Spa 2010 - Our F1 Experience

Well well well....I've been away for some time, busy getting a job amongst other things, but I'm pretty convinced todays postings will make up for that!!
As a member of Warwick Motorsport, we always take a trip to an F1 race each year, this year was (strangely enough!) Spa en Belgique. After all the hassle of the organising, done marvellously by me if I may say so myself, money collecting and heart wrecking wait for the tickets to arrive we met up at the house of Nader on Wednesday evening for an entertaining evening. This included getting psyched for the event by watching the highlights of the epic 1998 Belgian Grand Prix and painting our Sakon banner, which read 'The Fourth Greatest Super Aguri Driver Of All Time' and if you don't get it then Wikipedia is a brilliant tool!
Personally from the number of mishaps on Wednesday just evening, including Jezza getting epicly lost and me tripping in a puddle I didn't think Thursday could possibly get any worse. Surely with my experience I should of known this not to be the case. It began with all and sundry falling out of bed at ridiculous hours and the proof came as we all completely ignored the Sakon banner hanging on the kitchen table, we even had to avoid it to get out!! Thing is we only realised as we hit the M25, about 20 minutes drive into the journey, of which mine and Nader's face as we looked at each other was a picture I only wish I'd had a camera for. So we went back to get it, sending the others off to Dover (of which Ed now informs me he briefly went the wrong way!) .
Once at Dover we managed to have about 6 intelligent lads, we all have been to Warwick university at some point (not that you'd think so!), having a mothers meeting regarding how to fit the headlight deflectors, drawing rather downing looks from those nearby. The rest of the journey passed by with little incident, excepting a randomly parked lorry in the middle lane of the Bruxelles' version of the M25 and Jezza constantly going the wrong way, until we reached the town of Malmedy. A lovely town it was, and perhaps its beauty was what was so costly, as after reminding Nader that people in Belgium drive on the RIGHT hand side of the road and not head on towards a van then cutting the central reservation at a roundabout, he succeeded to prefer driving straight into the flowerbed in the middle of a fork junction rather than picking one side. Once there we had some lovely Belgian food at a recommended restaurant but it would surely be too boring to tell you about what went well!!
So on that count Friday and Saturday passed with little problems I can remember, apart of course from some Citroen driver who either wasn't good enough or lacked the power to ascend the steep hill to the car park at the track, eventually giving up, us kindly leaving someone a breakfast present and Jezza nearly ran out of fuel and got called 'Kein Schumacher' by a witty car park marshal. Of course the rain played it's part too, and we now all hate Robert Wickens, he blatently cheated by ruining the last lap of GP3 :(. Oh and it was great finding out who understood our banner, which we walked round holding in front of us, to which those who did get the joke had a good grin and nod in approval.
All I know for sure is this, you'll wish you were with us to alight from the bedding at 4.45 am on Sunday morning where despite the race being quite excellent, and I'm sure I needn't mention it you've seen it!, there's still plently of off track action to provide analysis on. Firstly we used binbags to keep ourselves warm (actually a very good tactic, as you don't need to remove your footwear unlike a sleeping bag or the like) and then it all kicked off when Piggott found a Joe Tomato lookalike. I firstly replied he looked to geeky to be Joe, so I hope he finds out I said that, and then within his earshot dubbed him the asian Harry Potter, at which point I'd like to point out I was unaware he was within earshot, but I'm sure he'd be proud at that. Then someone came and sat in front of me, which was clearly worth a penalty and after completely overstepping the mark by sitting on my foot, I decided he was off down the hill, which was incredibly amusing seeing him get up and reposition his seat every 5 seconds. What was written on the back of his cap said it all, I only ever repeated it!!
Then it came time for the drivers parade, for those who haven't seen an F1 race live before the drivers go round on the back of a lorry or in cars to wave to the crowd and such. Luckily for us on this occasion all the drivers had individual cars, and I must admit they were all beautiful old cars, each team with a car of their own ilk, for example old Ferrari's for Fernando and Felipe and old Merc's for Michael and Nico etc. Naturally everyone was cheering their favourites, so a combination of mostly Jenson, Lewis, Michael, Fernando and Vitaly Petrov ;)! Once we reached the guys at the back of the field everyone had gone quiet, so when Sakon passed we screamed at the top of our voices and he started reading our banner, how much I have to admit I do not know, but I swear I saw Bruno having a private giggle.....
Once the race finished we marched onto the track and up the hill from our sitting position at Pouhon (and once again Mr. Wikipedia can help you if you are unaware of such locations) and took several photos of drivers binnage, including Lewis and Fernando's marks on the tyre barriers where they went off respectively. Then we departed the circuit in true F1 style as we created a new queue and then leapt in front of those using the correct protocol of joining at the back, well I mean we are 'Les bloody rosbif' so we might as well use it to our advantage!
Monday was possibly the day packed with most incident of all. We decided on the way back to visit Bruxelles itself, and after parking next to what appeared to be the most useless statue ever, we passed a theatre advertising drugs and a chocolate shop publicising pornography, reaching a big open space where we stopped for some free hugs whilst contemplating what similar service we'd put ourselves up for as an alternative! Then came the restaurant debacle, which would take an entire blog on its own to explain (and I really can't be bothered :p), where I truely would have got up and walked off paying absolute zero.
On the way back to Dunkerque, Ed and clan popped off to the beach to spend some really useful hours, and was just in time for the ferry, but the best is yet to come. I rather amused the British woman working on passport control by commenting how much more efficient she'd be cause she wasn't Francais and then we reached the boarding lanes. Far from being a well organised procedure, it ended up with some idiot blocking the far lanes causing utter mayhem, I even voiced such opinions in the open and some guy who couldn't work out row M was infact between row A and row N. When it came to boarding, after a visit to the most lifeless departure lounge there must be, I moved the cone at the end of our row, so we could go. This entailed us edging ever forwards slightly to detect the guy (badly) directing the traffic and by the time we saw him it was too late and we just drove onto the ferry, totally out of turn (there is a little more to it than that, but I've been writing hours by now and losing the will to live!). This caused chaos as everybody, not really suprisingly, tried to emulate our spectacular maneuvre such that 5 lanes of cars were attempting to get into 1 lane and the ferry was held up leaving by about 10 minutes, and it was all because of us haha!
I look forward to many more trips to F1 Grand Prix in the future, I think this my favourite to date, and next year we plan on Monaco and Monza, and yes we have McLaren fans :D!