I was at Brands Hatch yesterday for the first ever A1 GP, it was superb, well worth the huge £29 entry fee pre booked ages ago. Luckily I had seen 5th gear earlier this year and they had a piece on it so I was emailing people that night seeing if we should be booking tickets. We upgraded to grandstand seats (an extra tenner) when booking and as we were super early with our bookings these turned out to be on Paddock Hill bend so we got to see half of the track from our seats.
I live in E11 but was picking people up from N16 (Stoke Newington) and N6 (Highgate), I left home at 8am and we hit the queue just after the Dartford crossing at 10 it was bumper to bumper joy but we got to Brands by about 11:30 which didn’t seem *too* bad.
Anyhoo, we got to our seats just as a GT3 race was finishing, I remember these as being the ’slow’ cars at Le Mans this year. Very soon after was the opening ceremony, this consisted of a black cab (no idea why) containing each driver and as ther team name was read out they got out of the cab and balloons were released. To be fair it was relatively impressive for us being off ot the side (about 300 yrds from the start finish straight) and the sky was filled with balloons.
Next came the sprint race which was a rolling start. It was the first time I’d ever heard [pseudo] F1 cars up close and I now agree that the noise is something else, the pitch is terrifying and as they were dumping all of their fuel coming up to our vantage piont, the bop bop bopping of their exhuasts was just fantastic to hear. That said I still think the Le Mans cars win the biscuit. Hearing the Corvette Cr-6 lap after lap for 24 hours and that HUGE lower frequency growl will never leave me. Ok the A1 cars are less powerful than the F1 cars but I still can’t believe that there is much in it.
So, after the sprint (Team GB came 5th) was a (psycho nutter, sponsored by Honda) stunt pilot doing some really stupid things in a plane generally involving him trying really really hard to stall it or spin the thing apart. It was superb entertainment though the weirdest bit was hearing him talk to us over the PA as he was doing his stuff.
Enter the main race, and this time we got to hear them rev off the line and again see them all pile into the first bend (where we were sitting) $deity only knows how they manged to not crash into each other.
After 15 or so laps there was a massive smash right on our bend with a car cartwheeling off into the gravel. Luckily they were OK but the surreal part was watching these [relatively] rookie drivers still hammering around the Paddock hill bend (under yellow flag) with the [bad boy Audi A6] medical car parked on the rumble strips just at the exit. To top that the ambulance then pottered around the track with cars bombing past it, you really had to see it to beleive it.
The gutting part of the day was when Team GB bumrushed Team Brasil in the pits and leapt form their entry place of 3rd to first upon exit. As the safety car was out (see above) everyone was bunched up but they were all waved though up to team GB so the re-start could be from team GB. Just as the race was about to restart, the bloody car broke! Imagaine how many more headlines there would have been had team GB won the first ever main race at Brand hatch.
So to finish off we waited until the end of the main race and then got off back to the car (missing a few more other races). This worked to our advantage as we only had half hour of snarl up on the way out to the M25, there were reports of huge delays later that evening
In summary: the A1 GP was fantastic value for money and superb entertainment. If you are even slightly a petrol head then I’d urge you to GO NEXT YEAR and not bother with F1.
Related links:
- Lazz tooks some pics and a movie with his camera
- A1 GP
- Brands Hatch
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