The Spanish GP – our crazy adventure

Anybody who knows me and my family will also know that motorsport is a pretty big love for us! Well, mostly myself and my dad. I’m fairly certain that it comes from my his youth. He used to be an amateur rally driver – although he was probably good enough to further had a family and marriage not been in the plans! His cars included a Hillman Imp and a Ford Escort, in fact my mum learnt to drive in the Escort, roll cage and all.

So this year we decided as a family that we would all make our way down to Spain for the GP and some sightseeing. Dad and I would drive down (making it a nice slow journey with a couple of stops) while my mum and brother would fly down and meet us.

Our destination is shown on this map (I’m sorry, I’m no good with photoshop so this pathetic mock up in paint is the best I can do) the red line shows our journey on Sat/Sun, the green one is Mon while the purple one is our short little Tuesday stint.

As we arrived at our first destination and set up our little tents it was apparent it was going to be a rough night. Walking around in my little exploratory mood I went to check out the toilet and shower facilities – they were all locked. Now, being in a tent this is a slight problem. Off we headed to reception to get some opened. When they were finally accessible they were absolutely filthy (and this was a four star campsite) and come the next morning we even had to give up trying to shower because there was no hot water. In the end we had to wash in the sinks. And believe it or not they charged us €25 for that fabulous night.

Day two however got worse. Rain like you’ve never seen before just kept pouring. To make matters worse dad’s tent wasn’t fully waterproof because it was fairly old – he pretty much needed a snorkel to make it through the night! My night wasn’t much better – the winds and rain kept getting underneath my groundsheet and a few times I thought I’d fly away still trapped in the tent. At three in the morning and with torrential rain still flooding us we had to make special repairs to our tents after the wind pulled the guide ropes out. As it turns out the gales were 120kph. Water was even blowing up the mountains on the roads.

Finally as we made it to Spain it looked to have brightened up, so putting our full size family tent up was no problem in comparison!

Once we picked up mum and my brother from the airport we headed for a meal. Mum has recently had new varifocal glasses and is still getting used to them so it really wasn’t a surprise that we heard a bang and looked behind us to see she’d fallen down some stairs. She damaged the muscles in her foot and struggled to walk the next day during the pit-walk.

Thankfully though she could manage it with only a bit of discomfort and we had a great day. I turned into a woman possessed and took as many photos as I could. I spotted Vettel on his track walk so headed straight for him and jumped the barriers (along with about 100 other people I hasten to add) and plucked whatever reading material I could find in my bag for him to sign. Unfortunately it was the latest ‘F1 Racing’ with Schumi on the front – but at least I got it signed!

Almost immediately after I spotted Senna walking among the crowd so I asked him for a picture. He was extremely polite and very smiley with all his fans.

I also managed to meet Alguersauri and get pictures of loads of other drivers. However my favourite moment has to be the point when Schumi was ploughing through the crowd on his moped, I was inevitably in his way (as is often the case with me) and almost got run down. Although I did manage to get this picture as he passed – and I was on Spanish TV!

Once we were all kicked out of the pit lane I spotted a certain Mr Legard. Said ‘hi’ to him and no word of a lie stood chatting with him underneath the pit lane for almost 10 minutes about everything from the weather to Schumi’s pace to who we thought would win. Very nice bloke – If any of you have the chance to catch up with him at a race I implore you to do so, it was a brilliant insightful chat about what we were all there to watch.

We hung around for a while after to see how the autograph session turned out which is where I lost respect for the person everyone was here to see.

Thousands of people charged the pits to get to the Ferrari garage. I mean, I’ve been to concerts before and seen people run to the front but the crowds here were just way too large for the facilities and there was nothing the officials could do. Sensing things were going to get interesting we set up camp in the main grandstand opposite the garages hoping we could also catch a glimpse of the impending action. First the two McLaren boys came out closely followed by the two Mercedes drivers. Up and down the pitlane more and more drivers were greeting the masses. However someone needs to shoot whoever handles Alonso’s (and the whole Ferrari teams) PR.

After an hour and a half Alonso still hadn’t been out to great his fans and by this point people were in trouble. One heavily pregnant lady had to be escorted out because it was becoming too much for her. The rest of the crowed who jumped the fences and opened the barriers, spilling out on the pit straight dropping their litter everywhere, quickly followed this…

This lead to the Spanish police equipped with guns, truncheons and whistles (which other than sounding really annoying do sod all) to be deployed.

Eventually they had the crowd under control but it could have all been prevented had Alonso had come out earlier the way the other drivers did. Himself and the PR team would have heard the chanting and seen the crowds from their garage and yet they still let it continue. I still have no idea how no one was injured. So, although Fernando is a damn good driver, I have lost the last bit of respect I had for him.

FP1,2 and 3 was business as usual. I would post pictures but lets be honest you’ve already seen these cars a million times before. So I’ll save you the trouble of looking at them – maybe I’ll set up a Flickr account for those in the next few days.

As is often the case during the Spanish GP the race wasn’t thrilling however to make up for it the support races (Formula BMW, GP3, GP2 and the Porsche Supercup) had loads of crashes with three Porsches going off on our corner so I can’t complain on that front.

The big news of the race was Hamilton’s crash though. Just around the corner from where I was sitting it happened and I was appalled at the crowds reaction. The jeers and chants that came from them were disgusting. They had already booed him as he made his was around for the drivers’ parade but this was something altogether different. For all they knew he could have been seriously injured and yet I could still hear chants of ‘Chango’ which is the Hispanic racial slur for ‘monkey’. As someone who hates any kind of booing for sporting stars it upset me that they were prepared to act in this way. And however great the facilities are at the track if the fans continue like this they don’t deserve a race there – let alone two.

However by the time we got back to out campsite and to the bar I was slightly cheered up. You see, Catalonia (the region of Spain where the race in held) have their own language and like to separate themselves from the Spanish at all costs. So speaking to the barman he told us that they LOVE Alguersauri but couldn’t care much for Alonso. I have to say that put a smile back on my face!

The next day we figured a bit of culture was on the books. Go see some Dali and Picasso works of art and all that jazz. But in true Kemp fashion things didn’t exactly go to plan. We missed our train station so had to buy more train tickets for the metro to take us into the Gothic part of the city (which is just stunning by the way). While we were on the metro mum was pickpocketed – the kid grabbed her purse and ran off with it. Dad gave chase and almost decked him but settled for getting the purse, money and credit cards back – thankfully. However mum was extremely shaken up so our day in Barcelona sampling the sights and culture was effectively ruined. Let’s just say mum never wants to go back to Spain again or go camping either.

On a more positive note, the people at our campsite were the friendliest people you could hope to meet. This was our second year there however with the problems we had it seems that unfortunately it will be the last time we go. And on an even more positive note we all loved the racing!

My (younger, although taller) brother an I in our Vettel gear! 🙂