Silverstone's 'Selfie' Day Of Champions

I haven't been to many circuits (yet!) but Silverstone is just one of those places where I could go back every weekend and not get bored. It is genuinely my image of heaven on earth with its rich history ingrained in motorsport so by 8am, I was ready to set off to enjoy just the one day of two-wheel excitement with my VR46 Racing Team cap and VR46 Rider's Academy top.

Being later in the day than travelling to the Formula One British Grand Prix, the journey was slightly more painful but it's going to be one to get used to; as I can say now as a non-confident driver, I will happily travel to Silverstone on my own when I can after doing it twice with a passenger! Two and a half hours later and we had arrived, although the weather was making me regret painting a jacket instead of a t-shirt!

For any fans of popular categories of motorsport like F1, going to the track on a Thursday when supporting a series that isn't the most popular in the UK is such a different experience. I was so surprised how quiet it was when we got there an hour late. All of the food and merch stalls had no queues and the first time I actually saw other fans was only a handful of around 20 of us by the mainstage. My guess was I put it down to fans setting up camp in the local campsites before arriving for the main event at 3pm or they were preparing to ride their own bikes around the track with Randy Mamola and Niall Mackenzie.

Although there is a benefit to this as it made the experience of walking around a bit more relaxing. There were some awesome stunt shows going on, all different kinds of bikes on display and loads of merch as always to look around at. As someone who is relatively new into the world of motorbikes and motorbike racing, I wouldn't dare to poke around at any bikes but I did make sure to secure myself a FB1 hat at the Ducati stall as anyone should. That's another one for the collection!

By now, it was time for the group ride around the track and I knew exactly where I was going to park myself: Brooklands. Definitely not a popular spot amongst fans with it being a slow speed corner but one where you can really capture the details of everyone's bikes and get some great photos. Luckily for me, I remembered my polaroid camera this time around and managed to capture two great shots as they all came through. And the noise was incredible! Only a short bit of riding for the day but hopefully in 2025, I will be there front and centre for the entire weekend!

At this point in the day there was plenty of time to kill and I felt I needed to do something that my mum was interested in, considering I'm the only two-wheeled fanatic in our household. And there's one place at Silverstone where there is everything for everyone: the Silverstone Museum.

As we found out once we'd arrived, you actually needed to have an entire weekend pass to get free access into the museum. This would've seemed to be a pain but in actual fact, if you buy tickets into the museum then you can sign up to go back for free for the rest of the year. It was a win-win! And this time around, they even played the ACTUAL opening to the museum instead of letting the heavy rush through during the F1 weekend.

I just absolutely love the setup of the Silverstone Museum, slightly altered of course to have more of the motorbikes on show including Barry Sheene's and Maverick Vinales' bikes as well as Valentino Rossi's 125cc front and centre. However, this was when I also noticed a new Rothmans Williams car in the displays and it took me longer than it should've done to realise this wasn't actually in the museum last time as it was on loan to the Williams Fan Zone in London for the week. So yes! I had actually seen this car before!

Another plus to being back in this array of cars also meant I could gawk at my favourite Formula One car: the McLaren MP4, even if it's not actually from my favourite driver, Mika Hakinnen, but David Coulthard.

Now that plenty of time was filled, it was nearly time to head back to the main stage for the main events. After getting a quick gyros and recharging batteries on the picnic benches, it wasn't long until the Moto3 riders began to pile out. And what was even better was that they actually all came down towards the barrier to sign and take pictures with everyone. Annoyingly, this is when I reminded that the one important thing I could've brought was missing: an actual pen of any kind. But at the end of the day, what's more personal than a photo?

As it turned out, having a pen was no problem at all! I didn't have many things that they could sign I the first place and anything that I could get signed was given to me in the process. Like Nicola Carraro who handed me his signed right knee slider, I actually couldn't believe it! I'm in desperate need to get this into a display box immediately.

After snapping away all of my photos of 250cc bike riders like David Alonso above, it wasn't long before the Moto2 riders come out. Now with a rather larger ounce of confidence as I know this series as much as I do MotoGP, I was ecstatic to meet a lot of my favourite riders, and I did! Darryn Binder, Joe Roberts, Celestino Vietti, then my favourite riders from my favourite team: Alonso Lopez and Fermin Aldeguer. You wouldn't have guessed it but they were handing out their own signed posters and at least they had pens to sign these themselves! Obviously they're much more prepared than me.

As with all of the Moto3 riders, I was able to get a photo with all of the Moto2 riders other than Jake Dixon as he was feeling a bit under the weather to put it kindly (final edit: He must have recovered quickly with a home win like that!) And what's even better is that during this, they were live-streaming the special one-off 75th anniversary livery reveals in the pitlane from the stage above. The VR46 and Yamaha livery left me gobsmacked!

