Basically those settings are, well, too dark for the conditions.
If it's a dull day (I assume it was - British summer and all) you really need to be shooting with the lens wide open AND upping the ISO AND lowering the shutter speed...
I had a quick look at several pages and I don't see a problem. There are some variations, and possibly some room to finesse the exposures, but all in all they look pretty solid and certainly not systemically underexposed. There may be the odd one or two where an unusually bright/reflective area has forced a little underexposure, but nothing dramatic.No there was no sky in the shot, i was sitting in a grandstand looking down at the track.
Not sure why but i can't copy and paste on my laptop but if you go to flickr my photostream is egor110