Strange title I know.....but for those of you with an iPhone 3GS...avoid it like the plague!! It will try and download itself when you plug the phone into iTunes for an update. Take my advice, don't download it and set it to NEVER download!! It completely screws your phone and then you have to get a new one! Apparently there is a way back to the original software, but unless you happen to be Adrian Newey it's a bit of a long shot!

So the BTCC weekend has passed into history now and it feels like we are on the homeward stretch of the season. A big thanks to Neil for volunteering to organize the party of 30 of our finest boys in blue and associated hangers-on, you did a great job and i hope they all made it home safely and will be back to grace us with their presence again next year.Just off to restock the beer.....

Talking of next year, as you are aware, Silverstone are forging ahead with the new pit lane and paddock, which is causing us some headaches in terms of a plan for the future. We are still hopefully of a mutually acceptable outcome and it does appear to be getting a little closer, so please rest assured that as soon as we know anything - you will. 

Seems like ages since the last GP, mainly because it is ages. Spa this weekend, and my money is on a Ferrari/Red Bull battle.I would love to see Lewis and Jenson up there, but I think it'll only be the potential of rain that allows their current McLaren's to challenge.

It all seems to have gone very quiet with factory closures and summer breaks, so lets hope they come back with a bang and a cracking race.

The LMS is the next event on our schedule and the last car event of the year for us, looking forward to seeing the usual CD 'groupies' that tend to hang around the murky world of sportscars and GT's at either end of the season. They are a funny bunch, only come out when the racing goes on forever and will never be seen photographing a car that has no mudguards! But one thing about them...they are completely devoted to their sport, none of this F1 glamour, just a roof and damn good racing....long, long, long, long, long races interspersed with Classic Dreams coffee and biscuits!!

After the LMS I am off down to the Goodwood Revival on Sep 17th for my annual days holiday. You think I am joking....One day off per year and he goes motor racing!!! Yes saddo that I am!! If you have never been to the Goodwood Revival, I have one piece of advice......GO!! It's the most amazing event from every perspective, you simply cannot beat it. I am just glad that I don't have to work, so I can enjoy the racing!!

Well it's time to go and chase Elaine around the park for an hour or two....she runs and moans and I faithfully trail behind making sure she has plenty of water and motivation....10k's of sheer pleasure!!

MT

4th August 1.10pm.....Silverstone......cleaning the suite......again!!

Another great weekend of bike racing is over, the WSBK was a brilliant event. If you get chance to watch the highlights on Eurosport or Channel 4, do watch it. British riders took all 5 top places in round 2 and all the races were really close.

It's funny when you look at two events and see that the WSBK is based on road going motorcycles and provides amazing racing, for a bike that probably costs £100k to produce. You then look at F1 where a car costs £500k or more to produce and have stratospheric running costs and yet if you watched the Silverstone WSBK and the Hungarian GP, I defy anyone to say that the Hungarian GP provided better racing.

Bike racing is my number two choice, when it comes to Motorsport, anything with 4 wheels is generally first, but if it hadn't been for the Renault Lollipop man having a really bad day - along with Rosberg's wheel man, then the GP would have been pretty damn dull. 70 laps and what happened.....the only excitement was the 'Schumacher chop' and that could have been fatal, so not very clever Michael.....if you are reading this...which I am sure you do!!:)

So what's going to happen to spice up F1? In reality probably nothing, the 'spectacle' seems to be enough to keep millions of people happy every other weekend, but it can't go on forever and maybe the F1 boys can learn something from the bikers? I don't understand why they don't just stop playing with all these wings, just leave the advertising space as it is, but sets the wings so that they don't produce any downforce, same on every car. That should help the car-on-car passing problem.  

Bit of a break now from making coffee, couple of weeks before the BTCC event on 22nd August, which gives me time to do yet more cleaning....so on with the rubber gloves and Fairy Liquid here I come!!

Back soon....with tales of  my nightmare iPhone....

MT

Good question....what is happening, no blogs for months!! Well June & July happen to be the busiest time of the year for Team CD, hence the lack of updates.

 In 6 weeks we have had the Moto GP, F1 GP, Silverstone Classic and then this weekend we have the World Superbike Championship....talk about 'full on'....

So that's my excuse for being unable to type, it's been an amazing time and will take me all night to fill you in on the events, people, coming and going's, staff etc etc. Enough to say that we have had a great time at all the events, but just a few thank you's....

Moto GP - Chris, Tony and all the guys from the North of England, thanks for the business. Alan and Bradley Smith for their help in keeping our guests happy and well done Brad on your 3rd place at Silverstone....great race!! All the staff from the Moto GP, you know who you are.

British GP - All our customers over the 3 days, we couldn't do it without you!! We would be bankrupt.....but a big thanks to Tubbs, for his usual commitment and hard work in sorting out the 'usual suspects'. Again a big thanks to the staff, including Tom & Karl - CD Security and Emma, for hanging on in there despite our obsessive cleaning!! Also a special thanks to Sean, Steve and all the guys/girls from Aspire, the catering was magnificent.

Silverstone Classic - What a great weekend. Relaxed, great weather, great racing and great guests. Busy day Saturday, but family and relaxed day on Sunday, along with Elaine's birthday. Never seen so much cake in my life...God I feel fat!! Three important things:-

1/New sausages - MEGA!

2/New staff - You were all great - Alex, Ollie, Amy and Becky - superb!!

3/Caterers - thanks for the birthday cake for Elaine, great surprise and as usual she cried her eyes out!!

Oh and one more thankyou to Martin the bag piper...kept us all on our toes...just as we were falling asleep.If you ever want to hire a Bag Piper for an event he's your man - www.pipergram.com - excellentt!

So on to the WSBK, full house this weekend, can't wait! We always enjoy the bikers, although the suite ends up looking like an advert for a motorcycle accessory shop, when they all 'de-rig' on arrival! Should be a great weekend, weather is looking good too.

So F1 - Team orders...what do you think? I have to say I don't think team orders are a big issue, becuase it goes on all the time, as Mr DC was saying on TV. However I think there are times to be obvious (think Mark Webber's radio broadcast at Silverstone) and there are times when you should do things discreetly and this was done far too blatantly. I can imagine that Rob Smedley, got a good old slap on arrival back in the motor home!

I think the big issue is actually more to do with the rule makers, this is a rule that's just not policeable, so why bother, just give up and let them do what they want......or simple solution...ban radios....problem solved!! Surprised that EJ didn't come up with that solution! Wasn't he good dragging Dominicali across the pit lane...GO Eddie!

I must have been asked a million times over the last 6 weeks...'where will you be next year?'.....well in simple terms at this stage we don't actually know. However wheels are in motion, although slowly, and I hope that by the end of August we will have it all sorted.

In the meantime, I am working on the new 2011 website...looks cool, even if I do say so myself! 

Catch up again soon.

MT

Yes.....I am alive.....and there will be another blog.....very,very soon!! 

MT

Bravo to all who came to play this weekend! 

Hope you all relaxed and enjoyed!

Yes, Yes..my fans I am back....really cannot believe I am now receiving ‘Blog’ requests...I have been asking myself is Matt just boring you all-LOL LOL!!!!   Firstly, Andy reply to your request, I am back but unfortunately I am unable to download photos to the blog, but this maybe a good thing really! Love to all in Ireland and see you in September for the LMS. Kath, thanks for your request, great to see you revisiting us & yes, will try and blog all the gossip!    Yes, Gary will continue with my blogs full of motor racing news-LOL!!! Flippancy!!!!     Mr P, Blogging at your request, where is the blog you promised!?!   The list is endless... will try to keep you all updated!  Matts sulking as he has had no requests,... yes, thats none!

To so many ‘Thanks for coming back!’ great to see you all and catch up at the MOTO GP!  Only one problem time beat us...you know what they say when you are having fun .........  but many are returning to other events through out the season, so gossip more then! I mean catch up..lots more playtime!!

Also, to all the new faces, great to get aquainted and hope you enjoyed the ‘Classic Dreams’ experience. Plus, cannot forget my coach party of Geordie friends-wonderful to see you all and listen to your tales, always a pleasure and super fun!!!  

We also, had a great team with us this weekend!  Thanks to Alex, Emma, Kelly, Harry & Shelley..you all did an amazing job!   As Matt would say ‘thanks to the ‘’A’’ team and ‘’B’’ team , we will just humour him! then he goes away-LOL!  Oh course, not forgetting our super door attendants, well, more like paddock entertainment, direction kings, crèche facilities etc etc.. Tom & Karl, fab job as always, nothing too much trouble!!   Karl-we all loved the sunglasses and yes, you really needed them to fend of Toms glow, sorry I mean sun tan..bronzen hunk!!!!

Moto GP was great, just a shame Mr R wasn’t around, fancy breaking a leg-how inconvenient!!!   I just love his fooling around and wild ways and of course his racing or is it riding?!?  Got in a pickle at the weekend with drivers and riders, all very complicated!

I can’t believe we are again approaching the ‘Grand Prix’, where does the time go????  We are now busy preparing for this event, so looking forward! Well worth it!!!   So many thoughts, crowds, flags, Jenson & Lewis (our boys!), the noise-WOW WOW!!! To mention just a few.. Have to calm down and chill, just excited!!! Soon be here-Oh yes...did I mention I had met Mr Hamilton............Matt, wont let me continue, just jealous-LOL!!!    

Sad new for Classic Dreams this weekend as Stacey from Aspire  catering informed us that after the GP2010 she will be off to pastures new – weep, weep... she will be so missed and does an amazing job for CD, team and customers.  Stacey recent had a new addition to her family, wonderful baby boy and she will now have more quality time with her family..but as Matt quoted, there will be no escape as now Stacey will be available for all events and will be a guest of CD with Matt waiting on Stace-LOL!! Sight to be seen, watch this space!!

Also, we want to wish Tracey, Paul & Paige, our very long standing customers but now great friends, good luck in their new venture of moving to Florida.  Paul, I know you said you will have the Indy 500 & Daytona 500, but you will miss the CD experience! & more to the point we will definately miss you, there will be no late late requests, like day before GP, can I have tickets...or confirming numbers of your parties attending CD then extending and extending –LOL LOL.

What will we do....& Monaco will not be the same without you!!!!     Seriously, you are wonderful people and we wish you all the luck and good fortune!!   Really looking forward to the shindig....party, party..  (When I see you at the Grand Prix will give you the dates of the Florida hols I need next year-LOL!!)

Also, on a serious note as I am now on this avenue of thought, I would like to thank ‘Mr CD’ just for being ‘MR CD!!!!’.  He is an amazing, gifted, wonderful guy, just the best!  Matt, gives his customers 110% and after the Moto GP he received many, many appreciation emails and I would like to say thanks for your time in putting words to paper (if it was, should I say type to email) as I so think he deserves this!!!    He is incredible & so proud of him!

As always, thanks for visiting ‘Classic Chatter’ .. Take Care until next time XOXOXOXO

"Remember that life's most treasured moments often come unannounced."

Hello Everyone!

Yes, as promised my monthly news, update and oh course any gossip I have..just made it in time!  It's hard to believe it is the last day of May today-where does the time go when you are having fun!

I was trying to advise (tell) Matt how popular the  ‘Classic Chatter’ is - since my last update..well my one and only of this year (So Far) so many people have commented...frightening..

So all of you..and you know who you are... a BIG hello and thanks for tuning in!

Well, the GTs was just great!!  So good to see so many faces!!  New and old clients, friends, colleagues-hangers on etc etc –only joking...I had forgotten how social  it is- loved catching up on everyone's news!  One big problem I just didn’t have enough hours for all the chat and gossip!  Think this is now stressing Matt (well, he will never stress but as close as Matt gets to stress!!).  Now he can see that Mrs CD has made so many relationships he is concerned he will have to do some work-LOL!!!

Oh course, great to welcome all new faces to Classic Dreams!  & wonderful to see our old friends. , plus Aspire staff, suite holders, entertainers the list is endless.  I had a good catch up with Kate & Andy from Ireland (I should really call them  Mr & Mrs Xmas-you're too kind-with many souvenirs from Ireland, especially the ‘Tayto’ crisps), great chats with our Scottish pals, Pam & John and hearing about their news from last years, hols etc. (still working on Matt to get another booked-LOL!!). Mr P, his lovely lady and his father, Robin came for coffee and chats - but so much to catch up on definitely have to make another booking in my diary! Mr P has promised he will be submitting a blog shortly..so watch this space as they say.. he greatly misses CD (well Mrs CD), as we miss him!   that's how my day continued!  Plus, must not forget Martin the bagpiper who I hope will be seeing a lot of in 2010.  The list is endless...

I would also, like to mention our friend Ken Kingston from Tipperary, who sent good wishes for the Monaco trip!  We have to agree we also, really miss the F1 testing, wish Bernie would change things back as so many loved this event...who knows stranger things have happened...

If was super to have the presence of ‘the famous Mr Steve Saunders’ in our suite - his presence threw me for a while..as thought it isn’t the Grand Prix is it???  I know how important he is now and not very often we see him...only joking Steve, good to see you as always....and obviously you know you are always welcome at Classic Dreams.

It was so good that we had an amazing pair of hands behind the counter- Kelly was a star!!!!

Also, a big thanks to all the Aspire staff as all went famously-here's to 2010!

We are now planning for the Moto GP..come on Rossi and Lorenzo.....

Just a quick line on yesterdays GP.....well, wasn’t it fun!!!   Come on Jenson & Lewis...our boys, didn’t they do a well!!!!  Did I mention that I have met both of them.........................Matt is logging me off...................................

Elaine's quotation for May..
"Some people come into our lives and quickly go.
Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to
new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom.
Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon and they stay in our lives"

Tuesday....raining....8.30am....sat in McDonalds at Leeming Bar on the A1.....it doesnt get much more glamorous than this!!

Just on the way to visit a customer in Newcastle for the day. Not sure whats happened to the sun, seems to have deserted us again, summer is over.

Had a brief trip to Silverstone yesterday to catch up with goings on and see whats new. Good news for the MGP and BGP, we have a huge 25m screen opposite, so we can all watch the race on TV as well as the circuit.

Parking is changing this year and for once it actually seems to be for the better. I little further away but with shuttle transfers so no more hiking to the suite on raceday.

 Battery is going on laptop....

Back later.

MT

One minute - Living a life of luxury in Monte-Carlo, the next living a flat-out, not enough time in the day life in Monte-Nuneaton!!

Arrived back from the GP on Tuesday afternoon, what an amazing weekend, not sure what happened in the race, it's the usual problem of having 40 guests in between you and the track/screen, can't wait to watch it on TV.

Lots of people to thank for the weekend, Dean, Rob and all their crew, Graeme & Julie ( we really do owe you one!! ) and everyone else in the hotels, restaurants and everywhere that we stayed, worked, played and generally had a good time.

Our small - but select - group of clients had a fantastic time ( so they tell me! ) enjoying everything that Monaco had to throw at them, including a 700 euro bottle of gin....ouch! The weather was amazing and I am sporting a rather nice tan, well it's not exactly an all over, no white bits tan, but my face is a dirty colour, so that'll do.

So what was the downside to the weekend....there must be one....well no, actually the only problem was that with all the walking you have to do, between various coach / train stations and hotels, I lost all feeling below the knees by Saturday night and by Sunday, it was below the neck! But who cares, I sat in the Cafe de Paris on Monday morning, decent coffee, sun shining, Casino Square and the Hotel De Paris in front of me and thought...it doesn't get much better than this!

We are already receiving enquiries for Monaco 2011, so the planning starts all over again....bring it on!!!

Next on the agenda for the hardworking CD staff is the Moto GP in 4 weeks time, lots of preparation work to do for that, so as I said back to reality....blog again soon.

In the meantime......

On Williams-Renault's new design - The driver's position will be more horizontal than last year. It will be like lying in a bath with your feet on the taps, but not as comfortable!

David Coulthard (1995)

Bank Holiday Monday.......sun is shining and I am sitting here pondering what to right about...

The elections are driving me mad, it's a permanent state of blue, yellow and red every time I even point the remote at Sky News. I would like to think that it will all be over in the next 3 days, but i have a horrible feeling we are going to have a full 'HD' aftermath event for weeks to come!!

