This was the first time IÕd ever been to the Festival of Speed, not sure why IÕd never been before to be honest. Having read up on how much fun parking can be I made sure I got there early on the Friday morning and was only on the 5th row back in the field. I tried (and failed) to see as much as possible before the crowds descended.
I was in the Supercar Paddock when their engines started firing up and drowned out the noise of the people; the first hill climb of the day was due to start. Time to hot foot it over to the track and get some photographs. It was at this point that my ŌtrustyÕ EOS stopped working :-(
Fortunately I had brought along a little finepix compact so time to see how good the video mode is. (Video below, not too bad for a first attempt)

Once the first run of the day was over I headed up to the rally stage to get covered in dust as the cars were thrown round the bends. Quite impressed with how well the photographs came out considering that the EOS was now tucked away in my bag and I was shooting from the hip in some cases. This did mean I missed some of the racing cars flying up the hill climb but you canÕt be in two places at once and I really wanted to see the rally cars in their natural environment. After a bit I headed back down the hill to see what else was there and managed to catch the supercars doing another hill climb, although some were too fast for the finepix to catch on camera.

To summarise, it was a very enjoyable day, marred by the lack of a decent camera, otherwise I would have stayed until closing time and taken thousands of photographs. I did finally get to see a Mclaren F1 but it was the race car version and had loads of people hanging round it.
Still, thereÕs always next yearÉ

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