LMS Rnd 5: Silverstone 1000km 14-16 Sep 2007

[jna]

Originally Posted by iucrmh

Thoroughly enjoyed this years 1000K.........I thought that the commentary was excellent, well informed and very up to date. Ian Titchmarsh was superb as usual. One of the crucial things about a multi-class race is to point out things such as, "look out for cars 56 and 67, they are racing for position and the gap is closing". Constant updates on overall positions and close on track battles really did mean I could follow what was going on...........I'm afraid that my only critisism of Radio Le Mans this year was that there seemed to be a lack of updates (other than the hourly rundowns) on some close on track battles and it wasn't always clear as to exactly what was going on in terms of position without looking at a timing screen. Note that is not to say that Radio Le Mans doesn't do a great job - it does - but I think it could be even better.

Entirely agree with the above mentioned sentiments. An enjoyable race overall with the battle for second place in the latter stages being the highlight for me.

The organisers did a poor job before the race though. A long queue formed for the pit walk only for the jobsworth guarding the gate telling 90% of those lined up that "the general public can't go around. The walk is for invited guests only". Well, the Silverstone web site referred to a pit walk at 11.00 and that's why many of the 'paying public' made themselves available. Too much elitism in motorsport these days, but I'm sure that those who didn't pay to get in and probably can't differentiate between a 905 and a 908 found it a worthwhile experiance whilst leaving fathers to explain to their young sons why they were prevented from having a close up view of the cars on their only appearance in the UK this year.

The commentary was also superb, and I so miss Ian Titchmarsh at Le Mans. Together with Paul Truswell they were by far the most knowledgeable and listenable commentators to grace that 'stage'.

I have to support the comments about Radio Le Mans these days. Yes, before anyone seeks to enquire in the nicest possible way, I couldn't do without it, but this year I regularly had to make a point of standing near a big screen for race details. Reminded me of the days before 1987 when one took up position below a p.a. speaker in order to hear Bob Constanduros' (?) hourly summary only for a pair of Mazda rotaries to go past and drown his voice.

Graham in the pits (if you read this remember me from La Vert Galant in La Fleche during the nineties?) and his colleagues are superb, but other than when Paul Truswell is at the microphone far too much time is spent answering inane email questions from the 'under the bedclothes club' in far flung parts of the world.

Bring back Titchmarsh!

Actually why isn't he involved? Politics? Surely not.

[dj choc ice]

Originally Posted by Larsen

Enjoyed my day at Silverstone. Love the Sportscars, especially GT1 in particular.

Only gripe is that pitroad walkabout. I seem to remember it being open for anyone last year at Donington yet you had to be a BRDC member at Silverstone!? Happened at the FIA GT's earlier this year aswell. Its a crying shame really, but it is typical Silverstone. I hope the LMS goes back to Donington next year

NO NO NO AND NO!!!!!

donington last year was a terrible venue for this series, no decent straight's or anything, the car's were not a spectactle at all, at silverstone the car's were awesome to watch, especially accelarating down the hangar straight up to around 180mph+ and blasting through bridge and copse.

the only thing good about donington was watching the car's going down the craner's, and although i love donington there was nowhere else good on the track tbh, at silverstone there is the start finish straight, hangar straight, copse, left-right-left-right after copse, club and stowe and bridge, lots of great places to watch the car's and the facilities were good as well.

oh and a shout to the very nice bloke at the burger van behind the start finish straight, mate your burgers were bloody gorgeous *high five*

keep the silverstone 1000km, its not to far away and is kinda central location wise, donington needs longer straight's and quicker corner's to truly embrace the lemans series and better facilities.
brands hatch is just way too far for anyone up north, atleast a 5-6 hour drive is just unreasonable, it's a fair way too silverstone but it is bloody worth it.

more LMS meets like silverstone please, now roll on petit lemans on the 6th!

[Osella]

is there a link for a full lap analysis/results etc? Don't work on MST site. Also, and this gave rise to my previous question, they list the Britcar 24 as being on the GP circuit, and LMES as being on the International. Is this right, and what's the difference?

LNT's Panoz was a lot louder than the Chad Peninsula - any ideas why?
Was it possible to buy pitlane access?

[lorraine g]

does anyone have an photos from the Classic Endurance race?

[brielga]

Originally Posted by lorraine g

does anyone have an photos from the Classic Endurance race?

Have a few from Friday, send me a PM and I can mail you some.

[WouterM]

Originally Posted by lorraine g

does anyone have an photos from the Classic Endurance race?

Yes, we will have plenty in our report, which should be published tomorrow afternoon. Are you looking for any car in particular?