Why on earth anyone feels the need to watch Gordon Brown in HD is beyond me!! The stupid thing is that we have all the glamour and excitement of the F1 World Championship in Mono-Vision or whatever the non HD version is called. I really can't believe that Bernie can't afford the camera's so if anyone can please explain this to me, get in touch.

Just back from a great day out at the FIA "World" GT Championship yesterday, really nice to catch up with all the regular guests..Andy, Kate, John, Pam, Darran, Ciarran, Richard, Owen, Patrick.......actually Patrick....isn't really a guest, but we'll add him in anyway!!

We had a superb waitress called Kelly working for us behind the Classic Dreams bar yesterday, just sometimes we are given some really great staff and yesterday was one of those days. Mind you......as a certain 9 year old pointed out......(much to my amusement :) ) we are going to have to pop down to IKEA and stock up on glasses again....I think it was just easier to smash them, than clean them.....

So what's next in the world of the CD team? Well it's off to Monaco next Thursday for the F1 GP, we have some customers arriving on the Friday and I will be making sure their every whim is catered for, as usual. Actually bit of a change this year as we are up in the fantastic Hotel De Paris/Hotel Hemitage for the weekend and I really am looking forward to it.

Now we are into the season, I'll try desperately to cling on to an update every week if possible...time will tell....

MT

One final thought....On the Monaco Grand Prix......

This is a very special race. It's the most colourful grand prix in the world, and it's really classy here, but if I don't win, I'm going to hate the damn joint.

Mario Andretti (1978)

Just a quick update folks,as I watch Liverpool try and get into the Europa League Final,and then a few hours sleep before a 3.30am ferry on Friday morning.

GT1 should have the full 24 cars,allowing for the Ford GT being replaced/repaired after it's round one accident.

GT3 is now 31 cars with entries from Audi,Corvette,Porsche,Lamborghini,BMW(B6),Ford GT,Aston Martin and Ferrari.

There is also new cars to GT3 with the BMW Z4 and Ford Mustang,sadly we have lost three fan favourites in the Dodge Viper,Jaguar and the glorious thunder of the Morgan Aero 8.

GT4 has 19 cars with entries from Aston Martin,Nissan,BMW,Ginetta,Porsche,Lotus(Evora) and two not maybe for the purists KTM X-Bow and Lotus 2Eleven.

The first two rounds of GT1 where action packed with a win a piece for Matech Ford GT and Phoenix Carsport Corvette,several teams complained of the difference in performance after the equalisation tests,particulary Nissan who had a weekend to forget.

This has been adjusted again for Silverstone with the Corvette and Maserati receiving weight penalties,Nissan,lamborghini and Aston Martin removing weight and perhaps strangely Ford GT remaining unchanged.

http://gt1world.com/

Hope to see u there.

Andy

Happy New Year 2010 !

‘Wishing you health, happiness and lots of motor racing adventures!!’

Hello Everyone, Yes, I am back my first blog of the year…. (can you believe it by popular demand…many requests….LOL!)

Hope everyone is well and looking forward to another great year of motor-racing and more importantly with ‘Classic-Dreams!’. We are so looking for forward to seeing all again.

I have decided that every blog will have a saying from Mrs CD…’Aprils Phrase’

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

..We really hope this year Classic Dreams will make you day feel really special!!

 Back again soon.

I can't believe it's a month since the last tweet/blog from me....time flies when you are having fun!!!

So the first 3 GP's are out of the way and here are my thoughts....

Bahrain - boring as hell

Australia - Amazing...wow!!!

Malaysia - More rain please!! What went wrong there, weather forecasters got it totally wrong.

Anyway after a shaky start it has now turned a corner and apart from the seemingly dominant Red Bull's tbest of the rest  are pretty close together.

The major track alterations at Silverstone are now finished and the new grandstands are going in as we speak, it massively changes the view from our suite, it used to be packed with people, now we can see countryside for miles and miles. I think that the changes are for the better and actually it places us in a good position for the season ahead.

Apparently our 'startline' campaigning has even worked and we are getting the startline back in front of the suite again very soon, which is excellent news...

Okay time to go and do some e mailing...back again soon.

MT 

It has been announced today the US F1, one of the four new teams in F1 have pulled out of this years championship. Not really a great surprise, it's been on the cards for a while. Lets hope that Stefan GP and our old friend Jacques Villeneuve get chance to do their stuff.

Also just had this press release from Silverstone:-

For Immediate Release

03 March 2010 Silverstone ‘General Admission’ race day tickets sold out for 2010 F1 British Grand Prix.

So for those of you that haven't booked yet, it's either a vastly overpriced plastic seat...or a fantastic value VIP hospitality package with Classic Dreams.....I know what I would do!!

Sitting in a hotel100 milesNorth of Glasgow.....it's snowing yet again and I have to catch a plain back to sunny Brum this evening.....joy!! I was at the suite yesterday and Silverstone looks like bomb site, apart from the main straight outside the suite. All the work is done there, just confused about where the grandstands are going to go, when they put them back.

It won't affect our viewing, but I have a feeling that there is going to be a lot of disgruntled grandstand ticket holders this year. From what I can see they are going to be sat at least 20 yards or more further back from the track....not good!

 The good news is that ths slight kink in front of our suite, is now going to be a mega bike racing corner, i reckon about 120 - 140 miles per hour, by the time the Moto GP bikes get to us, and seriously leaning over, not quite knee down, but almost...bring it on!!!

 More updates as the Silverstone Snow abates!

Matt

The revised track had originally been designed with MotoGP in mind, but when Silverstone regained its F1 date following the collapse of Donington Park's grand prix bid, the Northamptonshire track began considering whether to switch F1 to the new circuit as well.

It has now confirmed that Formula One Management has approved the use of the Arena Grand Prix layout from this year's British GP.

Doesn't actually effect our guests, but good news all the same, will generate a lot of interest.

Roll on July!!

For all you people reading this from the world's warmer countries, it was quite heartening to see that it was raining in Spain for the F1 testing today, here's the times:-

 
Pos Driver              Team           Time           Gap   Laps
 1. Nico Rosberg        Mercedes       1m20.927s              57
 2. Sebastien Buemi     Toro Rosso     1m21.031s   +0.104     84
 3. Nico Hulkenberg     Williams       1m22.243s   +1.316    118
 4. Fernando Alonso     Ferrari        1m22.895s   +1.968     88
 5. Kamui Kobayashi     Sauber         1m23.287s   +2.860     55
 6. Jenson Button       McLaren        1m24.947s   +4.020     68
 7. Vitantonio Liuzzi   Force India    1m24.968s   +4.041     71
 8. Vitaly Petrov       Renault        1m25.440s   +4.513     27
 9. Mark Webber         Red Bull       1m26.502s   +5.575     50
10. Timo Glock          Virgin         1m38.734s  +17.807      5

MT

Ferrari finished the first weeks testing of 2010 at the head of the field...question is, will they stay there?

Difficult to tell at this stage, my money is on McLaren for the first race, with Mercedes a very close second...

So stick my neck out and here is my top 3:-

1/Hamilton

2/Button

3/Schumacher

Now do I go and put £10 now?

Guess I have to, I'll let you know the odds later.

MT.

ok so we ditch the iPhone tweets.....doesn't work!!

It's time for the blog to swing back into life....

It has to be a good month.....okay maybe more since I was able to update you on life at Classic Towers. Well you will be pleased to know that after a very quiet and somewhat stressful run up to Christmas, with the whole Silverstone debacle, we are back on course.

We have revamped the website with all the new events, Monaco is now up there as well, some fantastic packages for the Hotel De Paris and Hermitage Hotel, more of which later. Last week Silverstone announced that they have won back the World Superbikes from the now bankrupt Donington Park, so we have a full house of bike events.   

Anyway I have decided that I am going to take on Twitter at their own game, so the blog is now going to become....wait for it......Classic Tweet.....what do you think? Basically I am going to do lots of little 'tweety blogs' rather than big, enormous long 'blog, blogs'. The reason behind this.....my lack of ability to keep the damn thing updated!!

So starting tomorrow...the tweets will commence...and you can follow them here. I do have a Twitter account, but this is much more fun, struggling to get the admin site to work on my iPhone!!

Tomorrow I am off to Huddersfield for the day, meeting some important clients and then Newcastle upon Tyne for an evening of gambling and drinking with another customer...hey it's almost like being at Silverstone!!

Thanks for reading and 'tweetsville' here we come..

Matt 

Dear All,

We trust this email finds you in good health and winding down from the hectic 2009 motor racing season.

The majority of you, we imagine are entering into the festive activities of present buying, turkey ordering and fighting with those errant Christmas tree lights - that never work after 12 months in the loft!!

Under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t be bothering you at this time of year.  However, you may have heard the breaking  news today that Silverstone and Bernie Ecclestone have finally reached agreement - Hooray! To host the British Grand Prix for 2010 and many years beyond.

To say that we have been in "limbo" would be a mild understatement.

Those of you that have previously called to discuss next year's events, will be aware that the British Grand Prix is our key fixture.  So I am pleased to confirm that we are now moving forward with our 2010 plans for the Silverstone Paddock Suites.  However, unfortunately we have had to move out of our Donington Park suites, due to the current financial plight they find themselves in.

We also have a fantastic new range of hospitality packages and locations available in Monaco this year.  These include the Hotel De Paris and the Hermitage Hotel for the Monaco Grand Prix.  New for 2010 is  the Monaco Historic event, which runs through the streets of the principality, two weeks prior to the Grand prix.

We have a new, highly efficient and knowledgeable tour host for this classic event to make sure that your every need is catered for. Our Monaco website www.classicdreamsmonaco.com will be live on January 4th, will all the event details and pricing for our multitude of new VIP venues.

As you can imagine, the next few weeks are going to be very busy, now we have the green light for next year's racing calendar.   Although we do not have a price list available today, we will have a complete event calendar and price list ready to send to you this weekend.

Unfortunately,  due to the time restrictions, caused by the ongoing GP saga, we will not have the opportunity to produce a printed brochure this year. However, all the details will be on our highly popular website at www.classicdreams.co.uk, where you will be able to book your event tickets online.

I will be available on the telephone all day tomorrow (Tuesday) if you want to reserve places at the events listed below. Alternatively, please send an e mail to matthew@classicdreams.co.uk and as soon as the prices are released I will call you to confirm the booking.

Many thanks for your continued support and we look forward to a fantastic years racing in 2010.

Regards

Matt & Elaine

Silverstone Calendar of 2010 events - Provisional

Monaco Calendar of 2010 events - Provisional

Quite literally the million dollar question.........well I still have no idea.......but one of our customers thinks he knows......

Picture the scene…………..

A rather doubtful, non forthcoming and economic bloke from the midlands and a sly old fox who wears wire rim glasses. Sure that they will use the age old phrase of ‘oh yes you have’ followed by the retort of ‘oh no I haven’t’. Sounds rather too cliché for me but if in doubt use what works I suppose or rather the longer it goes on the more expensive it will become for all.

Second thoughts…………rather they didn’t bother doing this in public (or at all) and just got on with making a decision of where.

Thanks Richard.....

Kept me emtertained, whilst I am busy waiting....if that makes sense!!

Matt.

Back again and only 1 week between blogs....frightening!!!

Despite the fact all our car racing events for the year are over, there seems to be lots of news around at the moment. Just heard that Lotus is going to be back in F1 next year, with ex Toyota, Force India and loads of other places – Mike Gascoyne as technical director and a load of Malaysian money. Should be interesting...wonder if they will be British Racing Green with a yellow stripe....

BMW have just been snapped up by some Swiss guy, who obviously has a shed load ( or chalet load ) of cash, interestingly though, the FIA have now passed the 13th grid slot over to Lotus. This means that officially BMW can’t enter the championship next year, even if they wanted to. Apparently the FIA now have to get approval from FOTA to allow a 14th team into F1 for 2010.

Just think about that for a minute.....that means 28 cars next year....WOW!!!! we normally get the last row of the grid in front of the Silverstone suite...well not anymore....we are going to have the last four or five rows of the grid now!!! I am making a massive assumption here of course....that Donington Park don’t have £25 million pounds worth of guarantees in place in the next two weeks.

Mr Ecclestone has stated that the contract for the F1 GP has a finite deadline of the end of this month and if Mr Donington boss man, doesn’t come up with the cash...it’s over!!

Breaking news today.....I have just had an e mail offering us our existing Donington Redgate suite for next year.........now that might not sound very exciting, but it means that they have no intention ( or cash ) to knock down the current suites at Redgate. So much for the grand plans to build posh new ones and turn into a 21st Century venue....

I tell you something, if Bernie sees the state of those suites and toilet blocks at Donington, he is going to think that Silverstone is like Buckingham Palace....the expression ‘out of the frying pan....’ comes to mind.

One thing is for certain folks.....none of our trusty customers will have to endure the Redgate Grand Prix 2010 nightmare with Classic Dreams....because we won’t be there.

It really makes you stop and think, what is Mr Ecclestone up to......??? So here’s Matt’s thought’s....it won’t be long now until DP run out of time and money, then what happens? Well I am guessing that there must be some sort of penalty clause in the GP agreement which means Mr Gillett’s company gets their backsides sued, effectively putting them out of business.

Then what? Well Mr E is big friends with a certain Donington Park circuit owner – Tom Wheatcroft. I have heard that he is not very well at the moment and that is a great shame, because he is Mr Donington as far as I am concerned...anyway...what if Mr E and Mr W got together for a 2011 GP, with Mr E doing the funding.......

The FIA recently announced a provisional calendar for 2010 –

March 14        Bahrain (Sakhir)
March 28        Australia (Melbourne)
April 4         Malaysia (Sepang)
April 25        Turkey (Istanbul)
May 9           Spain (Barcelona)
May 23          Monaco (Monte Carlo)
June 6          Canada (Montreal)
June 27         Europe/Mediterranean (Valencia)
July 11         Britain (Donington Park) or Europe (Silverstone)
July 25         Germany (Hockenheim)
August 1        Hungary (Hungaroring)
August 22       Belgium (Spa-Francorchamps)
September 5     Italy (Monza)
September 19    Singapore (Singapore)
September 26    China (Shanghai)
October 10      Japan (Suzuka)
October 24      Brazil (Interlagos)
November 7      Abu Dhabi (Yas Marina)

Notice that Silverstone is on the calendar....as the ‘European Grand Prix’ ...why? Well presumably Donington have brought the naming rights as part of the package. So if Mr G’s company goes bust when he is sued, the British GP could still stay at Donington, but Silverstone effectively get the race.

So there’s my thoughts, time will tell.

Anyway whatever happens I will keep you informed over the next few weeks about Classic Dreams 2010.

Oh and by the way....GO JENSON!!!!!

Hello,

Just a short preview folks,the LMS reaches it's final weekend of the year.

We have 40 entries in total,11 in LMP1,12 in LMP2,3 in GT1 and 14 in GT2,lookout for the Gulf Aston Martin in LMP1 which should win the overall championship,the GT1 battle is sadly between only three cars,Corvette C6R which will win the title and a Saleen S7R and Gigawave bringing the Aston Martin DBR9 out for one last run and making it's LMS debut before the GT1 class is restricted in 2010 and which may not return in this championship,although in FIA GT most of the current GT1 can return next year with restrictions to bring them down  to the new generation of cars.

In GT2 there is 14 cars,8 Ferrari 430's,4 Porsche 997GT3's and single cars from Spyker and the gorgeous Aston Martin Vantage GT2,with this class being very closely contested.

I hope everyone has a great weekend and the weather is as forecasted,sorry the preview was not up to usual quality.

See You There

Andy

Not sure where to start with this one, do I start with the Force India qualifying on pole position? The Force India chasing the Ferrari all the way at Spa? The Force India driver on the podium? Fisichella the Force India driver expected to jump ship and drive for Ferrari?

Or

The fact that Force India may just go and win the Monza GP next weekend!!!

I am guessing that the odds for Fisi winning are probably about evens now, because he could probably do it in the white & green car or the red car!!!!!

