November 2016
MG LIVE, SILVERSTONE, 2016
From...Terry Jones
MG Live, Silverstone,
June 5th 2016
A
s soon as I saw the advertisement for the above event and
realised my UK holiday itinerary had a
suitable gap, I immediately booked a
ticket to the day and also to the President’s dinner the same evening.
The day didn’t start overly well with
the forecast for wet and windy
weather coming true but I drove my
MGF to the Silverstone racetrack (top
up and heater on) in a positive mood.
I drove into the venue and was directed to park with the other ‘Fs’ on a
grassed area close to the action.
There were more F’s parked there
than I have ever seen together before
and it was quite a sight. I headed first
to the auto-jumble and I looked
around the various stalls for things I
might need. I didn’t have a list, in fact
I couldn’t think of anything I needed
but this did not stop me from looking
at all manner of MG bits, tools and
other paraphernalia. I made a halfhearted offer on 2 air filter housings
for one of my MGBs but I didn’t really
want to cart them back in the suitcase
33
and so I was not disappointed when
my offer was refused.
There was an entertainment area
where a new MG3 ‘display’ was conducted at intervals throughout the
day. Ant Anstead (from The Love of
Cars’ television show) was the presenter and the ‘star’ was Russ Swift
who has a world-wide reputation for
stunt driving and in particular, drifting.
He ‘drifted’ the MG3 into a small gap
between two ‘proper’ MGs that belonged to MGOC members (I thought
they were foolhardy) but he never
came close to damaging them. He
also put the car on 2 wheels and
drove it around the arena, each stunt
he invited members of the audience to
sit in the passenger seats. I was impressed. I asked about modifications
to allow the 2 wheel driving and Russ
advised that they just pumped up the
tyres to a higher pressure!
There were displays by many service
providers and some of the ‘registers’
that were also interesting and there
were several cars out on the track that
attracted my attention for a while also.
I left the circuit and drove about 2
miles down the road to the Silverstone