The Motor Racing Spectator

After a rare weekend off, it was back to Donington on the weekend of June 23/24 for a very busy 2 day 750MC organised meeting. Very busy is something of an understatement with a hugely ambitious 28 race schedule in place with 12 races on Saturday and 16 on Sunday. The 750MC are organising less meetings in 2012 so it would appear that their doctrine is to cram as much as physically possible into each day.  We ended up losing the final race on Sunday, SportSpecials (nee KitCars) due to time constraints, so it was just the 15 races in total...... Dare one say it, but there was probably too much racing scheduled! Both days the length of races was reduced from 13 minutes + 1 Lap to 11 minutes + 1 lap (after 4 races on Saturday and 6 races on Sunday) All the 750MC formulae had double-headers over the weekend save the 750 Trophy which had just the 1 race. Such was the entry in the Locosts that they had 3 races. There was some very good racing throughout the weekend with only the Formula ...

This weekend it was the turn of  Rockingham to see a visit from The Spectator for the BRSCC organised British Formula 3/British GT package. There were 9 races on the Sunday, 2 of each for F3,UK Formula Ford, Volkswagen Cup & Ginetta GT5 Challenge plus a 2 hour British GT race. Rockingham, with it's 2 mile road course within the 1.5 mile oval, is an odd place to spectate at. Opened in 2001 the venue has struggled to find it's identity over the years with the visit of Indy/Champ Car in '01 & '02 a distant memory along with the much vaunted ASCAR/Days of Thunder. Indeed the Oval is barely used these days for racing with only the Pickup series using it on a few occasions throughout the season. The road course is a far less interesting version of the venue's early days, with the modern circuit not using the fast chicane on Turn 1 of the oval. I guess it couldn't last especially after Katherine Legge flipped her F3 car there in 2003. What the spectator is lef...

Thanks to a minor event event involving the Windsor family taking place this weekend, the Late May Bank Holiday became the Early June Bank Holiday this year and so it was to Donington on Monday for the annual Morgan Sports Car Club race meeting. Unsuprisingly the 8 races mainly featured Morgans but there was also a double header for the Ford XR championship and races for MGBCV8,Thoroughbred Sportscars,RAFMSA Challenge & a Sports/Saloon thrash at the end of the day. This was a very low key meeting with a very sparse crowd in attendance. Indeed there were far more contractors on site preparing for the forthcoming Download music festival at the circuit. The Old Hairpin area will apparently be the "Gold" campsite for the event as helpfully demonstrated by the decorating of the catch fencing with gold bunting and lightbulbs... At times one despairs watching motor racing in this country. Circuits have to decide if they want paying punters through the gate or don't bother...

No mistaking where I was on Sunday with a trip to Silverstone for Round 2 of the Blancpain Endurance Series which is a European based championship for GT3 cars with each race being 3 hours in length. This was a strange day with one of the worst timetables I've ever experienced along with some of the worst June weather I've ever experienced! First of all the timetable, with the meeting consisting of a 50 minute Lamborghini Super Trofeo race at 9.00am then a near 3 hour gap to the Blancpain race getting underway at 12.45 then the 2nd Lambo race starting at 4.10pm and that was that. Thankfully the main race of the day lived up to it's billing with a fantastic grid of 50 cars lining up, which made for a very entertaining race won by the 1st round winner, the Marc VDS BMW Z4 of Markus Palttala/Bas Leinders/Maxime Martin, pictured below taken in the Pit Lane walkabout on Sunday morning.... The weather was appalling for most of the day with the glorious sunny skies of the w...