What a season, Honda back from the dead....Schumacher almost back...but not quite and still Jenson in truly ‘British’ fashion is trying to throw away the World Championship after storming into the early lead. C’mon Jenson....we know you are only playing with us!!!

Anyway I have a sure fire way for Jenson to take the championship, which is simple when you stop and think about it......Fisi goes to Ferrari and Jenson replaces him at Force India....job done!!!!!

Not only do we have the Indians, doing their stuff, but our Lewis is back in the fight aswell, Mclaren seem to have chucked everything possible at the silver cars to try and up the game, and it’s working. Shame they are talking about dumping Heiki though, seems like  a good team player and almost as fast as Lewis. I guess that Mr Whitmarsh knows what he is doing though.

So the BTCC at Silverstone was last weekend and what a great day it was on Sunday. The usual completely unpredictable weather played it’s part, with the boss and me arriving at 6.30am in glorious sunshine, which had turned to rain by 12....forget global warming at Silverstone, it’s always damn well freezing!!

A great bunch of guests for the day, who entered into the spirit of alcohol and motor racing!! Well that’s what they pay for, so go for it!! Pete and Val, our long suffering customers who moved to Cyprus last year ( to get away from us ) were back in all their glory. Suntanned from top to toe and looking far too relaxed with life. Pete had a birthday last week, an age he wasn’t divulging, so it was cake all round, although I am not sure that the ‘I am the stig’ sticker was that convincing Pete!!!

Just a week to go now before the last car racing event of the year, with the Le Man Series 1000km race on Sunday 13th.  Not sure what to expect from this one, no Audi & Peugeot this year, so may be good, could have an Aston Martin 1,2,3 as in the Nurburgring. Our trusty Irish correspondent, Andy is coming down for the weekend ( with his mother!! You’ll recognise Kate if you are coming – her mouth never stops moving!! ) so we may even get several blog updates!!!

Breaking News.....just heard that Fisi is definitely going to Ferrari for the last races of 2009.....so Jenson....you had better get VJ’s mobile number in your speed dial fast!!!!!

More later....... 

It’s strange....I was expecting a flood of complaints...Where’s our blog!!...Why no blog!!!!.....Bring back the blog!!! I guess that you are all too busy watching the F1 season unfold to actually spend time writing in asking silly questions!

I wonder if a lack of blogs is called ‘blog starvation’ or some other medical term, like ‘blogpoxia’ or ‘blogwithdrawitis’ anyway the main thing is...we are back!

I am conscious that for the one or two readers that we have, the 6 week wait has been unbearable, so I apologise!! For the rest of you, this is all new anyway so you probably haven’t missed me!

The truth is that from just before the British Grand Prix until last week, it has been absolute chaos...not sure if I should advertise that to our customers, but what the hell. As Patrick has mentioned already the Grand Prix was amazing, not sure how the race went, as usual I didn’t see any of it! From an organisational perspective it was spot on, we had the best staff that I have ever had the pleasure of working with, the customers were great (even the slightly inebriated ones!), the weather was good....it was just great!

Sometimes in your working life, things come together so well that you have to sit back and say that you couldn’t possibly have done any better and this was one of those rare moments. We well and truly peaked, in fact we hit the Everest of peaks and nearly two months later, it still feels good!

After the GP we moved into the realms of the Renault World Series and once again 80,000 people descended on Silverstone for a great family day out, luckily not all in the Classic Dreams suite, although it would have been nice!! After that we had a couple of weeks run up to the Silverstone Classic and on the same weekend the Moto GP at Donington.....

Well I can assure you that there was an element of stress over the Twynhams household in that build up. I should point out that after the GP we sadly had to make Patrick redundant, the ongoing saga of whether there will be a GP next year or not has a major impact on our finances. Normally we would be in a situation to work through the winter knowing what to expect financially in the spring, but the current scenario doesn’t allow that. I could write a million words about how badly I think Donington are handling the inevitable switch back to Silverstone...but that’s another story. Patrick you are missed and if anyone out there has a vacancy I can recommend a hard working, motorsport loving guy that will be a great employee, so give me a call.

Anyway back to the ‘Matt in one place’ and ‘Elaine in the other – on her birthday’ story....so I spent Saturday at the Classic, while Elaine entertained the troops for the Moto GP qualifying day. After a very nervous start and lots of mobile phone death threats...if you ever leave me on my own again.....kind of thing, she breezed through it. In fact we had more compliments for that one day at Donington than any other event we have staged! All I got from Silverstone was a complaint...great!!!

So we swapped over on the Sunday and I managed to successfully keep 50 plus people happy (no complaints as yet!) for a cracking Moto GP race day, whilst Elaine lived it up at Silverstone, with our Classic fans. Over the two venues we looked after almost 200 guests and I think it was best described as ‘somewhat fraught’ but with ‘better than expected results’. The good news is that the Moto GP will be at Silverstone next year and so there will be no clashing dates. Phew!!!!

A big thank you must go to Mum & John who supplied all the catering at the Moto GP event after Donington’s caterers proved to be not too our liking. I am sure that they have gone back into retirement now, although they won’t answer my calls anymore...so who knows!! I do have a little thank you treat planned for them....more of that later.

It’s pretty quiet on our side at the moment, the F3 event is next Sunday, we have a small group in from one of the leading F3 teams, who shall remain nameless. Then two weeks later the BTCC, followed by the LMS and the finale BSB event on September 27th.

Currently we are in negotiations with Silverstone for 2010, to try and work out a package that will be financially viable for us, without the usual Grand Prix revenues. Not an easy task for both sides, but I am sure it will all work out well in the end and we’ll be greeting you at the top of the stairs as usual next year.

Run out of time now, but there is still so much to talk about, Hamilton’s win, Renault’s exclusion and a name that I never thought would appear in the blog, Michael Schumacher!! Wow that’s going to be one to watch!! So I am going to attempt to do another blog over the weekend and keep things a little more up to date in the off season.

Bye for now.

MT.

‘Save Our Silverstone’ seems the right title for this blog!

I just don’t know where to start to describe the British Grand Prix. We had a fantastic time looking after all our wonderful guests who attended over the 3 days.

We were anxious about entertaining 270 guests over the weekend; we wanted to ensure that they all had a great time, so we made sure that everything was covered. This meant that we went over all the suites with a fine toothcomb beforehand. It was definitely well worth it because the weekend went very smoothly.

I have to thank our great team of staff who did an awesome job at keeping the suites looking tidy and making sure our guests were well looked after. Considering that they had never worked together before they bonded to form an incredible team. Now the race: it was a shame that Jenson couldn’t top it off with a Brit on the top of the podium, but it means the championship should be close this year with Red Bull’s Vettel closing the gap on the Brawns. The Red Bulls certainly seemed to have improved the most out of the two top teams, so the Brawns will have to start raising their game in Germany.

One of my highlights from the weekend was the bagpiper who came into the suite and went out on to the balcony to play happy birthday to one of our guests. I must thank Tom and Karl who were working on the door who managed to get him to come into the suite.

After a day off on Monday, I was back at Silverstone on Tuesday to clean the suites ready for our next event. It was very strange coming back to an empty suite and a quiet Silverstone.

So was this the last Grand Prix at Silverstone? I think we will definitely have some kind of GP at Silverstone next year. It could perhaps come back to Silverstone if Donington fail to be ready in time. Bernie has from the start said if Donington aren’t ready then we won’t have a British GP, but it could mean that Silverstone will be labelled as the European Grand Prix.

Anyway at least we know there will only be one F1 championship after yesterdays announcements.

The teams and fans have now got what they wanted, Moseley to stand down! I wonder who will replace him, Mr Todt?

I guess we will just have to play the waiting game for now, which is a pain for us because so many of our guests want to come back next year!

I must say thanks again to all our guests and staff for making a great weekend to remember! Mr P

The British GT grid moved up to sunny Scotland for the seventh/eighth rounds of the championship.Sadly for various reasons including a clash with the Le Mans 24 hr race,there was only 12 cars entered,8 in GT3 and 4 in GT4,this was then reduced by a further two leaving only two in GT4,despite this there was still a quality look to the event on the 1.3 mile circuit.In GT3 there was four Ferrari 430's,Dodge Viper,Ascari KZ1R,Mosler MTR900 and a Ford GT with both cars in GT4 being Ginetta G50's.

Race One was on the Saturday and the Ascari of identical twins David/Godfrey Jones had a point to prove following their win here in 2008 been taken away due to overtaking under a yellow flag,David lead from pole position while been put under severe pressure from Dan Brown's Mosler,these two pulled out a small gap from the rest and after the pit stops the lead stayed the same,David handed over to Godfrey and Brown handed over to the slower Gregor Fisken.On lap 51 of 66 the safety car was called to remove debris and on the restart Jones left the pack behind the Mosler of Fisken lost out to the Wilcox/Burton Ferrari and Daoudi/Lester Ferrari to eventually finish fifth behind the Wilkins/Scott Viper,in GT4 the only finisher was Jody Firth driving solo in the Ginetta after the Stinton Ginetta only lasted six laps.

Race Two was on the Sunday lunchtime and the predicted bad weekend weather arrived at exactly the wrong time just as the cars where lining up on the grid,all where on slicks and as the rain started the cars followed the safety car for a few laps before they all pitted for full wets due to the conditions,this heavy rain lasted for twenty minutes and in that time the Matt Griffin Ferrari had stayed in 1st place from pole up to lap 30 before Godfrey Jones's Ascari passed as the track was drying,the Ascari had problems with the clutch and broke the pit lane speed limit and again during the penalty drive through,which handed the lead back to Duncan Cameron who had taken over from Griffin only for the drivetrain problem to resurface on lap 54 of 58 to hand the lead to the Viper of Wilkins/Scott who won the race ahead of a consecutive 2nd place for Wilcox/Burton's Ferrari and in third the Ferrari of Hyman and guest driver Balbiani,the Jones twins recovery to fourth place which enabled them to lead the championship,with the unfortunate Cameron /Griffin classified in 7th place ahead of the Mosler which lost four laps in the gravel trap,in GT4 Stinton/Marsh finished ahead of Firth who lost his brakes and ended up in the gravel trap.

That's all for now folks,next racing for me maybe BTCC Knockhill in August or LMS Silverstone in September.

For those going to the British Grand Prix this weekend have a great time and i'm sure Matt and his team will look after you.

Andy 

Life is funny sometimes.

 I guess we are like a lot motor racing teams....you go into the start of the season full of expectation and trepidation. You spend the whole winter planning, preparing every minute detail of your 'baby' and you emerge in the spring with your newly polished pride and joy, like a new parent.

Will your car be the fastest? Will your driver be the one to beat...or the one that gets beaten? Is this the season where you will make your mark and be on your way to greater things, a higher formulae or a fully sponsored works drive..?

By now you probably have those answers and if you are Jenson Button, then the sun is well and truly shining on your parade, if you are Lewis Hamilton....well....there is always last year to reflect on and next year to look forward too!

So why are we like these teams...surely we only make posh coffee!! Don’t we?

Well we are only 7 days and 19 hours away from the British Grand Prix....as Autosport’s website keeps annoyingly reminding me....and although this is only our 5^th event of the year, it feels like we have been working flat out for a year!!! Next weekend is the big one....3 days.... 12 staff......270 guests....540 meals.....1000 bottles of beer......1800 cups of coffee.....the figures are mind blowing for a company that started out just 2 years and 3 months ago, in a little yellow and blue box with 4 guests!

I am not saying that to blow my own trumpet...far from it, Classic Dreams has only been able to reach these dizzy heights, because of the ongoing hard work put in by the team. So before we dive head long into the 2009 Santander British Grand Prix I just want to say a big thank you to all the people along the way who have made next weekend possible in no particular order....

Dad, Mum, John, Mark, Roger, Andy & Roberta, Richard L., all the Aspire Team (including you Stacey!), the many waiters and waitresses that have experienced ‘Hells kitchen’, Silverstone’s team, all our colleagues up and down the pitlane for their advice!! Our customers, without whom we would be a ‘little bit stuck’ and of course Patrick for all his hard work this year.

That just leaves one person, who means more to me than the I can put into this blog, she has to put up with my ‘dynamic’ (read schizophrenic) nature, constant pushing to make this and that better, spending all her savings and then making her pay to work, using up all her holidays, by spending every waking hour in a field in Northamptonshire or Leicestershire!! Anyway you all know that she loves it really, no matter what she might tell you after a few glasses of Shiraz, none of it would be possible without her help. So my eternal thanks to Elaine, my wife, who didn’t sign up for any of this, when she said ‘yes’ 15 years ago.

So are we a Button or a Hamilton.....well if you consider only the financial aspects of this year so far, we are probably a Mark Webber....nearly, almost there but not quite. If you consider the work commitment we have made, taking on 5 suites and a yacht....we are up there with Max Mosley...fighting the FOTA bunch.

 But if you look at the most important aspect of our job....making sure you have the time of your life...well we are definitely a Jenson and Brawn....I honestly don’t think that one group of people from such varied backgrounds, could work together as well as we do and make something that just kicks the competition into touch........British Grand Prix...BRING IT ON!!!

Time for a post Monaco blog. Well, where do I start?! This was one of the most incredible motorsport experiences you could ever have.

The weekend was great and our fantastic guests (you know who you are) helped make it an event not to forget. I must thank everyone who put up with my driving on the taxi-runs, sorry if I scared anyone and sorry for the odd detour after missing the turnings!

After we picked our guests up from their hotels on the Saturday and Sunday, they put up with my driving to Cap d’Ail harbour. Once at the harbour they could relax as we waited for the speed boat to arrive into port. Some lucky guests even got to see Vettel and Buemi on their morning jog, and Rosberg getting ready to leave for the track on race day.

The speed boat transfers from Cap d’Ail to the Monaco harbour were enough to put a smile on everyone’s face. When coming into the harbour the sight of all the yachts lined up, plus the sound of twenty Formula 1 cars coming out on track were amazing.

Once aboard the yacht, named Bulldog, the location and view were brilliant, being able to see the cars exiting the famous tunnel, before braking hard to enter the challenging Nouvelle chicane and then accelerating hard towards the fast left-hand Tabac corner.

The weather was certainly on our side for this year’s race, and with Button bringing home the bacon the alcohol was flowing and the atmosphere was sensational. We are already drawing up plans for Monaco 2010 so watch this space…

As mentioned in my previous blog Elaine and myself had drawn the short straw, having to fly back on Sunday evening at 22.00 meaning we missed all the celebration parties. But due to a delay of 40 minutes on the flight we didn’t arrive home till 3.00am, giving us just a two hour sleep before setting off to Donington for the British Superbikes.

We both had an enjoyable time entertaining our guests at Donington on the bank holiday Monday, even though the weather wasn’t like Monaco. The day was full of exciting racing with some nasty crashes, but luckily no one was hurt too badly. We look forward to seeing all of you again at the British Superbikes round at Silverstone in August.

So, now the CD Team is focused on our next event which is the 2009 British Grand Prix. Let’s hope that we’ll have a repeat of this weekend’s weather for the GP. And remember, our plans for the Monaco GP 2010 are already underway, so stay posted!

Mr P

Hello World!!!!!

This is a very brief note to say ‘Hi’ and let you all know the ‘Classic Dream Team’ are back in Blighty!!

Anyway, I thought I had better do the blog, Matt and Patrick are just too slow!! You know how efficient us women are!!!

Well.....................................

WOW..WOW..WOW &  YES WOWWEY!!!!!!

It was more than amazing and with good old Jenson doing his stuff-AMAZING!!

It really was a wonderful weekend and I would like to say hello to all our special guests I hope you had a superb few days. 

From the feedback and comments I received it seems you were all under the same umbrella that I was – just incredible. 

My only regret is that it was over too soon and I really would of loved to chat (& party-don’t tell Big M as I was continually told you are here working!) with you all a lot more!  Just have to make up for it next year!!! Or maybe one of our coming events.

I really have to catch up with a few hours sleep and try and get back on planet earth.  So I will continue with this blog later in the week giving all the details!

