I was a little embarrassed by this, and had been the butt of a lot of unfair jokes from friends, until Wednesday 1st June 2005. Now, those that laughed at me are a little jealous and are considering membership themselves. You are probably asking why this change of heart and what happened on 1st June?

Well, it was the most amazing day (if you like your racing!). As a Pitbull (still embarrassed to admit that!) part of the membership is the opportunity to attend a test day with the team. It is expensive, but oh so worth it.

1st June was the first day of the Silverstone test. Most teams were there, although only Red Bull, Williams, McLaren, Ferrari and Jordan did any running. It seems the rain scared the others too much to venture out of their garages!

The first excitement of the day was having paddock passes. I know it was only a test day, but wandering around the paddock still had a great buzz. Having made it into the paddock, we then went to the RBR hospitality suite, where it has to be said they looked after us in a big way. Breakfast on arrival, 3 course lunch, afternoon tea and cakes, drinks and whatever you wanted throughout the day.

Then came the highlight of the day - we were given access to the garage. The side of the garage was available for us to watch the team all day and there was an area outside, in the pitlane to watch the action. We were not allowed to take photos inside the garage, but you will see I made the most of the pitlane area.

Christian Klien and Scott Speed were testing. Klien (so young!) seemed to enjoy the attention! Scott Speed did not get to do much as his car had a fuel leak in the morning. However, the team fixed the problem and then rebuilt the car in the afternoon. The test session closed at 5pm and they got him on circuit with about 10 minutes to go. This was incredible to see. I know nothing about cars (probably shouldn’t admit that to you lot!) but even I could see these mechanics were amazing. One guy standing next to me was very impressed with how they rebuilt the gearbox, I was just impressed generally – how am I supposed to know what a gearbox looks like???

No other team gave their guests such unrestricted access to the team. For example, the McLaren guests got shepherded in, supervised and ejected after 15 minutes.

All in all a brilliant day and something I would definitely do again. I recommend it to everyone, and if anyone wants to know how to become a Pitbull, let me know. I hope you like the photos!