trulli in the Toyota was probably the most exciting driver to watch.

There were just over 105,000 people there today, but our park and ride bus got us from the circuit to our front door in under 40 minutes. Last time I went to qualifying day in the car, it took 3 hours to get out of the bloody car park.