Hope all is well with everyone..

Mrs Classic Dreams

Seems like ages...because it is!! It's Tuesday night 8.54pm on the evening before the CD team fly out to Monaco for our first international foray.

To say that the last few weeks have been stressful would be an understatement...actually we ( well me! ) don't really do stress. So lets just say that it has been 'character building'!! You think it's all under control and then another 'situation' rears it's head!

Well it's two late now, the yacht is in place, the customers are on their way, the F1 circus has arrived and all that is left to do is, get up at 1am to make sure we arrive at Gatwick by 4.15am.....funny when we booked the cheap flights, it seemed like a good idea....maybe after 2 hours sleep I will change my mind!

Unlike last year, when I made a miserable job of the Monaco blog, I do intend to keep this up to date over the weekend....promises, promises. At least the weather is looking hot, so Elaine won't need the eye catching plastic clothing, designed by Mr Dustbin Liner!! Anyway keep an eye out for us at the new chicane. Ours is the boat next but one to the small grandstand there, always plenty of action.

So last week we finally held our first ever event at Donington Park and I tell you now...i honestly thought it would never happen. Thanks to the 14 guests that decided to take a chance on the JCB's being able to fill in the pathetic excuse of a tunnel, so a racing licence could be granted! It turned out to be a great day although finding out that your catering supplier has been given the boot 2 days before the event, caused a few ripples in the Twynham household!! The stand in guys, D & J catering did a superb job, however it would appear that they are now out of favour and another bunch are in!!

If you are coming to the BSB event next Monday, don't panic we are now using an offsite catering company that are very efficient, so I am quietly confident.

Elaine and Patrick are on the 'red eye' flight back from Monaco on Sunday evening and will be all bright eyed and bushy tailed at 7am on Bank Holiday Monday to greet you at Donington, so please cause them as much hassle as possible!! I will of course be escorting our final guests back to the airport in Nice, to make sure that they get home safely...tough job that's why the boss has to do it!!!

So finally for today....a question...

Does anyone out there have any interest in planes? or more specifically aerobatics? Well if you do, please get in touch. Silverstone are holding the World Aerobatic Championship this year and we have 90 tickets that are burning a hole in my pocket....any ideas?

so to bed and I am going to leave you with one thought......

If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough!

P.S. thanks to Andy for the last blog...our roving GT reporter!! I owe you a Guiness!

Hello Again,

Apologies for the lateness of this issue,extra work commitments have got in the way again.This was my fourth FIA GT race at Silverstone and the last year of the current regulations before the series becomes the World Championship from 2010 onwards.Present was three cars effectively doing test runs as they are running to next year's rules and will not be challenging for the championship,two Ford GT's for the whole season and a Nissan GT-R which is only racing in four rounds,bringing the GT1 numbers up to 13 and in GT2 there is 12 and one Corvette Z06 running in class G3,the Porsche in G2 did not turn up.

Sadly there was no Aston Martin DBR9 in GT1,but last year's winners Wendlinger/Sharp returned in a Saleen S7R which was on the pace the whole weekend,along with the two Maserati MC12's of Bertolini/Bartels and Muller/Ramos,behind them four Corvette C6R's and three Saleens made up the rest of the 2009 GT1's.At the start of the race,the first three pulled away,positions not really changing until the pit stops/driver changes.The Wendlinger Saleen was the first of the leaders to pit,followed by the Muller Maserati they handed over to Sharp/Ramos respectively,but Ramos in the Maserati only had a lap before the left rear departed the car(a very rare Vitaphone mistake) forcing the safety car to join the fray,Ramos's team mate Bertolini was still out when the safety car was deployed and he was able to hand over to Bartels before the safety car came round again,he was then able to be waved past when he caught up with the safety car after some confusion,Sharp was able to pass Bartels a few laps later the Saleen gaining a second per lap,both cars pitted again and the Maserati retook the lead in the pits by one second,Wendlinger was able to retake Bertolini and then held a small lead to the end of the race,third was the Moreau/Maassen Corvette C6R,of the three new cars the Nissan had suspension damage which may have been caused by a puncture and only completed 28 laps,the Ford GT's finished 8th and 10th(and sound and look glorious) and all three can be pleased with their pace(only three seconds per lap off race pace).

In GT2 the race was won by the Porsche 911GT3 RSR of Westbrook/Collard after leader Bruni was hit by the Marc VDS Ford GT and had to retire with 10 laps to go,2nd was Russo/Perez,3rd was Kirkaldy/Bell both in Ferrari's 430GT's.In GT3 the Morgan Aero Super Sport won both races ,in GT4 Ginetta G50's won both races,overall an excellent racing weekend with hope that the GT1 class will be well represented in 2010 with Nissan,Ford and others to follow including a rumour that Lamborghini are building a new car to the new regulations.

Next racing for me British GT/Knockhill/June.

Chat Soon Andy

So we are in May now. With our first event under our belt we now have a very busy schedule ahead of us.

As the boss mentioned in her blog below the FIA GT’s was a great weekend of racing and hospitality. It was fantastic to meet the regulars of Classic Dreams and also brilliant to entertain new guests within our Silverstone suites.

We now have the BTCC to look forward to this weekend which is always a great venue for producing exciting racing. We then have the Monaco Grand Prix the weekend after as well as the British Superbikes on the Bank holiday Monday (the day after the Monaco Grand Prix). Elaine and myself will be track hopping from Monaco to Donington that weekend!!

Classic Dreams will then be full steam ahead for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. It is sure to be an amazing event and the last at Silverstone so if you want to experience part of motorsport history then you had better hurry up as tickets are going fast!

Moving on to Motorsport news, what a great result for Jenson, 4 out of 5 isn’t too bad is it…. Let’s just hope he can keep it up. The weekend also saw the return of the Peugeot 908’s to the Le Mans Series where they stamped their authority on the Aston Martins and the rest of the field by winning the 1000km race at Spa. The Le Mans 24 hours will surely be an awesome battle with Audi vs Peugeot vs Aston.

Once again I would like to thank everyone that attended the GT’s with Classic Dreams. We look forward to seeing you all very soon.

Mr P

Hello All & Happy New Year!

Just making my yearly debut  to ‘Classic Chatter’..as lots to chat about!

Today, is a feel good day with the sunshine and Jenson on pole position for the Barcelona Grand Prix!!!!    Just hope for lots of sunshine for the Silverstone, Donington and must not forget MONACO events we are hosting.   Those of you that have known me for many years - who would have thought that I would be this excited and wrapped up in the Motor Racing World!!  I do sometimes have to pinch myself to make sure it is all real!

Moving on, as you can tell from the above paragraph above, I am getting a LITTLE excited about Monaco.  It was after having chats with lots of our friends/guests/colleagues last weekend at the GT event at Silverstone, then seeing the sunshine in Barcelona this weekend and the clips of Monaco.  It is such a magical experience - the whole ambience..from the collection by speed boat in the morning to the yacht, the people watching, being so close to the cars and the track – the smell and noises...ohhhhhhhh......   and of course I will have to force myself to party!!! Obviously only a little.. nice food, sunshine (I hope), champagne.....   & lovely shops - which as you can imagine Matt hates!!!

On arrival in Monaco this year we are meeting friends in the Hotel De Paris on the Friday for cocktails & champagne and to watch the practice-I can’t wait!! 

But, back to reality....

We having to preparing and organise the Donington suites for next weekend, the BTCC event.  To our customers/friends who have reserved spaces I really hope you have a wonderful weekend and you enjoy the suites and racing.  I do not think I will be attending this event but you will be in the safe hands of the debonair Patrick and the suave, handsome Matthew (well, I just butter them up-it keeps them happy and make them feel important!)

Last weekend, was a great success!  The racing was awsome with Ryan winning and our sponsors taking over the suite for the weekend etc......

I t was a pleasure to have so many great visitors, new and old.  It’s so nice to see so many familiar faces and know they are enjoying the suite and hospitality.  Plus, again meeting lots of new people who we hope enjoyed the experience and will return.  It was such a great atmosphere and with the three suites it gives us lots of different options so everyone feels more comfortable!  We had a really good team and hope you were all looked after!!  Any complaints see the boss (this will be Matthew, only for this occasion!)

I would like to say Alistair; my Father in Law was missed by many.  For those who are not aware Alistair decide to retire from the Classic Dreams team last year, for a well earned rest.  He put in many hours a lot of hard work and commitment to make it all so special!   Thanks Again!

Well  folk, I must sign off as I have still lots of things to action and check lists to complete for next weekend at Donington, the Monaco event and obviously, not far behind the British Grand Prix!

 GO JENSON AND LEWIS BOY!!!!!

Again it was great to see lots of familiar faces last weekend and I must mention our friends who travelled from Ireland, newly engaged, Roberta and Andy ( you must bring your Mum back to the next event-we really missed her!!) and John and Pam from the Scottish lands!!! Young budding f1 photographer Ciaran and good old Dad plus, I must stress all our new guests, great people!!

I will try again write again with news before 2010!  As we have major events approaching and there will bound to be lots of stories, news and gossip!! (Matt will tell me off - I don’t mean gossip!!)

Take care until next time!

<><>Hello All,

<>Welcome to Andy's FIA GT Silverstone Preview,with the credit crunch etc news has been very slow to arrive for this bumper weekend of racing,but I will try and give a brief update of the expected weekend action.

On the card is the main event of GT1 and GT2 racing together with 27 entries,with the GT1 class comprising of 13 cars including 2 x Maserati MC12's,4 x Corvette C6R's,4 x Saleen S7 and three cars racing to the new regulations for the 2010 World Championship,two Ford GT's,and a sure fan favourite a Nissan GT-R 35 Skyline,these cars are not expected to be on the pace,but they have some quality drivers in the mix.In GT2 there is 12 entries comprising 7x Ferrari 430,4 x Porsche 997 GT3 RSR and a solo Aston Martin V8 Vantage(you will hear the scream),also in two special classes G2 a Porsche Bi-Turbo and in G3 a Corvette Z06 GT3.

In GT3 there is 33 cars confirmed,with 7 to be confirmed subject to the Panel of Stewards,so hopefully a truly quality grid of 40 cars,including brand new cars from Audi(R8LMS),BMW(Alphina B6),Ferrari(430 Scuderia) and also Ford GT,Aston Martin DBRS9,Corvette Z06,Porsche 911GT3 Cup,Lamborghini Gallardo,Dodge Viper Competion Coupe,Morgan Aero Super Sport,and hopefully the new Jaguar XKR-S subject to the Stewards Approval,sadly the Ascari KZ1R is missing this round,which would have been the 12th different car present.

In GT4 there is 21 cars confirmed,including Ginetta G50,Aston Martin N24,Nissan 350Z,BMW M3, Porsche 997,Corvette C6 and Mustang FR500c,there is 4 supersports and they are visually challenging to say the least,the Donkervoort and the KTM X-Bow.

The Lamborghini Blancpain Super Trofeo series has been withdrawn from the meeting,and there is also British F3 International Series as a support.

For further information check out this month's (May 09) Top Gear magazine(other publications are available) which has a big feature on GT3 and also a report on GT1,2 and 4.

Hopefully see you at Suite21 this weekend!

Andy 

So China here we come and has anything changed? Well Yes and No, Hamilton on top of the 1st practice session with the help of his hybrid diffuser and Button fastest in the 2nd practice session with his (now fully legal) diffuser.

Can Button make it 3 out of 3 or will his rivals have something up their sleeves to keep up with him! I think he can as the BrawnGP car is by far the quickest car on the grid. If Williams had some more experience in their driver seats then in my eyes they would be achieving great results. The Redbull and Toyota’s will be not far behind the Brawns and hopefully Hamilton can start getting some good results or else that back to back title is going to slip away!

My top 6 predictions for Sunday’s race are as follows:

1. Button

2. Vettel

3. Barrichello

4. Hamilton

5. Trulli

6. Rosberg

If anyone is looking to watch some live racing then get yourselves to Silverstone on Sunday 19th April for an action packed day of motorsport. The event was scheduled for Donington but due to their lack of a full track licence the event has moved to Silverstone (This could just happen with the British Grand Prix if their not careful!)

The event will host, The Lotus on Track Elise Trophy, the GT Cup, The Production BMW Championship and the Toyo Tires Racing Saloons. All this is for FREE as spectators will not have to pay admission entry.

Not long till our first big event at Silverstone for the FIA GT championship. I can’t wait to get the Classic Dreams season kicked off.

I suppose I had better start preparing the suites and selling some more tickets.

I shall be back next week.

Patrick

Well not exactly the 5am restart as I promised....but when has this blog ever been on time!

What a couple of weeks...I won’t go over and over all the stuff that’s gone on in detail, but here’s Matt’s version of events...

      Lewis completely loses the plot by lying to the stewards in Australia. I don’t care what you say about his racing ability – which is phenomenal – for someone who is as highly intelligent as him to make such a fundamental error is beyond belief.  My guess is that McLaren, will be fined heavily (again) if not completely excluded from the championship (again!!). As for Lewis, not really sure what is going to happen, but don’t be surprised if he doesn’t end up parting with some of his millions and his points.

      Jenson does a rain dance in Sepang. Its funny how as one star fades another starts to shine...amazing performance, even if it was only half a race. 10/10 for Jenson ( or 5/5 to be  correct )

Someone needs to give Bernie Ecclestone a good shaking and explain about the far eastern weather....even I know that it rains in the early evening in these areas. So how come Mr E, can’t read the weather forecast!! Actually I don’t really like the TV slot moving backwards, it wastes a load of time during the day, and I would prefer to be watching the race at 6am and then having the day free....maybe that’s just me!

So on to the positive stuff, before I end up in the ‘room for depressing bloggers’!! It would seem that my friends at Donington, may be about to turn a corner (get it!! ). The FIA are due to give their go ahead next week on the circuit and apparently my sources tell me that the F1 deal has been extended to 20 years, to help recoup the astronomical costs of the construction. It would also seem that the debenture scheme will be launched next week, a bit late, but as long as it happens, who cares.

Patrick and I went on a highly important business trip to Monaco last week, well someone has got to do it...hard life and all that....

We are scouting for opportunities for 2010 and boy...did we find some good stuff! Amazing balconies in Casino Square, penthouse suites overlooking the harbour and climb up from the first corner and the best bit of the day.... getting the concierge of the Hotel De Paris to park our Peugeot hire car, next to a Ferrari 599!!!

Ok so time for the biggest scam of the week.....I have just received an e mail from the F1 store, presumable a shop owned by Mr B Ecclestone Esq.! They sell all of the licensed merchandise for the F1 teams....and guess what? They have just launched the Brawn GP clothing range. Now those of you that follow F1 will know that the Brawn team are currently running with very little in the way of sponsorship or colour scheme and guess what? The official T shirt is basically white, with a small Brawn GP badge....cost £24.99!!!

So kids...save your money....go down to Asda and buy a £4.99 shirt and some crayons for 99p...it will look the same!

I should have my own website ‘Matt’s Money Saving Tips’....

More later...

One race down.....and what a race!!

It's 11pm and I have been awake since 6am ( which was actually 5am if my brain serves me correctly!! ) either way that's now 3 days of ridiculously early starts. Friday Practice on the 'red button', Saturday qualifying on the Beeb and Sunday all over the place! Tried Sky digital, BBC freeview and finally finishing up with the 'Forum' once again on the 'red button'.

The outcome of all this, channel hopping.....1.Jenson 2 Crasher ( as we know now Rubens ) and 3. Lewis!! So for those of you that read the blog on Thursday, why on earth didn't one of you tell me to put some money where my mouth is!! ( you know who you are John!! ). 

Do you think they will rename the pesky 'red button' - 'Jenson' in honour of 'one of the greatest sporting achievements in the world' ( Mr Jordans words - not mine )! It won't be quite the same pushing the 'Jenson' to get my interactive coverage, but who the hell cares.

To have two Brits in F1 2009 and both of them on the podium ( sort of ) is just ....well I am kind of lost for words...just mega! I guess that I am talking from a purely selfish business point of view, but the amount of interest in our ticket sales for the 'final' British GP has suddenly increased, after all just imagine this.....

