For years, I’ve loved motorsport, but fairly quietly. I’ve visited a few tracks, been to car shows – both grand scale and local – and, of course, races. I’ve been to dawn raids (if you know, you know) and car meet-ups. Things inevitably change when you have kids, but I’ve always tried to make a bit of time for motorsport. Watching the Grand Prix is one of those things, although with weekends being so busy, it’s not always possible to find the time to watch qualifying and races for every round.
But my girls have been brought up with a love of cars and racing too. Their first real experience was the Lap of Lights at Silverstone (with The Chain playing, of course) as we drove around the track. I just hadn’t yet taken them to a live race.
With their 13th birthday coming up, I knew this would be a really good opportunity for them to experience racing for themselves. I booked tickets to the Classic Car Grand Prix because I thought it would be a great, relaxed introduction for them. Plus, they’d get to see lots of cars I absolutely love – especially the 911 Turbos. My parents drove Porsches when I was growing up, so it’s a car that feels like home to me and brings back lots of happy memories.
I booked the tickets online and was really surprised that the kids were free, meaning I only had to pay for one adult ticket – which was, again, surprisingly inexpensive.
I was always a huge fan of the Porsche Cup at Brands Hatch, so I wanted the girls to experience something similar. When I saw there was a Classic Car Grand Prix happening around their birthday, I thought it would be a great opportunity and a really lovely experience to share with them.
The tickets said the event started at 8am, but unfortunately, there weren’t many other details that I could find. I was hoping to receive a timetable of the races by email, but sadly didn’t get one, and I couldn’t find anything online under the event either.
Thankfully, we ended up speaking to a lovely lady called Poppy, who helped us settle in, made the girls feel really welcome at their first race event and gave us an idea of the race times.
As we were there very early and had some time before the first race, we enjoyed watching the qualifying laps and having a little look around. We decided to head over to the Silverstone Museum to kill some time.
We entered from the race track side and had a look around the shop, which was packed with lots of Silverstone goodies – apparel, art, keyrings, LEGO and more! We all came away with a race track keyring, and one of my LEGO-obsessed girls bought her third Speed Champions race car – a Ferrari, of course!
Unfortunately, we didn’t actually visit the museum itself. I didn’t fancy paying the full cost to only spend around 30 minutes there, so we decided we’ll go back another time and book online beforehand. That way, we can spend longer there and really take in everything it has to offer.
So, we headed back over to the track in time for the midday race.
Except… it was actually quite hard to work out whether this was still qualifying or an actual race! We sat down and enjoyed it anyway, but shortly afterwards another set of cars came onto the track and we had commentators – so it seemed this was actually the proper first race.
I must admit, I didn’t really prepare us very well. We should have packed some snacks and jumpers because sitting in the grandstand was getting a little chilly!
We ended up deciding to leave after the first race, even though there were six races planned for the day. The first race ended up being suspended, so we decided that was probably our cue to call it a day.
We could have stayed a little longer. There was a coffee place on site, a “Pit Stop” where you could grab something to eat and drink, and, of course, toilets. But after a very busy summer of birthdays, holidays and days out, we were all completely pooped and decided to head home.
Thankfully, Silverstone isn’t far from us at all, so we’ll definitely be heading back in the spring.
Next time, we’ll be better prepared – snacks, jumpers, and a full day at the museum included! And most importantly, the girls have now had their first proper taste of live racing.
