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Friday lunchtime, and the day's already had most of the colour bleached out of it by the kind of merciless, battering sunshine you only see in movies set in southern California. All the normal hues sponged up into a sky the same colour as a newborn's eyes.

An odd thing to be thinking about at Silverstone in Northamptonshire, I reflect, glancing up into an endless ceiling of baby blue and lolloping around the back of the Stowe circuit in a faintly dieselly clatter of Land Rover Discovery. Definitely in the right place though: glimpses of primary-coloured leathers flash through the new grandstands, the air rent by the buzzing howl of a superbike trackday. They look quick. Accelerative. Bloody dangerous. You wouldn't catch me on one, I think with a slight cringe. I'm far too sensible.

Words: Tom Ford