Qualifying hour....Silverstone Saturday 20th June.....1 minute to go......Jenson's out, Lewis is out.....both on their final flyers.....IT IS GOING TO BE AWESOME!!! 

off to bed now.....back at 5am to finish...

You are probably saying...well it never went away....which is of course true!! It just had to take a bit of a vacation whilst we were getting ready for 2009.

So it’s a bit like one of the new F1 cars, bright, shiny, bit awkward looking but we will all get used to it over the next few weeks, small back end and expanding front end!!

We have Brawn GP....no Honda....we have BBC.........no ITV and so on, talk about a year of change. If this doesn’t spice up Grand Prix racing nothing will! Then last week I heard that the points system is no longer going to decide the F1 World Champion, it will come down to the guy who wins the most races. Interesting proposition......except the fact that our Lewis would have lost the championship last year and Mr Massa would be showing off his number one plate next weekend.

But no.....that has now changed as well....we are back to square one again, points make prizes! Well here is my official ‘Matt CD Blog’ prediction of what is actually going to happen this year:-

Australian GP – Winner – Jenson Button, Second – Lewis Hamilton, Third – Rubens Barrichelo and the rest will be nowhere!!

A little optimistic maybe, but that Brawn is flying, in fact it wouldn’t surprise me if we didn’t see ‘Jenson – World Champ ‘09’.

Anyway, what do I know? I thought that Donington would be hosting the Grand Prix in 2010 and that all was well with the finances, but the proposed debenture scheme has all gone quiet. I can assure you that after two weeks decorating up there, we have not seen site nor sound of any JCB’s merrily digging up foundations for a new pitlane....your guess is as good as mine!!

It’s March 25th and the first GP is only 2 days away, Monaco and the British GP seem an eternity away, but they will be here sooner than I would like, from a planning perspective. Luckily I have a great team of people around me this year, who are shielding me from the reality of the fact I am a glorified tea-boy, so keep up the good work Patrick and Elaine. Please don’t ever let me slip into that comfort zone of thinking I know what I am doing and am actually in control!!

Team work is very important in any aspect of motorsport and none more so than looking after our guests at the expanding portfolio of events we now cater for, the reason I bring this up is to remind ‘my team’ that they can also write the blog.......

Time to go....we are having a great deal of difficulty making our minds up whether to paint the new suite white or lurid green (think it’s actually lucid morning). Worryingly Patrick has paintbrush in hand and is not being monitored, so I had better go and give him some ‘team motivation’ whilst sitting back and enjoying my chocolate digestives and tea...

Back again soon....I promise....in fact this weekend, GP blog!!!

MT.

Hello everyone, let me introduce myself,

I am the latest addition to the Classic Dreams team, the ‘nice young, good looking person on the team’ as suggested by Elaine!

I recently graduated from Swansea Metropolitan University with a BSc (Hons) in Motorsport Management. Motorsport have always been one of my passions in life and from a young age I was visiting motorsport events all around the UK. Like most people’s enthusiasm for motorsport it was thanks to my Father and Grandfather for introducing me to this thrilling sport.

From the age of 16 I began working at Silverstone, on the hospitality side at the event weekends to earn some pocket money. It was and still is, a great way for a young person to be involved within the sport and most importantly, network with people established in the industry. After all, this is how I met Matthew and Elaine.

I was able to gain some valuable experience working for Mazda Motorsport Team in 2006/07, at Silverstone in the Britcar 24 hours. It had everything; adrenaline, excitement, emotion and hard work! It gave me a great insight into how a team operates before, during and after a race meeting.

Being a keen follower of sportscar and endurance racing, this year will be fantastic to have an Aston Martin LMP1 gunning for overall victory at Le Mans. My fingers are crossed for them to enter the Le Mans Series round at Silverstone!

After the last three months at Classic Dreams it has been great to put the skills I learnt at university into practice. I am still getting to grips with my role within the business but it is very enjoyable. You can not believe the work that needs to done before our first event in April. I have already been getting my hands dirty, as Matt highlighted before taking the job. The suite at Donington is in the middle of its facelift, to bring it up to the Classic Dreams standard that we and you, our customers, expect.

It is going to be a very busy year for Classic Dreams and I am certainly looking forward to being part of it.

I look forward to welcoming you to a Classic Dreams event for a memorable motorsport experience.

Roll on the season!

Patrick

Optimism...... Not a word that has been bandied about in recent months, in fact I think you will struggle to find it used in any newspaper or SKY news bulletin in the last 6 months!! However..... I have just returned from a fantastic day out at the 2009 Autosport International Show. For those of you that don’t know ( which I am sure is few and far between ), it is the largest motorsport dedicated show in the UK, in fact probably Europe and maybe even the world these days. It covers everything from autograss racing to F1 and beyond.

I guess the best aspect of the show is that it sets the scene for the motorsport year. It’s been a long, cold and depressing winter and all of a sudden you are greeted by bright lights, racing cars, girls etc etc you get the picture. Well I went along this year, as a guest of one of our hospitality customers and I came away from the show – buzzing! There must have been 20,000 people there on Saturday, all excited, all clamouring for photo’s and most importantly all SPENDING!!

It is easy to get very isolated from reality when you spend all winter away from your customer base and as Classic Dreams comes out of hibernation I was beginning to wonder whether there would be any customers left!?! But having seen the turnout at the show, I am now confident that 2009 is going to be a fantastic year....which is quite handy now that I have pawned the family jewels to support Silverstone, Donington and Monaco!!!!

You may be wondering why there has been such a long gap between the ‘blogs’, well we have been focussing on producing the new brochure and updating websites, stationery etc and I guess with Christmas and all the usual stuff I got slightly behind. But...I promise that it will be updated on at least a weekly basis from now on. Especially as our new Operations Manager – Patrick is onboard!! Little does he know...the blog is going to become his baby, whilst I live it up on a far away beach somewhere!!

So lot’s of changes in F1 this year, Ferrari have just launched their new F60 and it looks...well..strange...large front wing, small rear wing, no bargeboards etc. I am sure we will get used to the whole look over time. The main thing is whether it will improve the racing...let’s hope so.

To round off the first blog for 2009, it’s good to see Donington Park pressing ahead with the building work, now they have the planning approved for the F1 Grand Prix in 2010. It’s easy to sit on the fence and look for the pitfalls, problems and issues that may arise, but I am always reminded of a quotation that was written by Theodore Roosevelt –

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out where the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with dust and sweat and blood. At best, he knows the triumph of high achievement; if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Good luck Donington.

Hello Everyone

Its Elaine here, I am new to this, so please handle gently!

I think this will be more like a gossip column, than that boring motor racing stuff Matt writes about, more Hello and OK! than Autosport...

Well, firstly what about old Bernie’s divorce –what a shame!  I bet he wasn’t saying “what a shame about Classic Dreams” when he made his announcement on the Friday of the Grand Prix!  But.... we didn’t let him ruin the fun!  What a fantastic weekend and we had so many wonderful people in the suite.  Yes, and to finish the weekend - Lewis went and won!!!!   Tremendous!!  Go Lewis Go!!

Next year is going to be so exciting for CD!!!!   New venues plus larger suites.. a nice young good looking person on the team – sorry no offence father-in-law Alistair - you will be greatly missed, just a little bit more mature!

I always enjoyed the commentary on the ITV F1 weekend...we have gone from good old Murray Walker to Mark Blundell.....& now the BBC have introduced Mr David Coulthard & Mr Eddie Jordan!!!!  Should be fun!!!   Maybe old DC will pop up to CD for a coffee or maybe glass of champers now he’s not on the circuit!! He only used to talk to me previously on the way into the paddock as he was always booked to do a race; you know how it is... but now who knows!!!

As I must tell you all or maybe you know...i have a few friends in the paddock, did you hear about my meeting with Mr Lewis Hamilton and his Dad!  Oh, Matt’s telling me that it’s getting boring now...just jealous....but if anyone hasn’t heard my tale, happy to inform you, just ask when you are next in the suite. Pics available on request!

I think I am really losing the plot or becoming a racing fanatic without realising!!  2 yrs ago didn’t agreed to working at S/Stone but it grew on me (well really loved it-don’t tell Matt) second year kind of agreed to a second suite-which has been amazing and met some wonderful people.  Then suddenly having 3 suites at S/Stone, two at Donington and a damn great boat at Monaco... plus a few weekends ago, I ended up at Daytona Kart Circuit, Milton Keynes for fun...What is happening??  

I think I must be being brain washed... (Matt owes me – well that’s what I keep telling him-but loving it really!!)

A bit higgledy piggledy for my first blog - but that’s me!

Until the next time...

Keep safe..

Hope to see you all in the New Year at one of our events. ..

Best Wishes for Christmas and the New Year!!

The REAL BOSS of Classic Dreams

ETxxx

Well what a couple of weeks!!!!!!!!!

      In order of priority –

      1.  Classic Dreams confirms its new 2009 double suite at Donington Park

      2.Andy & Roberta (two of our long suffering customers) are finally tying the knot...

      3.Classic Dreams has a new team member

      4.Some  British guy wins a championship in a back yard in the back of beyond in Brazil

So there you have it...November in a nutshell! I am off to finish the bottle of Red wine that I am tackling, in the interests of ‘customer satisfaction’...let’s face it, if I don’t like it – you won’t!

Well it appears that our advertising strap line ‘dreams do come true’ may not just be advertising rubbish after all. I dreamt that one of the directors at Donington would get the boot and Classic Dreams would be invited back with open arms....it happened!

It seems that the errant Director was the one responsible for kicking us all out last year and so the path is clear for our return, we have now signed, sealed and paid our deposits on a lovely shiny new (well not exactly new) double suite that will hold 40 guests for all of the 2009 events, including the Moto GP (only visit to the UK), World Superbikes (only visit to the UK), BSB, BTCC etc etc.

Onwards and upwards....You will be receiving an e mail flyer in the next week or two confirming the pricing and details of these events and of course we are working on the shiny new brochure ready for January 2009.

Congratulations to Andy & Roberta, I guess that you are officially the first of the Classic Dreams guests to ‘tie the knot’. For those of you that don’t know, Andy is the tall guy who insists on wearing the strange, red Liverpool football club bobble hat to all the GT and LMS events, and occasionally does our blog – when he can be bothered. Roberta is his sidekick who prefers the comfort of a glass of vino in the suite, rather than Andy’s route marches around the old Northamptonshire airfield in April. We sincerely wish you all the very best for the future and look forward to an invite!! It’s about time I had some free alcohol for a change...

So on to the new team member, we needed someone young, committed, keen, eager, experienced – unfortunately we couldn’t find anyone, so XXXXXX will have to do for now! Sorry I can’t divulge his name just yet, but all will become clear over the next few weeks.

Anyway he has started work and I am sure he will have a massively positive impact on Classic Dreams and you will all get to meet him in due course...so just be patient.

Lewis....what can you say...talk about edge of the seat stuff! We were literally hanging off the edge of the sofa on that Sunday afternoon, with two laps to go. I couldn’t believe that he was going to lose the title for a second year running and then 10 seconds from the end....it swings back the other way again!!! I can’t recall a championship that has been decided on the last corner of the last race in F1, although I do stand to be proved wrong of course!

I did feel sorry for Massa, he drove brilliantly, won the race, did everything asked of him and for about 20 seconds was World Champion, only to have it snatched away. I think he probably doubled his fan-base that afternoon for the very sporting way in which he handled defeat. The expression about good losers and losers springs to mind, but I really don’t think that’s the case in this instance. He has a genuine desire to win, but is composed and dignified in defeat...a rare commodity in F1 drivers.

So the season is now over, no more racing until next March, no F1, no bikes...nothing...it’s kind of depressing and yet, somehow, I feel really excited. Maybe the new ventures into Monaco and Donington are keeping me awake, maybe it’s the fact we are expanding during a recession...which is scary. I can’t put my finger on it....but all I will say is roll on 2009....I can’t wait!!

2009 here we come..

Season number two is safely despatched into the realms of history for the Classic Dream Team. Despite the fact it only finished 3 weeks ago, it seems like a distant memory, serving the last bottle of Carlsberg to the final British Superbike hangers on.....can’t remember who you are, but I am sure you will!!!

We have managed to escape to sunny Florida for 10 days relaxation which was amazing, great weather and far too much food. I am sure that most of you think we all now sit back and hibernate until next April, well let me tell you...God I sound like my Dad!!.....it’s nothing like that.

As some of you know I do have a day job, running a website design business, more of which later. Elaine has a very busy full time job, working for a vending company, where of course....she is the boss! My Dad works for a major travel company, booking holidays and generally making sure people arrive in whatever country they should do...when they should do.

So the reality is somewhat different and although it’s very nice to have some weekends to ourselves again at this time of year, we can’t completely take off our green T-shirts, because work has already started on the 2009 brochure, along with planning the logistics of knocking a damn great hole in a damn great (and b****y thick wall) to make a cosy double suite into the Silverstone equivalent of one of those new Airbus 380’s! Not only that but we have Monaco to prepare for, which admittedly is slightly different in the way it works, it’s not our yacht for a start...if it was...I can assure you I wouldn’t be writing this blog!

It seems that we may finally be about to appear at another circuit near you for the 2009 season, can’t divulge any details yet, but I will update the blog this week and confirm it all once the contract is signed. 2009 promises to be an exciting time, not only coping with 90 of the finest hospitality guests on the planet ( that’s you of course ), but the business and financial world is in turmoil and that will undoubtedly affect us, as I mentioned in my last update.

There is also one more slice of news that is not common knowledge yet, but it is now....after two years of being our trusty and faithful barman / kitchen staff / washer upper / cleaner / motorsport guru / enthusiast / photographer my Dad has decided to hang up his helmet for the last time. So we wish him well in retirement in deepest Leicestershire and want to publicly thank him for his sterling efforts over that last couple of years...couldn’t have done it without you!!.

This will of course mean a new line up for 2009 and I am sure that we will have a new young, dynamic bunch of tearaways to entertain you throughout the last Silverstone Grand Prix season.

People keep asking me if there is any more news on the Donington move, on? Off? Going somewhere else and the truth is that nobody really knows. There is still no planning permission in place, but what they do have is...determination and that is sometimes enough to tip the balance, so I guess patience is going to be the key.

Couple of things before I go –

1. Go Lewis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2. Take a look at this link http://www.bloodhoundssc.com

 All will become obvious in time.....

Hello All,

 First of all let me apologise for the lateness of this issue and also the lack of a preview before the event due to extra work commitmnents.

After the appalling summer weather,my fingers where crossed for some good weather to bring a crowd out for what promised to be a great(diesel)battle,Friday's practice was in heavy rain as I made my way across the Irish Sea,but Saturday and Sunday was bathed in glorious sunshine,in front of a estimated crowd of 40,000 people.Anyway back to the racing,a large grid of 46 cars assembled,which even on the full Grand Prix circuit does spread out quite quickly,there was 15 LMP1's,14 LMP2's,4 GT1's,13 GT2's.

Onto the main raceday the Peugeot's dominated the front row of the grid like they had done the LMS on the previous 4 rounds,but due to Audi's consistency they still had a chance for the title but surely would need the help of the rain clouds/unpredictable Silverstone weather to help them slow down the faster Peugeot(as at Le Mans this year).At the start Nicolas Minassian tried to overtake the sister car of Pedro Lamy on the first lap at Copse but had to back out of it and slid into the Audi of Allan McNish causing the Peugeot to spin dropping Minassian to 10th place and on the charge again.

One hour 15 minutes in Minassian after a great recovery drive turned across the front of a GT2 Porsche putting both out instantly and within another 30 minutes the Peugeot of Stephane Sarrazin tangled with Rinaldo Capello's Audi on the first proper racing lap after clearing the wreckage from the previous crash,this incident occured as my partner Roberta and I had decided to leave the Classic Dreams experience and walk around the whole circuit,both cars sliding across right in front of us at Copse and landing in the small gravel trap at the end of the main pit straight,the Peugeot escaping first but receiving repairs in the pits costing it 13 laps,while the Audi had a puncture but only lost 2.5 laps,and soon made another one back when the safety car appeared again.

