| Review: | Thanks to Rich I got a couple of tickets for Thunder in the Park II at Donington. This was well timed as it gave me the opportunity to see the track and get some idea of the corners etc, before the trackday on the 19th.
The event is spread over 3 days - I ended up going on Saturday afternoon. I was able to see F1 cars (Minardi passenger rides) - including Damon Hill as one of the drviers. F3000 cars, Formula Audi, Formula Renault, Superkarts (loony) and finally a BMW only race.
The track looked pretty difficult to me - lots of tight corners - and gradients. I saw a few crashes - nothing serious but still entertaining (from a audience point of view). All accidents were down to entering the corners too fast - a lesson to learn there.
All the formula cars were VERY loud - by the time the BMW's made there entrance even the superkarts sounded too loud. The BMW turn out was mainly M3's - the front pack were all M3's (E36s) apart from a soul Z3M which was in about third. Bringing up the rear were a couple of 2002 coupes. On the FastSaloon front the only saloon was an E34 M5 in bright yellow. The M5 was about 8th and had a number of M3s snaping at it's heels - I was glad to see it power away out of corners - although the M3s caught up in the corners.
The nice thing about Donnington is that you drive under the track and then you are on the inside of the circuit then you are free to park/drive where ever you like. You can also walk under to the pit side - or rather the area behind the pits. This also allows you to watch the first hair pin which was a good place to see the F1's outright pace - it would have been interesting to see the BM's there too - but I was at the opposite end of the track by the time they came out. | |
