Day 9, rainy Silverstone Classic

The day started with a rather frustrating experience at the breakfast at De Vere Horwood Estate. Hardly any staff in the restaurant. Normally you would expect that you are shown to the table. Followed by a question if you’d like some tea or coffee. This wasn’t the case here. You did eventually got shown to a table. But then someone else where supposed take your order for tea/coffee etc. We got to finish most of our breakfast before that someone bothered showing up. That’s certainly not ok.

Well then, off to Silverstone. About 20 minutes drive from the hotel. The reception at the track was very efficient. Tickets were swiftly scanned and we got directed to the area where we would find Club Lotus. Compared to last years experience at Hockenheim, this was miles ahead in organization and efficiency. In short, well done Silverstone Classic team! One we arrived to the designated area, we were asked to join the club exhibition together with a couple of other Evora and Esprit.

There were just short distances between the club exhibition areas, the stands and the sales area. Due to the weather, there were a lot less cars than expected. According to one of the Club Lotus officials, there were about 70 cars in their area. Compared to the 100+ expected. on the positive side, there were a lot of older models. primary Elan and Elan +2. but also Europa, Elite and Esprit. This is something we lack in Sweden. Despite having quite a few of these cars, we rarely get to see them on any events.

On another spot, we found Lotus Drivers Club. by the look of it, they had managed to get more of their members to join in the rain. In between the rain showers, we walked around to look at TVR, Aston Martin and other clubs.

Among the sales stands, we found a company that sold carpet sets. The company is called Autostyle (http://www.autostyle.co.uk). Since our car has covered close to 90,000 km the foot carpets has seen better days. So we took the opportunity to buy a set. Looking forward to get them in a couple of weeks time. Apart from this, we also bought ourself some mugs, t-shirts and a couple of die-cast models.

Due to the weather, the racing varied between the different classes. When the track dried up, there were some really good racing. But during the rain showers, the cars were merely cruising around the track. Most entertaining was, as always, the Mini race. Close to 60 Minis were on the track. in many case three or for in parallell – amazing and entertaining. The results from the weekend can be found here: https://www.tsl-timing.com/event/193056

The dreadful hotel experience continued in the evening. On the Saturday evening, the wedding party occupied the bar as well. It was almost impossible to talk to the person sitting beside you due to the noice level. Plus of course the loud noice from the corridor when we got to our room. Which, as mentioned earlier, didn’t had any WiFi connection.