 With one Peugeot out and another only finishing in 19th place,this handed the title to Audi's Premat and Rockenfeller who drove a consistent race to finish 4th overall.The race was won by the sister Audi car of Allan McNish and Rinaldo Capello,in 2nd place was the Lola/Aston Martin of Stefan Mucke and Jan Charouz and in 3rd place the Pescarolo Judd of Romain Dumas and Jean-Christophe Boullion.

In LMP2 : Jos Verstappen/Peter Van Merksteijn won their class and Verstappen won the  LMP2 championship in the Porsche RS Spyder.

In GT1 : Antonio Garcia/Tomas Enge won their class in the Aston Martin DBR9 but the Corvette C6R of Patrice Gousselard and  Guillaum Moreau only needed a points finish  and third in class was enough for the title.

In GT2 : Rob Bell/Jamie Melo won their class in the Ferrari 430 GT and Bell also won the championship for the 2nd year running.

I hope in the current economic situation that all the teams can find sponsors for next year and beyond and I'm sad to see that hard times have hit Embassy Racing,a team that I have followed since they joined British GT a few seasons back,an extremely friendly crew and with Embassy Radio they tried to give something back to the fans.On a separate note I was unable to attend the Britcar 24 Hour race the week after the LMS,I have read about the 1st lap accident on different forums and while I personally don't know Andy Neate(TVR Sagaris) driver,I wish him and his family all the best for the future.

Well that's all from me for 2008,I'm away to watch some F1 which Matt keeps telling me is where the real action is,I'm still not convinced but will give it a go in the hope that Matt "resigns" me for 2009.

 Andy

Credit crunch...is motorsport immune?

I suppose the more specific question is actually...is the credit crunch having an effect on motorsport’s ancillary services? Engineering companies, sign writers, helmet suppliers and dare I say it....hospitality companies?

Well the reality of the situation from Classic Dreams perspective is not at the moment, but we cannot afford to be complacent. We were just settling in to a weekend of LMS last Saturday at Silverstone, turned on the TV at 6am whilst preparing the suite for the oncoming hordes and there was Exel Airways, travel and God knows whatever else they traded as, all gone down the pan in one fell swoop.

You might think, badly run company or directors living the high life or inefficient aircraft? Well none of the above, it would seem that the main reason was the recent escalation in fuel costs and the company’s inability to pass those costs on to its customers in time. I have to say I did feel sorry for the management in this case, it’s easy to point fingers when you are watching from afar, but it must be bloody difficult to wind up a company that size knowing there are families stranded all over the place. Not a job I would fancy...under any circumstances.

Okay so this wasn’t a motorsport hospitality company, but you watch this space, because it won’t be long before one or two start dropping by the wayside as things start to get tighter and not just the public but the banks, start to tighten their purse strings.

I can hear you all asking.....and how exactly does that effect me...or even Classic Dreams...well it doesn’t  affect us at the moment and we are going to do our damndest to make sure it doesn’t. To that end, we have instigated a price increase for our Grand Prix Weekend, but tried to keep it inflation linked and not much more. However my plan is to try and hold our 2009 prices at less than inflation increases where possible for all the other promoted events next year.

This is not a time to be making huge price increases to counter the ‘predicted’ lost customers, so I am working on the ‘Matt’s full ship’ protocol which involves getting as many of you as is comfortable in the suite as is humanly possible for every event!!!

The exciting news is that Silverstone have now agreed to us taking over a third suite on the pitlane for 2009!! Unfortunately Silverstone don’t follow my inflation linked idea, so it has cost a HUGE amount of money, but it will now give us a capacity of either 90 guests in one suite or the extra configuration of 30 guests on an exclusive suite basis and 60 guests in the larger suite as is the case now.

2009 promises to be a very exciting year for us, Monaco Grand Prix for the first time, with our VIP yacht hospitality, the ‘last’ Silverstone British Grand Prix and a couple of other projects we are working on that I will announce over the next few months.

On a totally different subject.....

I had a fantastic few hours yesterday at the home of the ‘Quicksilver’ project. For those of you that don’t know, Nigel and his time are attempting to break the World Water Speed record. It is a massive project and the last record has stood for 30 years, so my description would be ‘slightly difficult to achieve’!! I am sure Nigel would go a stage further than that!! Anyway we plan to give our whole hearted support to get the record back in good old blighty, so I will give you some more details of our input and how our customers can benefit as it happens over the next few weeks.

Their website is www.quicksilver-wsr.com I would normally say go and make a donation, but don’t just yet, as I am working on a Classic Dreams corporate package, so our customers get to help as a whole.

Wow...this blog has only taken 15 minutes to right, not the usual 15 days.....I will be back again after the British Superbikes and Singapore F1 Grand Prix.

Bye for now.

MT

Another weekend....another racetrack.....

You know that when your wife asks ‘why the blog is not up to date?’ that you really are being a bit slack.....apologies for the delay....it’s been really busy honestly....

So F1 hits Valencia, what did you think? Personally I thought that the circuit looked really exciting, from the drivers perspective, lots of fast corners, close walls and tough baking zones.

However, despite predictions of close racing, safety cars, overtaking and all, it has to rate as one of the most boring of the year so far! The question is why? It should have been good, but you only had to look at the ‘field spread’ effect that Martin Brundle alluded to after three laps and you could see the problem....it’s the cars. The aero packages are now so sensitive, so well designed and so critical that it’s just not possible to stay with the car in front.

If you follow F1 you will already know about the changes coming for 2009 and I can’t wait, we need some close racing desperately....talking of which the BTCC hit Silverstone last weekend...rain and touring cars....a recipe for success!!

The weather on Saturday was great, unfortunately most of our guests were due on Sunday, when it hammered it down!! I was very impressed by Adam and his mates that arrived for their ‘stag do’ at 10am on Sunday morning having been out until 5am in some house of ill repute the night before! I am sure that had they been on top form the beer fridge would have been empty and the clothes would have been carefully removed from the bride groom, as it was, it took until about 3pm for them all to wake up!

Even then it was only because one of our other guests, Gareth brought along some of his friends, who just happened to be the Team Halfords grid girls, Paige & Tilley! Despite several comments from customers who should know better ( you know who you are!! ) they remained fully clothed and entertained the troops! I will publish the ‘artistic’ photo’s on the website at some point!

Anyway if you want to see more go to Gareth’s website at www.planetpug.co.uk and take a look at the 2008 BTCC Silverstone round. We also had to say farewell to two of our longest serving customers at the weekend. Pete & Val were one of our very first guests to take the plunge and book tickets in the heady first few weeks of Classic Dreams existence in March 2007. They have been great supporters, bringing family and friends to lots of events and we wish them a great time in their new home in warm and sunny ( just like Silverstone...not!! ) Cyprus. By the way Simon, I still have your Dad’s credit card number if you want to come to any events, now he’s out the way!!!

Finally for today, a bit of a sales plug for CD...not something I would normally do, but our 2009 Grand Prix tickets are now on sale, you can find them at this link..

http://www.classicdreams.co.uk/eventslist.php?evid=3

With this looking like Silverstone – The Finale, sales are already going well, with Friday completely sold out, and even Sunday looking busy already, so don’t hang around if you want to catch the F1 cars for what could possibly the last time in the UK.....not telling you where I heard that rumour....watch this space.

Back again this weekend...I promise!

Commentators....just arrived back from a brief but enjoyable fact finding mission to Dubai. As you may know there is an Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in 2009 and I was curious about the possibilities of Classic Dreams offering hospitality and tickets for the event. Dubai is about one and half hours away from the capital and is the ‘second’city of the UAE, in a similar vein to the London – Birmingham set up in the UK.

So geography lesson over...what did I think? Well it’s a good job that it is going to be held outside of the summer months....it was 36degrees as we left the airport at Midnight!! The temperature didn’t go below 45 degrees during the day...we are talking hot!! You end up going from one air conditioned vehicle / building / hotel to another and as fast as possible! The standard of the hotels was truly amazing, 5 stars really does mean 5 stars in this country, the service was impeccable and every details was accounted for.

We met several Tour operators based in the area and checked out the transport infrastructure, flights and had a good look at the hotels and packages. It really does make the UK hotels / airports look a bit 3^rd world...to be completely unpatriotic!!

Obviously the only thing we couldn’t actually see in action were the racing cars, but hey who needs them....Dubai is a fantastic place in its own right. So will we be offering a service for the GP? Well in reality probably not in 2009, it’s just too short notice to put the infrastructure in place, but for 2010 then almost certainly, subject to the goings on with the Bernie – Donington – Silverstone love triangle....watch this space.

Whilst in Dubai, I wanted to catch the Hungarian GP qualifying and race, but for some reason, none of the 73 hotel channels had any coverage whatsoever! So I was forced to tune into Radio 5 Live on the laptop and try and visualise the events unfolding....you get so used to TV these days that listening on the radio can be a frustrating experience, however the commentary was excellent and full marks to production team for a great hours qualifying on the Saturday afternoon. I decided that risking two hours of radio commentary on the Sunday was potentially life threatening (Elaine was with me), so I opted to attempt the old ‘don’t listen to sports news’ and ‘cover your eyes at anything resembling the outline of a racing car on TV’ approach which lasted a good 2 hours after the race and then I switched on SKY news to see Heiki on the top step of the podium....

So I decided to just be patient and watch a replay of the race when I got home, only to find a serious lack of Martin Brundle!! For all you Damon Hill fans out there, please don’t take this the wrong way, I respect everything he did as racing driver, you don’t beat Schumi or become World Champion without a serious amount of talent. I also have ‘some’ respect for the way he runs the BRDC, although that is waning, with every British Grand Prix Donington message I come across. But as a commentator he was rubbish! You do tend to forget how we take the commentators for granted, I don’t always think James Allen is the best, but at least he gets the facts straight and there is a good flow of information, Martin Brundle is excellent, straight to the point and with a fantastic eye for the bits us mere mortals cannot comprehend, technically and tactically. All I’ll say is that if you do read this blog Damon.....stick to your day job!!

I guess the question now is...who will the BBC choose to lead their team next year, so again at the risk of alienating myself here goes....

Front Man – Steve Rider

Front Man assistant ‘expert’ – David Coulthard

Head Commentator – Ben Edwards

Pundit – Martin Brundle

Assistant stand in – Anthony Davidson

Anybody disagrees....remember it’s your BBC.....but it’s not your blog....so tough!!!

Back again soon.

That Friday afternoon feeling...you know what I mean, it’s 3.30pm and you really don’t want to be doing anything, but the reality is that if you don’t do it – nobody else will!!

So that’s the reason I am writing the blog now...because nobody else will, despite me trying to convince the rest of the family that it’s their turn.

Anyway the truth is that, there ‘ain’t a whole lot going on’ at the moment, we are in that abyss that always exists after the GP, you have spent two months preparing and then BANG...3 days and it’s all over. However it’s now only one week to the fantastic Silverstone Classic weekend, if you love classic racing cars there are only two places to visit in the UK, Goodwood for the Revival and Silverstone for its rapidly improving Classic.

Having spent a few years recovering from the loss of the prestigious Coys branding and fighting against the Revival for airspace, the Classic is now once again becoming a force to be reckoned with.

There is a massive amount of action going on from Friday – through to Sunday evening and you can find a timetable on our website within the events and online booking page. We only have 2 Sunday tickets left, so you had better be quick if you want them!! Saturday is fine at the moment, but I am expecting a late rush early next week (actually ‘hoping’ would be a better word!!).

 Okay...a completely different subject now...you may recall that I mentioned several months ago about an online magazine called GPweek, well I am pleased to say that still appears to be going well, however I received an e mail this week, from  Octane magazine announcing their new online mag.

For those of you that don’t know, Octane is a sort of upmarket version of a classic/sports car mag that delves into auctions, watches, memorabilia and so on...very good quality. In fact I know it’s good because my copy always gets nicked from the suite on a race weekend!!

The same publishers have just released  a new online mag called ‘I motor’ , doesn’t sound much but take a look at this link - http://dennis.cerosmedia.com/1B487f128968ece653.cde it is brilliant. They have managed to make a format that has been a very slow starter into something that could radically alter the market and really make it work.

It’s not just the usual turning pages, it contains links, videos, downloads, interactive sections, loads of stuff that makes you want to actually read it, rather than look for a way out, you find yourself looking for more! This is one mag that is really going to take off and for once I am pleased to see that it’s not just change for change sake, it is genuine progress in a very stale market...well done ‘Imotor’ and good luck!

Started the blog at 3.30....it’s now 9.30...6 hours to write 9 paragraphs....now that’s progress!!!

Some exciting Silverstone news to come...

What a weekend......

From a real sense of disbelief on Friday when the FIA announced that Donington is to get the GP from 2010 to the most amazing atmosphere I have witnessed at Silverstone, when Lewis Hamilton won the wet / dry British Grand Prix by a huge margin...taking back the championship lead! Wow!

Things started off well on Friday, the weather looked set for a good day, the guests managed to get from their various car parks and all arrived in time for breakfast...which is always a shame...no sausages left over for me! In fact most of Friday morning went very well; we had a charity raffle in the suite and raised well over one thousand pounds for a cancer charity courtesy of some great selling from the Citipost staff.

Then at about 11am we had a call from a friend of Elaine’s who was asking about the Grand Prix moving to Donington, well of course we thought it was a wind up. That was until I checked the Autosport website and discovered the FIA press statement. Shocked is not really the word, more a case looking at the date to make sure it wasn’t April 1^st! How can a racetrack with one road in and out, have the remotest chance of receiving and despatching up to 30,000 vehicles in one day, it will be a complete disaster...not only that but by its own admission, Donington’s facilities are poor and the whole place needs knocking down and rebuilding. If you have ever visited one of the Donington Paddock toilets, you will know where I am coming from.

I have nothing against Donington holding the GP, other than the fact we have already been on the receiving end of their decision making process, when they pulled the plug on our 2008 hospitality plans at the last second....now I know why!! As a customer of ours said to us this morning –

“Bet you'll be having a few more in the future as the chances of Donington making it as an F1 venue are as slim as my chances of driving in it.”

Saturday was a great day, the usual Silverstone summer rain for 30 minutes in the morning then a nice dry and sunny day, if a tad windy – one of our guests likened the suite to the new Honda wind tunnel at one point and Elaine refused to go anywhere near the main door for fear of upsetting her very expensive ‘GP’ hairdo! Qualifying was not quite as exciting as last year, all the Lewis fans were left wanting. The Webber fans were going bananas for about 12 seconds and the Kovalienen fan was ecstatic, although he had no one to share it with! I have to say I did watch the qualifying on Saturday evening and it was pretty obvious that Mr Hamilton was on the ragged edge or actually stamping all over it to be precise, I reckon that someone had switched on the new ‘drive it like you stole it’ button in the McLaren.

So to Sunday, third 4am start in a row and the staff are looking decidedly knackered, but one day to go. The first guests arrive in their canoes at 6.52 am, luckily the coffee is on and the umbrellas are ready, 5 hours of rain didn’t dampen spirits and come 1pm they all lined up in their respective grid positions ready for 2 hours of champagne and excess food! There was an almighty roar every time Lewis went past and although I didn’t see anything other than lap1 and lap 60, I knew what was going on thanks to the ‘ooh’s aargh’s and Boo’s ( presumably either Alonso or Ecclestone ) from the crowd!

Well everyone made it, the helicopters flew despite the ropey conditions in the morning a Brit won the race and even the sun came out in the afternoon, to finish the day off we had a meeting with several other Silverstone Suite holders and did what us British do best.....had a damn good moan about everything!!!   The perfect end to a perfect weekend.....and as I said ‘What a weekend’.

At least for a change I have an excuse....Monaco 2009 launch, website, brochures, three days of F1 testing and rounding that off with the inaugural Classic Dreams Kart Grand Prix!!!

So where to start.....the exciting news is the launch of our new Monaco 2009 Hospitality Packages, you can view the new website at www.classicdreamsmonaco.com if you read my earlier Monaco blog, you will know all about it, if not...why not!!! Read it now...