After what seemed like no time at all, it was already 3pm where the auction would be starting. And I had a front row seat, with the cheapest tickets for the day. What on earth? This atmosphere was on a completely different level to F1, I was only 30 minutes early and in the perfect spot. In this position a month ago at the 4-wheel racing weekend, I wouldn't have even be able to work out Leclerc and Sainz with how far back I would've been! This was also when a kind stranger let me borrow a Sharpie to try and get my jacket signed, I feel awful for not remembering his name but a huge thanks!

I'm a lover of every team when it comes to MotoGP (obviously one a bit more than others) so when Trackhouse Racing with Raul Fernandez and Miguel Oliveira were announced first, I could've screamed. It was so cool to see these guys up close to the point where I didn't actually care that I wasn't able to met a lot of them. And the impulse control to not buy anything in the auction was too much, but you'll find out in a few paragraphs that I did in fact crack in the end. Not early enough unfortunately to grab Luca Marini or Joan Mir's gloves who were the next up. Damn...

LCR Honda and Pramac were next, even including the Michelin Man which was a surprising turn of event. Awesome items like an entire tyre including a carbon rim, signed artwork, custom chairs and pieces of equipment were flying through bidding towards some lucky winners. I just found it hilarious when Fabio Quartararo tried to get involved in orchestrating the bidding and to be honest, he didn't do a terrible job alongside Alex Rins and Remy Gardner! Then was the moment I'd been waiting for: VR46 Racing Team.

I'm gonna take some time out here to apologise to the people around me as I was doing anything I could to get Bez's attention like waving and shouting. After probably around 3 minutes of panic, the jacket caught his eye and quickly motioned that he would come down after the bidding. It turns out that some people have some bigger pockets than me as I tried everything to get something of his or Fabio Di Giannantonio. But he held true to his word and they actually both took their time to sign and take photos with everyone whereas others might have had to rush off for interviews. And I was one of the last people in the queue.

As much as I try to be professional, it was a different kind of scenario when you meet your favourite motorsport driver or rider at an event as a fan. I immediately showed him the jacket and he was so impressed. All of his media started to look at it too and they were equally amazed. Because of the slight downpour, he apologised for the borrowed pen signature not being the best but I didn't care. This was then when I asked for the picture above and I thought that was the moment over but, oh no. He signed a few more fans things and came back to me to ask if he could take a picture on his personal phone which I had absolutely no problem with at all. I told myself that I would avoid the question but I had to in the moment: "Can I have a hug?" It was genuinely one of the best interactions I've ever had with anyone in motorsport.

All of the excitement actually made me have a delayed reaction to Diggia coming past and I didn't want to miss out on an opportunity to meet him either. They're both apart of such an awesome team and I'm going to miss them both together on the grid next year. That being said at the time of writing this article, I hope Fabio is staying at the VR46 team!

I tried to focus back on Marc and Alex Marquez who were now selling off their things, one of them being the world champions helmet which I think went for the most amount of money over the day, but a couple beside me distracted me once again with "Did you know you're on his Instagram?"

You've got to tell me that I'm dreaming right? Nope. I can now say that I am on my favourite riders Instagram, Facebook, you name it. This means I've got to paint another jacket for 2025, right? As hard as I could, I just couldn't focus on anything for the rest of the day.

I was convinced that my luck for the rest of the day had ran out by missing Jack Miller and Brad Binder from KTM by a small margin and Augusto Fernandez and Pedro Acosta who were too focused on stage as the rookie impulsively decided to auction off his current shirt with a signature. That would be a bit of a weird thing to put my bet on but at least someone out there is enjoying it. That's until Pecco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini came to auction their items. There was no way I could afford any of them but I came away from the day with a photo of me and the world champion, who again came around to sign everyone's things. Pecco is another one of my favourite riders too so I did in fact end the day with a photo of me and my top 3 riders!

The day was nearly over with Aprilia being the last team. With Bez moving to the team next year, I must admit I was intrigued with trying to buy something and actually ended up walking away with a Maverick Viñales art print that was signed, and a decent amount of money put towards charity too. I think I was so excited by this time too that I actually forgot to go back to the main stage to see if I could get a photo with him, after all he's an awesome rider and the only non-Ducati rider to win this year! The guy who provided the art also gave me his socials to message him as he got some photos of me with Bez so a strange coincidence that I ended up with his work! @drautoart if you're interested, he does Formula One themed art prints too!