Rain wreaks havoc for fans ahead of British GP

Up to 30,000 fans are being urged to stay away from Silverstone today after chaos descended on organisers of the British Grand Prix.

Sickened Silverstone managing director Richard Phillips was close to tears yesterday as he attempted to explain how one of the most anticipated sporting events of the year had been ruined by rain.

Phillips issued an unreserved apology to all fans who either sat in hours of traffic yesterday and missed both practice sessions, or who will now miss qualifying today.

A statement read: “Silverstone are strongly advising fans with public car park passes for today not to come to Silverstone.

“Unless spectators have pre-booked park and ride, a hospitality ticket that includes parking in the centre of the circuit, or are in local campsites and able to walk to the circuit, Silverstone strongly advises you do not attend the qualifying day.

“Silverstone has had to take this action due to the fact that 50% of the public car parks have been lost due to the severe weather conditions over the last weeks and, in particularly, the last 36 hours.

“Silverstone is doing everything possible to protect and preserve as many of the car parks ahead of tomorrow.

“Fans will be refunded for any unused Friday or Saturday tickets.”

The financial hit is expected to run into seven figures and turn a potential profit into a loss, but worse is the damage again to Silverstone’s reputation given what happened in 2000 when heavy rain turned car parks into mudbaths.

On this occasion, with Phillips at the helm, he fully accepts the burden of responsibility.

“There will be 20,000 to 30,000 people today we won’t be able to properly cater for,” said Phillips.

“It’s going to cost us a lot of money. I honestly don’t know the figure, but it could be a lot more than hundreds of thousands (of pounds).

“Right now we’re trying to get ourselves into a situation to get in as many people as we can from a position of devastation.

“But I unreservedly apologise to people. I feel very responsible for it, this is something I’ve been very proud of over the years and I almost could cry now.”

Phillips was visibly choking with that last remark, highlighting the toll the day had taken on him, with a year’s worth of hard work undone by the forces of nature.

June proved to be the wettest on record, and with no let up in the rain at the start of this month, notably with 40 millimetres falling in a 12-hour period yesterday, Silverstone fell apart.

By mid-afternoon all campsites in and around Silverstone had to be closed, with the traffic havoc that caused miles of tailbacks and hours of delays sparked by the campers.

The concern for Phillips is that people do not get the message regarding not turning up if they have a public car park pass, or they opt to ignore the warnings and plough on regardless.

“I really hope that’s not the case,” said Phillips.

“There is slightly less pressure today as we have a park-and-ride system in place, which we didn’t have yesterday because today it was a working day and the buses were unavailable.

“Hopefully the campers who did arrive yesterday have found something this evening and won’t be on the roads today.

“But yeah, I’m worried. Of course, I’m worried.

“It could come to the point where we will stop people on the Dadford Road (the approach road to Silverstone) and push them through past the circuit, and I don’t want to do that.”