Read on Twitter
#AH19 In 2017 Anthoine and I were teammates at ART GP in GP3. There were 4 of us, myself, Anthoine, George and Nirei. ART pretty much dominated that year, with us taking the top 4 spots in the championship, but I think it’s fair to say we got on pretty well despite spending a...
...fair bit of time racing each other. We’d even managed to have a 3-wide moment at Monza, for the win, without crashing! For Silverstone that year we were staying in Northampton, and for one reason or another I ended up sharing a hire car with Anthoine for a few of the days.
... On the Thursday, we were doing our usual prep, and in a spare moment I was walking down the paddock (we’re based in the ‘old’ pits by Copse) and saw some of the unused garages were lit up, and some old cars were in there. Old Williams F1 cars to be exact. No idea why the...
...garage had been left open and unattended, but I didn’t need another invitation, so I walked in and started having a closer look. There were cars from the Rothmans era, BMW Williams, even one from the proper turbo and ground-effect times decked out in green and white. I had...
... to leave eventually, but later that day when we were all done, Anthoine and I were walking to the car and I motioned for him to come over to the garage door. It was closed but I was really hoping... yep! The door was still unlocked. We went in and his reaction was the same...
...as mine had been; woah. We admired the retro liveries, and joked about how flimsy the protection was on even the most recent of these, compared to our GP3 cars. I don’t remember what else we talked about, probably what it would be like to drive one... But it was just two...
...guys in a dream garage, free to look as close as they want, as much as they want. It was as if we were kids again, awestruck by these rocket ships, even though not 1km away was a Formula 1 paddock and a team we had access to fairly regularly. I find that pretty comforting...
...actually, it means we haven’t lost our passion. We eventually turned off the lights, closed the door and left. We drove back to the hotel and had a candlelit dinner for two to finish off the day, ready to hit the track tomorrow. Living the dream wasn’t far wrong.
