I'm back in Leicester again. And I'm kind of sunburnt. Ah well, this is the price you pay for a weekend of fun and... stuff.

You want to know what fun and stuff I had/did? Well, let's see.

Saturday:

Mark picked me up at about 10am and we went to Collectormania. You may recall that we went there before. That was *searches blogger entries* the 21st September 2002. We looked round all the stalls, and stared at Corin Nemec from afar. Yes, Corin Nemec who plays Jonas on Stargate. Bless 'im.

If you want to read a ramble about this, I wrote a thing for Stargate United, which I can't be bothered to repeat here. You can go and read it in the archives, if you want.

After that, Mark was kind enough to drive me all the way back to Southend! We did a few touristy things, while he was in town, such as walk down Southend Pier. We visited the new lifeboat station at the end, ate some sugary doughnuts, had a go at some of the things in the arcades, and caught the train back to dry land. It was fun, although a bit blustery. :)

Mark stayed for dinner, but then he went home. I spent the evening watching Die Another Day with John. The DVD came Saturday morning, you see. Perfect timing.

Sunday:

Went to the Elim church in the morning, Nanny's for dinner, watched the GP on the telly, went to Emmaus in the evening. That's pretty much it.

Monday:

This is the day that was so packed with stuff that... I dunno how to end that sentence. It does explain the sunburn, though. For Monday was the day that I went to the London Champ Car race at Brands Hatch.

It took us about 3 hours to get there (usually takes 45 minutes), due to enormously slow moving traffic on the M25. Well, it was the turn-off to exit the motorway, which was only slow because people kept zooming past and then trying to squeeze into the queue later on. I'm sure if they just joined the back of the queue it'd keep moving. Some people were even zooming along the hard shoulder. Very naughty... Thankfully, as soon as we left the M25 the police were directing the traffic, so it kept moving.

We found our grandstand seats (Stand D, row U 63-5) and were all comfy by the time of the first British Touring Car Championship race at 11.45. It was a very entertaining 35 laps, with lots of craziness (especially towards the end!). Matt Neal nudged his opponents out of the way in order to win the race. Matt Neal's a complete madman, and such antics probably shouldn't be allowed, but it was certainly entertaining!

There was a bit of a gap after that, so we ate some lunch. Dad had brought a huge rucksack full of food. It was very impressive!

The Champ Cars started appearing on the grid at 13.15. They lined up in a sort of Le Mans start way, not in a "grid" sort of way. I don't know if you know what I mean, but... they were kind of parked diagonally along the track. They don't need to start in a traditional grid, because they don't start from a standstill. They have a rolling start.

So... at 14.00 the race began! What followed wasn't nearly as exciting as I thought it would be. I thought Champ Cars were supposed to be tons more exciting than F1, with lots of incidents and overtaking... but no. There were only three retirements, and there was a disappointing lack of overtaking. Paul Tracy looked good for a while, but his engine started smoking and a little while later flames came out of the back. End of race for him. After that the Newman/Haas team dominated, with Bruno Junqueira and Sebastien Bourdais battling for the top spot. In the end, Sebastien won, Bruno was second, and Adrian Fernandez finished third.

The best thing about the race was that we were opposite the pits. Champ Car pit stops are extremely chaotic when you compare them to the balletic F1 stops. It was interesting seeing how it all worked. And even before the race, it was cool being able to watch them setting up on the grid. Actually, the best thing about the race was Damon Hill. Yes, the 1996 F1 World Champion presented the winner's trophy. Coool. He was wearing a denim shirt and baseball cap, and his hair is shoulder length. He obviously didn't think the occasion merited dressing up. ;)

I cheered Darren Manning throughout, because he's the only Brit in the series. Despite starting pretty high up the grid, he ended up 10th. Not bad, but not great. There aren't that many cars in the series - only 19 - so... all in all it wasn't as good as I thought it'd be. Maybe it's just that Brands isn't a good track for Champ Cars, I don't know...

I still love F1 the most. By far. It's a sport completely on the edge, from a technological point of view as well as a driving one. They don't buy their chassis from Reynard and Lola, they design them. You're seeing different solutions to the ultimate driving machine. Beautiful creations capable of terrifying speeds. And they're louder than Champ Cars, too. :p

There was another BTCC race at 17.00, so we watched that. Matt Neal had a lot of ballast on his car, because he won the first race, so he wasn't all that quick. The major excitement came in the form of the Vauxhall Astra / MG battle. In the end the two Vauxhalls involved ganged up on the MG and pushed him out of the race. Very mean.

The last race was the UK Formula Renault Championship, so John and I took the opportunity to go and look round the many vendors. I bought a couple of cheap (old but new) F1 T-shirts (a Prost one and a 2001 Australian GP one, cheating I know because I wasn't there, but what'ya gonna do about it?). The Brands Hatch merchandise was cool, but a little over my price limit. Ah well.

When the last race finished, Dad joined us, and we tried to get out of the circuit. It didn't take us as long to get home as it had taken to get to Brands, but it was busy. Thankfully the police were around again, although they did keep sending us in the wrong direction - away from where we wanted to go. Perhaps making sure everyone's lost in the Kent countryside is the best way of easing congestion. It did seem to be working..!

Anyway, that's about it. I've rambled on enough.

And now I'm in Leicester again, back to coursework... aargh!

posted by Fiery Fred @ 10:46 PM