As potentially the last Formula One race at Silverstone, the British Grand Prix was a well-attended affair in terms of paddock people. I will take a riskhere of getting it all wrong again, as I may have done in Monaco, but I did see a number of what appeared to be celebrities.
Unfortunately, I forgot to download the photos from my camera before going onto the starting grid, so I only had space for 19 photos in my camera when I went on the grid and they disappeared quickly, mostly in two batches, one of Stirling Moss and the other of Sebastian Vettel. Well, not a bad hit that. But I suddenly noticed the camera’s memory card was full just as Eric Cantona, the French soccer player and artist, passed me by on the grid. He was a guest, it seemed of the Renault team.
Otherwise, it was a very royal affair elsewhere, as I saw Fergie - Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York - and she and a few other royals met up and greeted each other warmly. For instance, there in the morning in the paddock with Damon Hill, the president of the BRDC and world champion, was Prince Michael of Kent and the Duke of Kent. Hill appeared to be showing them around the paddock, and I later saw them on the starting grid as well.
But the moment that appealed to me most was when Damon led them all over to the Brawn motor home in the morning. Brawn is far down at one end of the paddock - the lower end - and at the extreme upper end is the FIA motor home. At the same moment Hill and the royals headed for Brawn, at roughly the halfway point of the walk, with the Hill group surrounded by photographers catching the royals, another swarm of journalists surrounded another royal going in the opposite direction. The two groups passed each other roughly in the middle of the paddock. But I saw absolutely no signs of recognition between these two royal clans. I suppose it was of no surprise, however, since the second group was not true royalty, but just Max Mosley, being interviewed on the move by media as he was each time he broke loose in the paddock.
After the race, however, upon examining my photo of Damon Hill and the royals, I suddenly wondered what Hill was reaching for in his jacket at just the moment Mosley passed, as you can see in the photo above.
Mosley, however, has since said that he is ready to iron out the problems with the FOTA, so his popularity may well go up a few notches in the coming weeks.
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