Monday morning had barely broken when two of the fans had to leave the event to rush to the hospital to have their first child... Mother and son (named Rentaro) are both well. Meanwhile, fans were gathering from all directions...

One fan flew from Scotland, two more from The Netherlands, and one fan flew all the way from Japan - just for this event !

So, we climbed aboard the minibus (a minibus made splendid by the addition of some fan club logos ) and set off to the Super Aguri F1 factory in Leafield. After a small detour (the directions I had didn't seem to match the roads I was driving on, hee hee. Nevermind, Atsu's Satellite Navigation gismo came to our rescue) we arrived at the factory ahead of schedule.

Most of the group had never seen inside an F1 factory before, so seeing their wide eyes was a pleasure for me. We were shown the design office, where CAD (computer aided design) was being used to design the next new components; then on to the carbon fibre shop - where most of the manufacturing happens. Then on to look at the autoclaves (enourmous ovens that can take a whole car body which are used to 'cook' the carbon fibre and resins to bullet-hard components). Then the best part of the tour took us to the car bays.

There in front of us were several part-assembled cars for us to poke our heads and cameras into - the fans could touch the cars and see just how uncomfortable the monocoques are. For many, this was the closest they had ever been to an F1 car, and many of them were transfixed.

Our guide was Rachel and she answered dozens of questions, and gave an excellent guide of the various stages and processes combining technical information with team information. A very professional job, thank you Rachel.

As we completed the tour, we headed upstairs for tea and coffee, and found ourselves in Aguri Suzuki's office, an honour indeed. Rachel continued to answer questions and to discuss the season ahead. Secretly she was holding us all in the office while our suprise VIP guest arrived...

There are some special moments in F1 of course, and as a fan one of the most special moments is when you first meet the driver you support. So imagine the looks on the faces of the fans when Takuma walked in to say hello to us. Fantastic!  Over half of the group had never met Taku before, and this was a perfect surprise for them.

Takuma kindly spared time out of a vey busy day, he had been to Honda's factory for a live tele-cast to Japan, and was on the way to London ... but wanted to come and say hello to us. Very generous indeed! It is always very special to meet Taku, and we were all very grateful. 

After lunch, we headed into the minibus to the go-kart GP in Aylesbury. We were all ready to show how good we were (I did invite Taku of course, but he was busy, hee hee). Taku had kindly signed the three prizes, and they were worth winning - so let battle begin!

The GP was hard work and there was always one clear winner, lapping most of us. Joe is 14 years old, and does karting at a national level - and his skills showed. Stu came second and Kantaro took third. I didn't make it to the final, because I was cheated out of points at the very last 2 metres of a 20-lap race by Calvin. A very good move past me on the final corner... well done, Calvin, huh!  0.40 seconds, I woz robbed!

The first meeting of the UK fan club was ending, but we had all had a great and memorable day... See some of the photos in the gallery later.