It has taken a massive amount of work to get the new posters and brochures ready for the F1 testing and British GP, but we made it in the end with about 2 hours to spare and they look fantastic, a big thanks to Rob Barsby at www.shinx.co.uk I really can’t recommend these guys enough.

I don’t want to use the blog as one big advert, but needless to say, high quality VIP Yacht, fantastic hotels, great company, you know the score and before any of you ask, as one trusty customer did the other did ( you know who you are Richard ) the decimal point is in the right place!!

The F1 testing that precedes the British GP is becoming more and more popular every year and with Lewis and the silver cars needing a good result next weekend it was imperative that they had a good test this week. From a spectator point of view, it was pretty inconclusive; although Lewis was faster we didn’t know what the Ferrari’s were up to, so we’ll just have to wait for next weekend.

The new suite had its first real test on Tuesday with a full house of 60 guests for breakfast and it all seems to have held together well, It may look fairly seamless from the paying side of the counter, but just trust me, when I say that it doesn’t always go to plan, Wednesday, 60 guests and 6 breakfasts arrive.......AARRGGHHH!!! Anyway that’s our job and nobody said it would be easy!

We had a fantastic group of guests over the three days, 190 in total and although I am sure not everybody went away happy, I think that we pleased most of the people most of the time.

So to the Kart Grand Prix, after three 16 hour days at Silverstone, Elaine pointed out that my timing for the event at 8pm on the last night, was perhaps, not the best, however a couple of Pro-Plus later and all was well.

Queued for ages to get out of Silverstone, stuck on the A5, finally arrive at Daytona 20 minutes late, and suddenly the realisation that I had left all the trophies at the suite!! I found that Elaine has a wonderfully colourful vocabulary...can’t see what the problem was, she only had to go back and back again to get it sorted....women!!

Anyway, after 3 glorious days of sunshine at Silverstone, it absolutely threw it down as soon as we arrived at Daytona, we are talking wet, very very wet. There was a sense of fear, in the clubhouse beforehand, not made any better by the fact that all the karts were on slicks!! So at 8.54pm, the first Kart GP got underway and boy was it funny! I have never seen so many karts going in so many different directions....that was just the warm up lap....this was going to be a long 40 minutes!!

There were yellows, blacks, greens in fact every combination of flag you can think of and eventually through it all came Simon Childs to take a very well deserved victory in treacherous conditions.

A huge amount of respect to all the competitors, it really was awful out there.

Next weekend is the big one...the British Grand Prix, I’ll do my best to keep the blog updated during the weekend, but my guess is that I will be far too dead to even think about it, so see you again afterwards....but you never know....

By the way, if you haven’t heard yet, Elaine had her picture taken with a certain Mr L Hamilton in the McLaren pit garage on Thursday....don’t worry you will hear all about it....she is driving me insane....’Lewis touched my shoulder’...’Lewis held this pen’......think I am going to be sick....

The question was....could we stay awake for the whole 24 hours? Well, as you know, I very rarely manage to stay awake long enough to finish my blog....so you guessed correctly...NO!!!

We had a damn good go though!!

This year’s Le Mans 24 hours will go down in the record books as one of the best ever races. The all conquering Audi’s were on their ‘back foot’ as the Peugeot steamroller arrived in town, fresh from victories in the LMS series. They were 2-3 seconds faster in qualifying, fastest in every test session and from my point of view, they had the biggest hospitality unit you have ever seen...they had to win!! However they didn’t reckon on one factor – desire!

You may think I have lost the plot, but the one thing that struck me before the race was listening to Allan McNish on Radio Le Mans (Tip Number 1 fantastic radio station, English commentary, don’t ever go to Le Mans without you radio tuned to 91.2fm ) that he WANTED to win this race. Unlike his illustrious team mate, Kristensen who has seven victories to his name, Allan only has one, despite 10 years of trying and being just an integral part of the Audi team.

He really wanted this and if there was a prize for ‘Man of the Match’ he would have walked it. Long driver stints, fastest driver, all conditions, day and night this guy was 100% on the limit and never put a tyre wrong. So hats off to the underdog’s, this was a flawless performance in difficult conditions and Audi wiped the floor with Peugeot.

So back to my escapade, caught the flight at 6am Friday morning, landed in Paris, 1 hour late and 1 hour later, hire car down to Le Mans and into the Friday afternoon, free pit lane walkabout. Few drinks and an early night at our Girls School, you think I am joking! The girls all line up and leave on a Friday afternoon, just as a cavalcade of Ferrari’s, Porsche’s, Lamborghini’s, Bentleys and my Audi A3 hire car – pile through the school gates! It’s not the most glamorous of surroundings, but it’s a bed, shower and damn good breakfast.

(Tip number 2 – all food served in any of the food stalls is far too expensive and taste’s awful! So eat as much away from the circuit as you can)

Anyway back to the circuit at 9am Saturday to watch the Group C race, which was excellent, then the big event at 3pm, so who falls asleep on the banking at 2.30pm – me! Luckily as the cars came around for the first green flag lap I woke up and watched them disappear off for the first lap of nearly 400. Numerous Kebab’s, sausages and beers later, I finally gave in at 11.30pm, couldn’t focus any longer, after a really good couple of hours down at ‘Arnage Corner’ as it started to get dark, fantastic.

I always think there is something mesmeric about watching racing cars first thing in the morning, just as the sunlight is bursting over the horizon, so I make a point of getting up at 4.45 am on the Sunday and heading down to the end of the Mulsanne Straight and watching the day begin. Only problem – after a glorious days sunshine on Saturday, pouring rain on Sunday! No sunrise, just a damp, wet mud bank, but what the hell – this is Le Mans and it was great.

So 'Team Twynham' made it through about 19 hours of the 24, not bad going, I will make it one day, but this year I was a little like the Peugeot team – All good intentions, but let down by the finishing!

Its blog time again....Well what a week, Kubica takes his first victory in F1, a year on from that terrifying crash and Classic Dreams also reaches another milestone in its long and slow trek to Hospitality domination!

First though I promised a review of the kangaroo TV device I used in Monaco and it was fantastic, it’s a small TV screen, about 4 inches across and it wirelessly picks up the full FIA TV feed at every Grand Prix Event. But you don’t just get the main action, you can look at the leader board, sector times, weather and track information, but best of all you can choose your own driver and settle for his in car camera for the whole of the race – stunning!!!

We were in a fantastic location on the yacht, but you still have no idea what is going on around the rest of the circuit, but with this little beauty, problem solved. We saw and heard all the action, not quite ITV coverage on a big plasma, but damn good sitting on a boat in Monaco.

Do you know what the best feature of the whole device was – it was waterproof, which turned out to be quite an asset during the first hour of the GP.

You can’t buy a Kangaroo TV, but you can rent them, just visit http://www.kangaroo.tv/ and reserve yours now for the British GP.

Talking of which we now only have a very limited number of British GP tickets left and they are selling fast, especially as Silverstone have run out, so don’t hang around if you want one.

The suite was open yesterday for the first visit to Silverstone of the Renault World Series, what a fantastic event, there were 100,000 at Silverstone over the weekend and it was buzzing! It’s the first time I have seen the grandstands full at a non GP event, so good on you Renault, shame some of the other manufacturers don’t jump on the bandwagon. The highlight of the day was some demonstrations from the Renault F1 Team, with last year’s car and Roman Grosjean at the wheel, one handed ‘doughnuts’ whilst waving at the crowd in an F1 car...this guy should have been in Montreal....not Northamptonshire!!

So the Grand Prix, Lewis...Lewis....Lewis what did you do? I think I have more concentration, when loading our dishwasher, than he had tootling down the pitlane and clouting the amazingly calm Raikonnen. Personally I would have got out and made my feelings rather better known than Kimi did, mind you – I bet my friends at Force India had a good chuckle after the pain inflicted in Monaco.

So well done to Robert Kubica or ‘not exactly Brad Pitt’ as we know him now! Still judging by the fact that 1% of the UK population is Polish, I would say a pretty good result for us Brits all in all!!!

So what’s next, well I am off to Le Mans on Friday for 3 days, for the 24 hour party, sorry Race....meeting some clients etc etc, but mainly just soaking up the most amazing atmosphere you could imagine, I’ll blog that next week ( I think I’ll blog is the terminology, but not sure! )

Finally, Classic Dreams is pleased to announce that as of the 2009 season we are providing hospitality aboard a yacht in Monaco for the Grand Prix...fanfare....champagne corks....not exactly a well kept secret, but the deal is now done. I have signed away the family silver and I now have 12 months to sell 20 tickets, so if you want to spend the 23^rd /24^th May 2009 aboard a truly amazing yacht, having the time of your life, with F1 cars, just 20 yards away....call me now!!!

There will be a whole new website, section coming along, brochures, flyers, posters, billboards you name it, because basically if I don’t shift 20 tickets.....we’ll be homeless....hey no pressure there then!!

So, you might have guessed it!! Useless at daily blogging, I don’t know why I even make these ridiculous suggestions, when it’s obvious that I have no chance of actually doing what I say!!!

Its 2.20pm French time, bank holiday Monday and I am sitting in Lyon airport waiting for the connecting flight back to not so sunny Birmingham.

By now, I am going to assume that you have already heard the result of the Monaco Grand Prix, what a race!! What a weekend!! You may have read my earlier blog, but if not, we have been down here since Friday, staying in Nice and commuting daily to the yacht in the harbour. I am going to refrain from saying ‘our’ yacht, because it was really just pretending to be wealthy yacht owners in the Monaco harbour!

It has been an amazing weekend, the yacht was positioned just at the chicane after the braking point on the tunnel exit, and so from the top deck we could see the cars as they came over the brow at 180 mph and hit the brakes, down to 45mph in the matter of 150metres – phenomenal!! It was also the point of impact for Mr Coulthard as he hit the barrier, during qualifying and came past us with 3 wheels on his wagon, so fast, that I literally blinked an missed it. It was also the point that other than Kimi Raikonnen himself, I was probably the first person – in the world – to realise that the poor old Force India team were not going to get the result of their lives.

As they came into the braking area, I was level with the Ferrari and could see it start to squirm side to side and it was obvious what was coming next, I have to say, I was almost as annoyed at that ridiculously unnecessary manoeuvre as I was thrilled by Lewis’s victory. As some of you know I am a huge Force India fan and to lose those points and prestige must be a massive blow!

Well this is part 1 of the Monaco blog, there is a lot more to come including a full review of the Kangaroo TV, plus all you ever wanted to know about being on a yacht in Monaco and the ‘mines bigger than yours’ syndrome.....

800bhp...F1 cars....narrow streets....glamour...casino...in can only mean one place - Monaco 2008!!

I am just watching the ITV F1 website coverage and soaking up the atmosphere....we will be there tomorrow. As some of you may know, both Elaine and myself have significant birthdays this year ( I am not saying ), so we decided to treat ourselves to a little luxury!

Fly down to Nice on Friday, 2 days on the yacht in the harbour and then back on Monday....should be fantastic.

So I have a plan.....I am going to attempt what has so far been..impossible - a daily blog update!! Sad as I am, my trusty laptop will be going with me and I will attempt to give you a daily update. This all depends on the copius amounts of free champagne of course.

It will be great to be on the other side of the bar for a change, my only problem is that working within the hospiatlity industry, you tend to end up constantly assessing the levels of service and the way the event is run, rather than just relaxing and enjoying it. However if all goes to plan we are hoping to have the same trip in our 2009 brochure, so it's important that it reaches our very high standards of location, service and overall 'feel', if it does then I expect we  shall be offering the trip later this year.

So just a short blog today....but with luck....more from the hotel in Nice tomorrow evening....

Au Revoir... 

Hey... I know it's not exactly Friday morning, but the sun was shining, there was a load of racing on the TV, so the blog had to wait! Actually I was working, but keeping half an eye on the new ITV.COM F1 Friday practice coverage.

I have worked out the best way to watch is turn the sound down and log onto Radio 5 Sports Extra, you then get a full commentary and reasonably good ( BT 1mb broadband ) website TV, not bad for free!!

So a huge improvement in excitement after a very dull Spanish Grand Prix, Turkey was much better. Lots of overtaking, good close racing, just a shame Lewis had to stop three times, otherwise he may have been on the top step again. I still find Massa a bit of an unusual character, obviously highly competent, pole position, race win, but once again he leads from the front in the best car, without really coming under any pressure, as per his other victories. So is he a racer? Or just a damn good 60 lap qualifier?

Hamilton on the other hand is a damn fine racer and he is obviously dragging everything he can out of an ever so slightly off the pace Mclaren, I think it will be fascinating next year with the new 'mechanical' rather than 'aero' F1 cars. My guess is that Lewis and Jenson will both flourish, despite their wildy different driving styles next year.

The highlight of the ITV coverage for me was Martin Brundle driving the Lotus 49 at Silverstone...I just can't believe he did it on a day I wasn't there. In my eyes, that is and always will be the ultimate F1 car. Maybe it's the shape, maybe the engine, the exhausts, I can't really put my finger on it, but it just looks and sounds like a racing car should. I was lucky enough to be stood next to it at the Goodwood Revival last year when they fired it up and it was just awesome.

You may notice that the Classic Dreams colour scheme is a green and cream affair, well it's not quite Lotus 49 colour, but that's where the inspiration came from. Anyway if you have a spare 5 minutes this is the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daUJc70CjhA

If any of you wonderful guests happens to own one of these and want to let me visit you, you will be a friend for life! Not just for Christmas....

Back again soon.

MT

Firstly a big thanks to Andy, for his invaluable support with the FIA GT weekend preview and his last post the race review.

When you sit down on day one and say "I know let's do a blog.." you think there will be loads of time, endless great stories and so on, the reality is that you never have time and usually get writers block as soon as you look at the Title...let alone the text!!

I greatly admire anybody who sits down and religously writes a daily blog, although they quite obviously don't have a real job or any sort of life!!! I am struggling to keep this updated on a weekly basis, even with Andy's help, so respect to you...you know who you are.

Andy is a long standing customer ( actually more of a groupie! ) of ours and travels over from sunny Ireland to indulge in his passion for GT cars, another of our loyal band of supporters is a chap called Simon Johnson who runs a website called

http://moslerlover.blogspot.com/

as you can probably guess, he is another GT racing fanatic, with a particular obsession for the Mosler brand. Simon also very kindly supplies us with video footage for our website, of different events throughout the year and his latest  visit is at this link

http://moslerlover.blogspot.com/2008/04/fia-gt-silverstone-20th-april-2008.html

Please take some time to have a look, it is an excellent site and really gives you a good idea of the location of our suite if you haven't been before.

When you run a company in the motorsport hospitality world, you do tend to come across a fair few people who I would politely describe as uttering too much cow manure...if you know what I mean, so it is really refreshing to meet people like Andy and Simon, who are just plain mad about racing cars and will go out of their way to volunteer their time and effort to help us create a unique experience for our web site visitors and ultimately our hospiatlity guests.

Moving on...before their heads get stuck in the balcony doorway...if you not heard of PowerNights you need to! Just take a look at this website

http://www.powernights.com

It is a new series of events at Silverstone, throughout the summer, but run on a Thursday evening, rather than the usual weekend. The first event is this Thursday and we are fully booked, so you are too late. However the next event is June 19th and we offer our PowerNights Free Hospitality evening to anyone that wants to come along and see what we are all about.

So if you would like some tickets to the next one, just drop me a line at matthew@classicdreams.co.uk.

Okay, that's enough rambling for now, I'll report back on Friday morning with all the details from the first Thursday night session....racing that is...not drinking...

 Matt

Apologies to all for the lateness of this issue.

Ryan Sharp and Karl Wendlinger took the opening race win of the 2008 season in the #33 Jetalliance Aston Martin but with only 20 mins of the 2hr race left the winner could have came from up to seven different entries.

