Silverstone: who should I be supporting?

Jock — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:26:35 +0100

By complete happenstance yesterday, I have a surprise Santander sponsor's ticket for tomorrow's British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Apart from once or twice being dragged through the cold countryside when I was seven years old to watch the RAC rally stages in North Yorkshire I've never been to such an event so I thought I should probably try it once.

I do support motorsport in general as I do believe it is the way the industry creates more efficient vehicles and technologies that eventually feed through into production cars and I do watch all the F1 races on TV. Though all this Max Moseley bad business does sour it a little.

But who do I support? The ticket comes because of a relationship between Abbey/Santander and Oxford Brookes University that was originally established when Alonso won the title a couple of seasons ago - Alonso lives in Oxford and set up some sponsorship deals for Spanish students to come and study at our School of Technology. But obviously he's no longer in an Abbey/Santander sponsored car. I have a small natural bias towards the "English" boy, Hamilton, and he of course is in the same car.

But, just watching the qualifying a new possibility arises. Apparently Heikki Kovalainen lives in Oxford too and is in the right sponsor's car and is the front runner in qualifying. He describes Britain as his adopted country (I wouldn't if I hailed from Finland I suspect!). Whereas the British born one has adopted Switzerland allegedly because despite all his good luck and fantastic income he can't be bothered to contribute his dues to Britain.

It would be nice to see a "British" winner of the British Grand Prix and eventually the championship again. But I think the answer is clear for tomorrow, go Oxford! go Santander! go Kovalainen!

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Silverstone: who should I be supporting?