Can I have your autograph please?

After Rob has written something on the Festival of Speed, it seems a little bit of a cop-out to write another blog on it.

However, on a quest to get some words out of the Formula 1 drivers I set off for the top paddock and having inhaled two burgers and a hot dog already that morning I really had to go on foot. It turns out that it is, especially when you are part jogging as you can hear “and Lewis is on the hill” over the loud speaker, a long bloody way.

Once there, I managed to get a quick snippet from Lewis and had a good chat with Marc Gené, who is a thoroughly decent bloke by the way.

Anyway, back to the point, just as I was contemplating turning round and trekking back down to the Motor Sport stand, I spotted the Ferrari F1 support van just about to leave, (with more than a handful of people needed to start an F1 car there was a van per car).

Trying my best to remember my Italian I asked if there was room for one more and after some frantic waving of arms and ‘Si! Certo’, I climbed aboard.

What followed was perhaps the most hilarious moment of the weekend for me. With the side door of the van open to the ‘adoring fans’, the driver nailed it down the hill beeping the horn. While struggling to stop the Formula 1 equipment from falling out I watched as the two mechanics on the door waved to the crowd, blew kisses and shouted in their heavily accented, Italian-English, “I love you, I love you”. While all this was going on the others gave certain attractive girls in the crowd marks out of ten.

You’ll be pleased to hear that no one scored less than 8. At one moment, one of the mechanics had to be stopped from jumping out of the van while it was travelling at 30mph, and pursuing a 9 and a half pointer.

Nearing the F1 paddock, I couldn’t resist and gave a half-hearted wave myself. Sorry about that.

Jumping out of the van at the end of my, actually quite bizarre, journey the wrong way down the hillclimb, a six-year-old girl asked me for my autograph. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I was in fact a meagre journalist who nobody has heard of and gave her little pink notebook the best ‘Ed Foster’ I could muster.