With my last post ending with a couple of short visits to Formula 1 teams’ headquarters, we pick up our story a few days later now. I’ve already come home at the time of writing this, since I wanted to get a few days together into one post, as not much has happened in those last few days of my holiday in England, apart from Sunday’s event(s), which we will still get to later on in a different post.
As I’ve said before, Formula 1 is quite a big part of my life these days, being invested in it more and more all the time. Whether it being the actual race weekends, or some behind the scenes stories or whatever else it may be, I just find it all very interesting. Not many people will get this, but we all have our hobbies, and Formula 1 is one of mine. Naturally, with being as interested in the sport as I am, and having an opportunity to at least get (somewhat) close to teams’ facilities, it had to be done.
With the previous post also talking about visits to Williams and Alpine headquarters, this time it was time to see another couple of locations. Including locations of two most successful teams in the last 10 years, Mercedes and Red Bull. We did drive by Aston Martin’s factory location as well, but that is also still being built and unfortunately, it is in such an awkward spot, that we didn’t stop and I didn’t get any photos of that. But I also got to visit one of the most well known engine manufacturers, not just in the world of motorsport, even though that is mainly the focus here, but creating some other amazing products for different cars. And that is Cosworth, where my friend, who I stayed with actually works.
The one thing that stood out to me was the fact that, apart from some flags and signs, there’s not much that you can see at the majority of the locations, apart from Mercedes’. They do have a bit more “on display”, so to speak, even the names of the roads leading up to the factories have been named with that in mind, as you can see below.
Yeah, true that Red Bull have done a bit more as well, but without actually knowing what’s going on, you would never have guessed it’s a Formula 1 factory. Which in some way is probably what they wanted to achieve. We can only imagine what it would’ve been like if they put huge signs out front, and people coming to visit all the time. Not something they want, I would imagine.
With that said, I tried to get some photos of the locations, just so that I can look back and say, “Yeah, I’ve been there.”, but really not many different photos you can take with it. And also time wise, you can literally spend only a couple of minutes at each of them and that’s it.
That is why this post has covered events that happened over a couple of days, with the other times being spent at home, doing some sim racing, and just relaxing and getting some much needed rest after what we went through with the trip to London earlier on in the week. On the other hand as well, which we didn’t know at the time of course, it was good that we did it that way, as we needed all the energy for what happened on the last (full) day of my trip!
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