I have many and varied interests but when it comes to sport I have only one: motorsport. More specifically F1 and I really only have eyes for the Williams Racing team. So when I saw that there was an F1 Exhibition coming to London and organised by F1 itself I booked up.
The exhibition was held in London’s ExCel centre right under the flight path for planes coming in to land at London City airport. The entrance was through what looked to be a fire escape into a dark area where bags where checked. To the right I could see the gift shop that we’d no doubt exit through at the end. (Spoiler: we did!)
Next stop was a desk handed a set of headphones and a remote control. It turned out that there were audio points around the exhibition that you pointed the remote at and that then triggered a commentary. I found that this worked well most of the time but there were occasions when the remote didn’t trigger at all.
The exhibition was in broad sections covering the history of the sport, it starts with a display of four classic cars including the wonderful Williams FW07C, then was an area about how F1 works covering topics like tyres and strategy, next an area on car composition and, finally, a video, more of which later.
All were well illustrated and included artifacts relevant to what was being displayed (see pictures below). There were also some interesting talks from a wide variety of people including ex-drivers, journalists and other prominent people from the sport. One had Mika Hakkinen describing a lap of Spa and at the end he said which a grin “the lap had to be absolutely perfect… of course mine always were”! I really miss Hakkinen.
The most chilling exhibit of all was that of Roman Grosjean’s fire destroyed car, half of which is in Toronto where there is a similar exhibition currently running, and the other in London. It is amazing that he got out of it alive and is a reminder of just how dangerious F1 can be.
The final section was a video, or more precisely a video wall covering three sides of a room which showed a montage of historic and contemporary racing footage to a very loud soundtrack. It was a good way to end the exhibition which had taken us about 90 minutes to go round.
But wait there was still the gift shop! This included a small amount of teamwear at over inflated prices, a Williams hat was £45 and it is £27 on the team’s website for example, and some exhibition specific items such as a tote bag for £25. I passed.
It must have been difficult for those putting on the exhibition to get the balance right between aiming at those new to the sport and the veterans. I think that they just about pulled it off. £30 was probably the upper limit of what I would have paid but it was a good experience and if you get a chance it is worth going.