The race was started in damp,misty conditions and there was also quite a breeze but all of that did not put off a sizeable crowd of at least 25,000 who where treated to a 2hr Sprint Race.Qualifying had taken place in damp conditions so the grid had a different look to it with the G2 Saleen of Edwards/Konopka in 3rd overall and the leading GT2 Ferrari of Bell/Kirkaldy in seventh at the start,this took a few laps to sort out but storming through the field after a slow start was the Aston Martin of Simonsen/Peter who had decided to start on intermediates and as the track started to dry out the other GT1 runners where having to try and find the wet line to stay on the track.

As the race progressed the track dried out even more and all the leading teams teams eventually changed to slicks but still the Simonsen car was leading until the safety car came out with 20 minutes left which left us with seven potential winners,at the restart with 12 minutes left Ramos in the Maserati MC12 hit the Corvette of Delatraz which left it down to 5 main runners with the top three pulling out a small gap,in the last couple of laps the Peter Aston was passed by the Aston of Sharp and Maserati of Bartels with Ryan Sharp able to start pulling away to the flag to win the Tourist Trophy.

In GT2 the Ferrari vs Porsche battle was dominated by Ferrari with Vilander/Bruni taking the honours,followed by an excellent 2nd place for Bell/Kirkaldy in the new Cr Scuderia team and third place going to Ruberti/Malucelli to make it a Ferrari lock out of the podium.

In G2 the honours went to the Mosler MT900 in first and second followed by the Edwards/Konopka Saleen S7R.

Andy

This weekend is the first round of the 2008 FIA GT Championship for GT1 and GT2 machines,also on the support card there is GT3 and GT4 races and two different Ferrari races.

First of all the main race is a two hour sprint between 14 GT1,12 GT2 and 4 G2 cars.

The GT1 battle is between 3 Aston Martin DBR9's,3 Maserati MC12's,4 Corvettes(3x C6-R's/1x C5-R),2 Saleen S7R's,1 Lamborghini Murcielago and a Ferrari 550 Maranello.

The favourites should be the quartet of Vitaphone Maserati Bartel/Bertolini,the Corvettes of Phoenix Racing Fassler/Deletraz and Hezemans/Gollin and the impressive Aston Martin pairing of Wendlinger/Sharp.The unpredictable Silverstone weather may also effect qualifying and the race itself,not to be discounted is the Lamborghini especially in Peter Kox's hands and also the Saleen's making a return to the series.

In GT2 it is more clearcut,a straight battle between 9 Ferrari F430 GTC's and 3 Porsche 997 GT3 -RSR's,the Ferrari dominated the 2007 Championship and Porsche have been busy working over the winter months to build a car to challenge again,the word on the street is that they have produced a great package.

Last years team to beat was AF Corse Motorola Ferrari and they return again with two cars but I feel this time things will not be as easy for them.

In G2 which is almost an invitational class,there is 2 Moslers,a Saleen and the regular Gillet Vertigo.

As I go to press there is no official entry list for GT3/GT4 but expect in GT3 cars from 11 different makers including Corvette,Ferrari,Porsche,Aston Martin,Ford(GT + Mustang),Ascari,Morgan,Jaguar,Dodge Viper and Lamborghini.

GT4 which is far closer to road cars than any other class here should have cars from Aston Martin,Ford,BMW,Nissan and Corvette.

Enjoy the racing and I will maybe catch up with you in Matt's suite at the weekend and for those who cannot make it,why not? The FIA GT race itself is live on ITV4 but trust me just like Formula One the TV does not do the racing justice.

Andy

Hello All,

Welcome to my first blog on behalf of Matt,well if truth be told my first blog EVER.

As we now approach the start of the proper motorsport season (GT racing) I have been to a new circuit after 10 years of Silverstone and a couple of visits to Mondello Park.

The circuit in question is Knockhill(perhaps the most northerly circuit in Britain?)for Rounds 3 + 4 of the British GT Championship,as a keen follower of the series since 1999,when attending Mini 40 at Silverstone and it was on the supporting card,it has changed since the glory days of GT1 and has now envolved into a great series of quality GT3 machines with a supporting cast of GT4 cars to fill out the grids.

First of all Knockhill itself,it is a very remote circuit and over the two days we had all four seasons,from glorious sunshine to hail and sleet on both days,the races kept on coming with a nice portion of safety cars to keep things nice and tight.The weapon of choice this year seems to be the Ferrari 430 along with a few Dodge Vipers,Lamborghini Gallardos,one or two Aston Martins an Ascari KZ1R and strangely compared to last year only one Porsche.Knockhill does not have any pit garages,so all the teams had their own awnings which gave very good access to all the cars.

Race One was won by Cr Scuderia's Ferrari 430,with the Dodge Vipers of Team Trimite Brookspeed and ABG Motorsport filling the podium,both these teams i'm sure delighted with the result.

Race Two was less hectic and right at the end the Jones Brothers Preci Spark Ascari KZ1R took the lead before the red flag came out.filling the rest of the podium the Christians In Motorsport Ferrari 430 and the ever improving 22 GT Racing Aston Martin DBRS9.

Well that's all for now folks I hope you are still awake and my FIA GT preview should follow on Thursday if Matt allows me back again.

Hope to see you all this coming weekend at Silverstone.

Andy

As some of you may already know, I have just returned from a week in Southern India. The trip was part business and part pleasure, we work with some software companies in India and so I managed to convince Elaine that taking  a weeks holiday would be restful - far from it!

If you think our roads are bad, you want to experience the "Indian taxi driver" in fact it's not just the taxi drivers, it's ALL the drivers! Although they are supposed to drive on the left, they seem to spend most of the time in the middle of the road, and trying to wear out their horns on every trip.

The state of Kerala is an alcohol free zone and most hotels don't have a licence for beer or spirits ( they don't drink wine ) and so you have to make a trip to the local government shop to collect your "stock" when you arrive for your holiday. Which brings me on to the point of this story - there is basically one brand of beer advertised all over the southern ( and probably northern ) India - Kingfisher. This company is owned by the same gentleman that has taken over the old Spyker team and is now Force India. You may be wondering why I am bothering to tell you something you already know...well here is my tip for the future....

Kingfisher is now a big name in India, Beer, water, airlines you name it...bit like Virgin is over here and this guy really knows what he is doing. So if you are looking for a team that is going to progress over the next few years, you could do a lot worse than put a small wager on the boys that are currently at the back of the grid. In fact I would put my money on them being midfield runners within a couple of years and on the podium within 3 years.  So just remember where you heard it first!

Anyway, we had a great holiday, good business meeting and all in all I would have no hesitation in recommending India as a great, friendly place to visit. 

Back to reality and only 2 weeks to go before the first event at Silverstone, the Supercar Showdown, Ticket sales are going well, but we still have some left, so if you want a ticket, get in touch asap.

You may have noticed some new enhancements to the website...we now have our gift vouchers online and you can also redeem them at the checkout, by typing in the code on the back. This area is one that we will expand over the coming season to include special promotions, for different events, so look out for the offers in your inbox.

There is also a new Photo section within the Silverstone Suite page, that will help you get a better idea of the new suite, the alterations we are making and the view internally and externally.

Next updates just before the first event!

So the first Grand Prix of the season is over.....what a race!! If they are all like that, it's going to be a fantastic year for F1...roll on July 6th!

I am sure that this removal of traction control issue provided a much more interesting race, although not all the excitement was directly because of the ban, it certainly played a major part in the majority of incidents.

The amazing thing for me, was that whilst everyoine else was chucking cars off left, right and centre, including the current World Champion, that Lewis just kept completely calm at the front, not an inch wrong ( let alone a foot!! ) anywhere or anytime. It was a superb drive and also proved that the Silver Arrows are more than a match for the supposedly all conquering Ferrari.

My other "man of the match" had to be Sebastian Bourdais, in last years Torro Rosso, he was holding back Alonso and Kovalienen and all and was on for a Fourth place before the dreaded Ferrari luck, struck his engine and put him out with 2 laps to go. He doesn't exactly ooze charisma out of the car, but after 4 straight Champcar titles and a debut in F1 like that, he is my tip for the season's second star, after Lewis.

I have to say it was a pleasure to get up at 4am Sunday morning and worth every minute of the lethargic day that followed! Roll on this weekend and having a lie in - until 6am!! 

I don't know whether you caught this but you can now follow all the practice sessions for the F1 races live at www.itv.com/f1 .  I watched the first Australian practice session on Friday and although you don't get James and Martin's chat, it's great to watch all the pit garage going's on and behind the scenes stuff you don't generally get.

I must just add that although the Honda's performed vastly better than expected.....who on "earthdreams" decided to make them all wear "kermit the frog" trousers...frightening!!

Finally...it's our birthday tomorrow! Classic Dreams Ltd, first came into existence on March 19th 2007 and Elaine has never let me forget the trials and tribulations of those first few stressful months in the hospitality business. More importantly we couldn't have done it without our customers, so thanks to all of you that take the time to spend your hard earned money with us. 

Back soon....  

Well it seems that Silverstone have finally made some decisions about where and when the new "master plan" will happen.

It appears that the pits & paddock will be moving to a new home on the straight between Abbey and Club corners and judging by the artists impressions, it looks pretty impressive.

You can see more of the details on the Autsport website at www.autosport.com. Although I am really pleased it is finally happening, it is with a little trepidation, as I am fairly certain that the rent will increase!! I suppose I just have to sit back and relax and wait for it all to happen, they seem to think that it will be ready for the 2009 Grand Prix, but realistically I don't see how you can build something on that scale and have it ready 15 months from now, when the planning permission has not even been granted yet. I guess time will tell.....

Last week we had the envious task of attending the "Suite Holders - GP tasting event", it is a yearly occurence that is organised by our contract caterers Aspire Hopsitality www.aspirehospitality.co.uk and is designed to allow us to sample all of the food menu's for the coming season, but mainly focusing on the GP.

The food was fantastic and for those of you lucky people attending one of the three GP days, I can confirm you won't be going hungry!! There is a wide range of locally produced organic products and this year, there is a full vegetarian option, so everybody is catered for.

On Friday, Elaine and Myself, visited Brands Hatch, exploring the possibilities of extending the Classic Dreams empire. The suites are fairly small in comparison to Silverstone, but the view is great, you can see the whole of the Indy circuit. Although we probably won't get full access to a suite until 2009, I am working on hiring one specifically for the World Superbike event on August 2nd and 3rd. If it goes ahead I will drop you all an e mail as soon as I can.

Finally......sounds like News at 10.....I promised you a some information about me!

Okay, so by now you all know that my first visit to the old airfield in Northamptonshire was at the age of 9 months, but what you don't know is that, I am also a distinguished racing driver in my own right! That may be exaggerating, just a bit, however i used to do a fair bit of Karting and I am 1/3rd of the endurance karting team that won the Daytona International Championship in 2000!

Wow...I hear you say....7 races, minimum of 6 hours, with 2 hour driver stints, we lead the championship from the first round and never looked back.

Now if we can just get Lewis to follow my lead this year.........

You knew it would happen.....4th blog post and my timing is already slipping!! I promise that I'll be back to every week again now. We have been down at Silverstone all weekend, finishing off the new suite...well almost.

I am setting up a new web page this week, that will link from the website, so you can all see the new facilities. I am really pleased with the result and we should get at least one or two years usage, before Silverstone decide to flatten the place for their new masterplan. At least we'll then have a brand new suite and won't need to spend all winter painting!!

The following link might be of interest to you:-

www.gpweek.com

It is a new weekly motorsport magazine that is only available online, but not just a website, it is a virtual magazine with a PDF download option. Don't quite know how they are going to make it pay, I guess they are going to try and generate advertising from it, anyway good luck to the guys, it is not an easy market to get in to, but I am sure they will do well.

Finally before I get back to my day job, a request, or bribe - would be a better description. I am starting a competition to to find a photograph for the cover of next years brochure, I know it's a long way off, but you have all season to take that ultimate photo. We never seem to have enough photo's from Silverstone or of the cars and suite in general, so anybody out there who wants to send me images...fire away!

matthew@classicdreams.co.uk

The usual rules apply, we can't guarantee what we will and won't use and we'll seek your permission before using any images in our literature...blah...blah, more importantly the first prize is a very nice bottle of our Champagne, to the best photograph recieved before October 1st.

In the next post i'll tell you a little bit more about our great leader....that'll be me then!!

Sunday afternoon, nothing on TV, rubbish weather, feels about a million miles away from the motor racing season and all that glorious sunshine! ( in theory ).

I have been keeping an eye on the F1 testing down in sunny Barcelona and amazingly it seems that this weekends test concluded with the two Toro Rosso's ( maybe they should be called a "herd" of Rosso's?? ) as the two fastest cars!!

It seems they are using last years cars with a few mods and were trying some superfast qualifying session simulations, whereas "our Lewis" was just out for a quick Sunday afternoon jaunt. Let's hope the Mclaren is slightly faster in Australia in March. Meanwhile, despite the appearance of  a certain Ross Brawn arriving at Honda, "our Jense" was way down the pecking order.

I know Honda are saying that, last year was bad and things can only get better, but over 2 seconds slower than a Torro, must be slightly demotivating at this stage of the season. Let's just hope they are sandbagging and he can stick it near the front in Australia.

I am guessing that some of you reading the blog are probably looking for some news and gossip, bit like an electronic version of OK or Hello magazine, in which case you are probably sadly dissapointed - at the moment!! Well don't worry, I have two new correspondent's coming on board in the next few weeks.

Our new Motorsport news editor, is a certain chap called Andrew Mcgowan. I am sure Andy will be very embarrased to see his name in lights, but he is a massive GT/sports/LMS cars fan and he is going to be keeping us up to date with news from the world of "enclosed wheeled vehicles". Secondly, our new celebrity columnist will be my very own better half, Elaine. Most of you will know her as the "BOSS", although she has been missing a few events recently and needs to start getting ready for the summer season - she has to start practising lifting the wine glasses again, so she can show YOU how to do it!!

By the way, I haven't told her yet, so I do hope she doesn't read this before I get chance....

You never know we may even get a guest appearance on the blog from my Dad ( Chief Coffee Maker!! )

Anyway as usual I am getting writers cramp, or in my case repetitive strain injury from using the mouse, so time for some real work...back soon. 

Thanks for all your kind comments regarding the new website design. It has been hard work, but i hope that we have succeeded in giving you as much information as possible.

As you can see from the Silverstone Suite pages, we have moved into a new suite for 2008. It is further down the pit lane towards the start and more importantly, it's a lot larger, with a capacity of 60 people. However it is about 2.5 times larger than last years so there is plenty of room to stretch out and enjoy the day.

We are in the process of finishing the suite at the moment and it should be ready for mid February, which is a bit premature for the racing season, but we are now able to host mini conferences within the suite . There is a projector and screen , WI FI and we have a new pass system to enable guests to come into the circuit on non race days.

As soon as I have some decent photo's I'll post them on the site, so you can get an idea of the new look.

We are already receiving orders through the new shopping cart system, which is much easier to use than last years PayPal version and in fact we sold the first tickets within 1 hour of the site going live. Ticket sales are progressing well in general and if you are interested in either the F1 testing or GP, the earlier you book the better.

The new brochure will be ready on Wednesday and should be posted out to existing customers and people that have requested a copy before the end of the week.

It is a fantastic looking brochure, produced by a company called Shinx ( http://www.shinx.co.uk), who I can definitely recommend if you are in need of this sort of literature.

Some of you may recall we intended to have a suite at Donington in 2008. We had a succesful trial run at the British Superbikes in September last year and all was set for this year. Unfortunately Donington is under new management and they have decided that no hospitality companies may rent suites this year. I haven't been given a reason for this and am still slightly shocked by the experience. I am keeping tabs on the situation and hoping that at some point we will be able to return.

Okay more work to do, I'll be back...

8pm, Saturday January 26th 2008 and finally the website is ready to go live! 3 months hard work, numerous meetings, arguments, changes and general mayhem, but we are there.

This is the first post from the new weekly blog, that I am faithfully promising to keep updated weekly!!! As those of you know that tried to follow last years blog, I wasn't very successful.....however I have made a New Years Resolution that IT WILL HAPPEN!!

There's lots of ineteresting stuff to catch up with, but for now I am going to just say watch this space!

In the next episode.....what really happened to Donington Park and why we won't be there in 2008!

Matt