[JAG]

You had to buy a pitwalk pass for around 50 Euros.

I had two which I won in a competition, the walk was only 15 minutes or so.

My general experience of Silverstone was far better than 2005, if they can gradually increase spectator facilities and attractions it will be a great event.

[Larsen]

Well, in my opinion Donington is far more better than Silverstone for photo opportunities at least . If you guys dislike Donington Park so much, then how about taking the race to Rockingham, im pretty sure that would be quite a sight, shame they have a limited amount of racing around there per year :P

[lorraine g]

Yes - we were running the Lola 212 that finished 3rd overall for Anthony Hancock.
my email is dgathercole1@aol.com

[The Badger]

Well , I wasnt there and from what ive read in the past posts it seems that there are quite a lot of unhappy campers who were .

So , Silverstone was a crap venue it seems , and Donington last year was crap too !!!

Why not try Brands Hatch for next year then . Ive always thought that Brands was the best track inBritain anyway .

[John Turner]

Originally Posted by jna

A long queue formed for the pit walk only for the jobsworth guarding the gate telling 90% of those lined up that "the general public can't go around. The walk is for invited guests only". Well, the Silverstone web site referred to a pit walk at 11.00 and that's why many of the 'paying public' made themselves available. Too much elitism in motorsport these days, but I'm sure that those who didn't pay to get in and probably can't differentiate between a 905 and a 908 found it a worthwhile experiance whilst leaving fathers to explain to their young sons why they were prevented from having a close up view of the cars on their only appearance in the UK this year.

Totally agree with this. The programme says 11.00 - 11.20 'Pit Walk'; absolutely no mention of it being restricted to BRDC members. If it was, why mention it in the programme at all? I wasn't particularly interested in doing the walk myself but happened to be in the area, and saw the majority being turned away. Very disappointing effort by Silverstone.

I wasn't too impressed either by having to work my way across two lanes of traffic which were turning left into the main entrance, when us 'plebs' had to go straight on to the 'public' car park. It made no sense when the signs as you come off from the Northampton direction tell you to use both lanes and the natural lane for you to take is the nearside one because others are coming in on the outside lane from the right! To cap it all, having negotiated that, one parking attendant told me off (politely, though!) for parking in the wrong place despite the fact that his colleague had directed me there in the first place!

I'll need to get a radio next time, too, since I could not hear any of the commentary, even when close to the speakers, except during the safety car period! However, the fact that I did not really know what the positions were, didn't detract from the great impression that the performance, sight and sound of these cars make. I sample several viewing places but Abbey was certainly a fine place to watch and enabled me a clearer and closer view of the action than I had experienced at Le Mans a couple of months back. A great meeting which as others have said could be improved substantially by Silverstone showing greater care and attention to its customers, the spectators!

[rdjones]

Originally Posted by Aysedasi

I did get to meet Paul for lunch on Saturday though.

I saw you sat there tucking into your burger and fries as we sat on the table behind you as we tucked into our burger and fries.....

[The Badger]

End-info are reporting that Horag have been disqualified from the results ... dont understand French though .

Anyone know why ?

[dj choc ice]

Originally Posted by The Badger

Well , I wasnt there and from what ive read in the past posts it seems that there are quite a lot of unhappy campers who were .

So , Silverstone was a crap venue it seems , and Donington last year was crap too !!!

Why not try Brands Hatch for next year then . Ive always thought that Brands was the best track inBritain anyway .

brands is good, but by the power of grey skull its far away, 6 hour drive, i dont bloody think so somehow, plus its not hugely fast

[Suze]

Too far away for some maybe, but not for me

Seriously though, I would love to see the race on the GP circuit at Brands.....

[SebringMG]

Brands is a great track - however don't think the facilities can handle 50 cars and i would not want to ruin Brands to bring it up to the safety level required of top flight motorsport!!

What we need is JP to buy Silverstone and run it properly!! The BRDC only seem to care about F1 and the other race series suffer accordingly...i can understand there bias towards F1 but it does not make it right.

IMO Silverstone is the only circuit capable of handling the LMS - don't think any other circuit could even handle 50 cars ?

[jaysalv]

i agree with everyone silverstone is not on my favorite lists of circuits.. the bloody fences got on my nerves and i could have done with something to eat or drink halfway round but there was nowhere. also i as forever trying to work out the positions so a screen or the lighting system would have helped . as much as i love watching the lmes i dont think i will be making a return trip to silverstone. but hey brands would be a great idea.

[Suze]

Originally Posted by SebringMG

Brands is a great track - however don't think the facilities can handle 50 cars and i would not want to ruin Brands to bring it up to the safety level required of top flight motorsport!!

