Birthday Treat

Another year of my life has passed and to mark the occasion my lovely girlfiend treated me to a Single Seater Racing Car experience at Silverstone.

Anyone who knows me well will know how much I like my cars and motorsport, so the chance to race around in a Formula Silverstone racing car was awesome!

I had been on a similar experience before for my 18th birthday (all those years ago!) and although I enjoyed it, I didn't have much driving experience behind me and I didn't feel I got as much as I could of out of the day, but this time round, having now driven for 14 years, I was determined to grab the car by the scruff of the neck and push it to its limits.

A wet and miserable day certainly made the limits a lot closer than usual, with big puddles on the track and heavy rain making for very tricky driving conditions, and whilst attempting to get to know the car and find the limits, it was sometimes like driving on a skating rink, but what fun!

Whilst other drivers in the group were sliding off and smacking in to concrete walls, I managed to keep it together and put in what I thought were pretty quick laps, but in reality I was probably seconds off the pace of that of an instructor in the same conditions, and I'll admit to a cheeky spin in my eagerness to plant the throttle coming out of the hairpin!

The speed and responsiveness of the car was incredible - capable of 135mph and the closest thing Joe Public is likely to get to driving a Formula 1 car. I certainly now have a lot more admiration for the likes of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button when they are faced with wet conditions - knowing the car can snap away from them at any moment and not being able to see for the spray and mist.

To get back to a photographic nature though, I took the opportunity afterwards to snap a few 'panning' shots of the cars during the session following mine, albeit not the first time I have photographed motorsport at Silverstone, but knowing I was driving the cars just minutes earlier made it even more of a joy to capture.