[Lucas Wilson]

I am thinking about going to the 6 hours of Silverstone this year. I am just wondering if anyone on here has been and could give me a few pointers. Where to sit, how loud the cars are, what time the racing starts etc…

[George]

I went last year, I got absolutely soaked (the race got red flagged for rain eventually) so be prepared for that. It’s almost always cold at Silverstone so bring a coat even if it’s sunny, there’s usually a cold wind. Bring some comfortable shoes too as it’s a long way around.

The cars are fairly loud, I used my headphones as ear defenders which worked pretty well, if you don’t have anything you might find the noise gets too much after a while. The LMP cars aren’t super loud but the LMP2 and GT cars are. Radio Le Mans were covering the race last year so having something portable with a good FM radio signal was very handy for keeping up with developments. I assume they’ll be there this year too.

As far as seating is concerned you’ll probably want to check a few places out, my favourite for the WEC last year was the inside of Vale, although they had boards up on the fence which limited the view a bit unfortunately. Otherwise Becketts is a great place to watch the cars but it’s quite far away from everything, the outside of Club and Luffield are pretty good and also the grandstands at The Loop. It depends how much walking you want to do really, Luffield and Club (if I remember correctly) are the best spots near to food stalls, but you could also struggle to find a decent seat as they’re quite popular.

Speaking of food you might want to bring your own, the stalls are fairly extortionate and the quality isn’t great. I don’t know if you’re actually allowed to but as long as it’s out of sight when you enter I doubt very much you’d have a problem.

[JackySteeg]

My first recommendation would be to, if you are able, do the whole weekend, or at least go on the Saturday. If, like me, you’ve never been to Silverstone during a non-Grand Prix weekend, you’ll find that there are so many places to explore that are inaccessible during a Formula 1 race (namely the paddock areas). In addition, there is a full support bill of European Formula 3 and ELMS, and with such quick turnarounds you’ll spend very little time looking at an empty track. So if you go for the full weekend, you’ll witness 5 races (3x F3, 4 Hours ELMS and 6 Hours WEC) and have 3 unique paddocks to check out, all very open and a great opportunity to get up close to some real racing cars without having some mechanics hastily cover it up.

In terms of where to sit, the grandstands are roving so you can experiment and find your favourite (another reason to do the full weekend). However, there are very few TV screens around the track — last year there was one on the pit straight, one at Luffield and one in the fan zone in the centre of the circuit. So if you want to be able to keep up with all the action then those are the best places to sit.

For the past 2 years, the main WEC race has started at 12 o’clock on Sunday, although you may want to get there early for the pitlane walk or the final F3 race on Sunday morning.

Other than that, I echo what @George said. Also, there are free shuttle buses that go around the track – particularly useful if you want to change your vantage point without missing too much of the racing. On the whole, I definitely recommend going. If you want to see world class drivers driving some of the worlds most sophisticated cars and don’t want to spend several hundred quid for the privilege, then this is the race you want to go to.

[Lucas Wilson]

@George @jackysteeg

Thanks for the advice! I really appreciate it :-)

[Author]

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