British Grand Prix Chauffeur Hire at Silverstone

Early July, a full weekend, and the Northamptonshire border: that is the British Grand Prix. Practice fills Friday, qualifying Saturday, and the race itself comes on Sunday afternoon. Few sporting events in the country pull a bigger crowd, spread as it is across grandstands, general admission banking and hospitality suites. Most of that is outdoors, and most of it a long walk from wherever you left the car.

The walk is exactly the point. Parking at the circuit is largely grass, allocated by colour, and can sit a mile or more from your gate, which is hard going in rain and harder again coming back. Book a chauffeur and you are set down at an entrance, then collected from a road settled in advance, usually clear of the main exit flow. Your driver keeps an eye on the traffic and shifts the pick-up if the obvious route has locked solid.

Two things want planning for: a very early start, and a slow finish. Coming from London the route climbs the M40 or the M1 before dropping onto the A43, and on race morning that final approach queues for hours, which makes leaving before dawn ordinary rather than dramatic. Once the chequered flag falls, roads around the circuit take a long while to clear, and plenty of clients would rather stay put for an hour with something to eat. Track access and paddock entry come off your ticket, never from us.

Four to six of you, with jackets, cameras, ear defenders and a spare pair of shoes, fit a V-Class, which also gives everybody somewhere civilised to sit should you choose to wait out the exit. When the weekend turns wet, a Range Rover Autobiography handles grass and mud best of all. Two people going up from London and back inside a day will find an S-Class makes that early start considerably easier to bear.