What I did over the weekend

When I was at primary school, every Monday morning we had a time to write our diaries, accounting what we did over the weekend. Quite regularly mine mentioned watching the F1 (no change there!) My teacher would comment saying that it was too loud for her. But, remanicing over, this weekend I went to Snetterton race track in Norfolk.

I had somehow persuaded my parents to take me (as I still can't drive!) and as it was near where they had lived for 10 years and they had friends near there, so it was a good excuse to do some visiting as well.

For those who don't know, one of my house mates for next year, James, races in the Formula Ford series, and was at Snetterton last weekend, and had invited me along.

Now, as things sometimes do in racing, the order of events moved and instead of James racing on both Saturday and Sunday, he was now only racing on the Sunday, and we only had tickets for the Saturday...ah!

As we had tickets, it was still worth going and we knew James should be there at some point on Saturday afternoon.

So on Friday 3rd August. The plan was to leave around 10 am Friday morning, to avoid the most of the M25 traffic, and visit both Walsingham shrines. One of the people at my dads church had invited me to an event at the RC shrine, and as I was unlikely to go, we thought it would be nice to visit them so I had seen them. They were both interesting places, the RC one being more busy because of a festival being there. But despite that I still preferred the Anglican one.

We were staying in Norwich on Friday night so that the run to the circuit would be fairly good on Saturday.

On Saturday morning, we drove past my parents old work places, my first house and the first church I went to at about 2 weeks old. (Another little piece of info: I was born in Norwich, but moved when I was 2!)

We arrived at the race track in time to see the end of the EuroBOSS qualifying and the lunch break. Once we'd found a place to sit - easy really - at Russell bend, dad and I went exploring. We found our way into the paddock and near the pit lane. It was good to get close to the action and the cars and get a better feel of the atmosphere. We managed to get a programme so that we knew what was happening when, and found where we could eat, before heading back to where we were sat. Most of the afternoon was spent in the sun, so even with sun cream some of us burnt...! James arrived with his mum and 2 of his friends at 5, whilst the last race was still happening. I was good to see him for a bit before we had to leave to get to London. As we left the track, for London, I thought that we wouldn't be going back, but I had hoped that my parents would change their mind.

And fortunately they did!! So on Sunday, we headed back to the track. It was busier than the Saturday, but that not at all surprising. We cut the timings a bit fine, and I got out the car as soon as we got to the circuit just in time to see the end of the lap before the start of the race and locate the car James was driving. His first race was good, but fairly uneventful. At the end, we wandered down to the paddock to see James and his car closer up. We stuck around the paddock for a bit catching up with the race news that wasn't on the commentry, before James' friends decided it was lunch time and we headed to the on site restaurant, leaving James sorting out a few race bits. The good thing about using the on site restaurant was the large tv on the wall, brodcasting the coverage from the Hungarian F1 grand prix. That was the only problem about the weekend was missing the F1 news, so this was ideal, and there were a lot of other F1 fans to watch it with. James and his mum found us in the restaurant and we all watched the out come of the race before heading back out to watch the live racing. James had to spend his afternoon making sure he was ready for his other race, so I spent time with his friends, watching the racing then packing up the tents. I was able to see James before he went off to his final race as we had to run at the end of his race. The second race was more eventful, with one car loosing it's nose, another spinning and two cars, including James, hitting the posts on the corner. James started 10th in the first race and finished 7th, then finished 8th in the second race. The journey home took about 5 hours including a break at a services.

It was a great weekend, and good to finally see James racing after hearing so much about it.

Just in case you're interested the races on Saturday were: BRSCC Formula Jedi Championship, Sports 2000 Historic series, Snetterton EuroBOSS Super Prix and Uniroyal Fun cup (which was 4 hours...4 HOURS!!!). And on Sunday were: BRSCC Club Formula Ford (MS) Championship, Sports 2000 Endurance race, Snetterton EuroBOSS Super Prix, BRSCC Formula Jedi Championship, BRSCC Alfashop Alfa Romeo Championship, BRSCC LMA Euro Saloon & Sports Car Chamionship and another BRSCC Club Formula Ford (MS) Championship.

Hope this makes sence!!

Clare xxx