My First English Race Is In The Bag.

Just got back today from Raceday of the Silverstone Grand Prix with my Dad and it was a great experience. The crowd was - not surprisingly - heavily biased towards the two English drivers (Button and Hamilton), but neither delivered a stellar performance, so the mood at the track was a bit conciliatory.

It's worth noting though, that the crowd itself was the main difference that I noticed between an English race and an American race. Even in the States where F1 isn't that popular, the crowd stands at the start of the race, cheers, yells, waves flags, and has the assorted groups of drunken hillbillies. At an English race though, it's completely different. At the start of the race - the most exciting part of the entire weekend - everyone remains in their seats and observes. Then during the race, the crowd is nearly silent, wholly motionless, and simply claps at the ends of the race as if they've just witnesses a satisfying opera. And as for the boozing, I've never seen such a large group of people consistently drink throughout the day as I did each day at Silverstone racetrack, yet there were no real drunkenness per-se. It's almost as if they're adults or something...odd.

Regardless it was a great day for my Dad and I, and we're already planning our next abroad trip to watch in F1 race - perhaps Bahrain in 2010?