What we need is JP to buy Silverstone and run it properly!! The BRDC only seem to care about F1 and the other race series suffer accordingly...i can understand there bias towards F1 but it does not make it right.

IMO Silverstone is the only circuit capable of handling the LMS - don't think any other circuit could even handle 50 cars ?

No I'm not sure it could handle the cars either without thinking about any safety stuff / noise issues etc!

I didn't go to the race as watched at home, but do agree the facilities aren't the best.

[Marcel ten Caat]

Originally Posted by The Badger

End-info are reporting that Horag have been disqualified from the results ... dont understand French though .

Anyone know why ?

From what I know they came speeding through the pitlane to get back on the track and get the chequered flag out on track. Unfortunately they did so after the flag was shown so the car was in the pit as the leaders crossed the line and was therefore listed as not running/not flagged and thus not classified (and not scoring points).

The Quifel-ASM Team penalty was also weird. Being stopped in the pit for 2 full laps for having damaged louvers where other teams had the same problem and did go out.

[JAG]

Originally Posted by The Badger

Well , I wasnt there and from what ive read in the past posts it seems that there are quite a lot of unhappy campers who were .

So , Silverstone was a crap venue it seems , and Donington last year was crap too !!!

Why not try Brands Hatch for next year then . Ive always thought that Brands was the best track inBritain anyway .

Don't know which posts you were reading but most thought it was an excellent day out.

The 3 lights system and scoreboard are ACO issues, the food and TV screens are easy to sort.

As for food around the back of the circuit, well hardly anyone went so it wouldn't be profitable to stick a stall there.

[Marcel ten Caat]

Originally Posted by Stranger

The Quifel-ASM Team penalty was also weird. Being stopped in the pit for 2 full laps for having damaged louvers where other teams had the same problem and did go out.

Ok, Peugeot had that problem as well (at the end)

[TheNewBob]

Thought I'd share some of the photos I got from my limited experiences of the weekend:

http://www.a1-racing.co.uk/gallery/t...s.php?album=12

[dj choc ice]

Originally Posted by SebringMG

Brands is a great track - however don't think the facilities can handle 50 cars and i would not want to ruin Brands to bring it up to the safety level required of top flight motorsport!!

What we need is JP to buy Silverstone and run it properly!! The BRDC only seem to care about F1 and the other race series suffer accordingly...i can understand there bias towards F1 but it does not make it right.

IMO Silverstone is the only circuit capable of handling the LMS - don't think any other circuit could even handle 50 cars ?

jonathan palmer to run silverstone?, i dont bloody think so, i hope he stays as far away from the running of silverstone as possible, the ticket price's for motorsport vision event's are very high, if they ran silverstone they would charge £40+ for a one day ticket.

imo the BRDC's bias towards F1 is a good thing in a way, it means the track will have good facilities and so on and so forth, although the catch fences were quite annoying in place's though, and those big blacky brown fences all over the hangar straight bridge .

in 2005 they were not there and it was fab sitting on the wooden rail thing and watching the car's blast from down the hangar straight, and my conclusion to one bugbear which i didnt pick up at lemans in my drunken state was how much quieter some of the car's are.

just whack the completely straight pipe's on the car's again, i wanna go completely and utterly deaf next time not half deaf

[Flat12-Aircool]

Well the only alternative to Silverstone I would consider would be Snetterton, provided that the planned renovation is ever completed. The proposed longer "International" Circuit with it's 2 long straights would make an ideal alternative to Silverstone.

But until then it has to be Silverstone, as Donington is just not right for the LMS. Now if they restored the Melbourne Loop to it's original length then maybe Donington's propects would improve. Either way, Doningtons new owners have some serious work to do if they want to raise it's popularity.

[Woolley]

Originally Posted by cg7aa

The first safety car period came as no surprise to us, we could see even on the warm up lap that the Rolex advertising boards were slowly coming off. I dunno how that wasn't spotted if we could see it

It came loose about 10 minutes before the start of the race and was both spotted and reported. I was a little surprised it wasn't attended to straight away, but I noted that they turned the CCTV camera to look at it, so someone must have determined it to be safe. Still, going by the photographers positions I may get my mugshot in some of the mags or websites.

Cracking race and many of the positions were in doubt right to the end. The Peugeots were awesome in the main race, but the support Pugs were seriously awful. A waste of petrol. The meeting was pretty good otherwise, though and the CER were a real spectacle on Saturday. I'll definitely be going again next year. Keep it at Silverstone, please, it's definitely the best circuit for a large grid of big bangers.