Donington Sat/Sun 31st Aug/1st Sep 2013

The latest meeting at Donington saw The Spectator visit both days for a rare International meeting at the circuit. The Italian based Superstars series made their 3rd appearance in the UK along with Auto GP and GT Sprint. Domestic support came in the form of Scottish Legends, the Northern based CNC Heads Sports/Saloons championship and HRDC Allstars.

International meetings are a chance to see cars and drivers that you wouldn't normally see and the V8 engined Superstars are certainly a spectacle. Sadly there were only 15 cars entered for the trip to Donington but at least there was quality on the driver front with ex Grand Prix drivers Vitantonio Liuzzi, Gianni Morbidelli & Domenico Schiatterella entered along with BTCC frontrunner Colin Tukington making a one-off appearance in a BMW M3. Italian Luigi Ferrara was visibly the most exciting driver through the Craner Curves during Saturday qualifying and his Mercedes took pole position for the first of Sundays races which he went on to win, despite a mid race safety car period. The safety car was needed after oil was deposited at the Melbourne hairpin and several cars went off. Given the complexities and performance of a powerful V8 engine, there was a notable amount of technical problems throughout the course of the weekend and by the time Sundays's second race ended there were just 11 cars circulating and not all were well! Gianni Morbidelli's Audi RS5 won said race very easily and having won most races this season vies with the Mercedes of Thomas Biagi for the championship lead.

11 cars sounds bad but contained more than 8 car entry for the GT Sprint International Series. This is a series that I was witnessing for the first time and although GT racing is in rude health globally, this is a series that simply isn't needed in an already crowded market. The 8 cars soon became 7 early on in both 1 hour races as Italian veteran Gianni Giudici's Ginetta G50 was merely there for him to have a bit of a play in....To be fair though both races held the attention as most cars contained a slower pay driver paired with a quick pro which meant different strategies on track. Both races were won by the Team Ukraine Ferrari 458 of Raffaele Gianmaria/Andrii Kruglyk. Apparently the wrong national anthem was played on the podium after race one and I would hazard a guess only if you were Ukrainian would you have noticed. I don't think the team members walked off like the North Korean's did at the Olympics last year when the South Korea flag was shown in error....

Definite highlight of the visiting trio of International series were the Auto GP races. This was the second visit to the UK in 2013 for the ex A1GP based Lola-Zytek cars. As a Donington regular who is used to watching slightly slower machinery usually, it was fantastic to see the sheer speed of these cars on track. Indeed the outright Grand Prix circuit lap record was set by Kimiya Sato in race 1 with a 1 minute 17.707 seconds lap. A good weekend for the Super Nova team with drivers Vittorio Ghirelli and Narain Kathikeyan sharing the wins. Despite a modest 14 car grid and the lack of much on-track passing I really enjoyed the spectacle.

For the second week running, Simon Allaway left the circuit with the winner's laurels as he won the CNC Heads Sports/Saloons race on Saturday in his mighty Lotus Esprit. 

Scottish Legends had a very busy weekend with 6 races over the course of the meeting. Championship leader Ross Mickel was involved in a big crash at Redgate during Saturday's second race and was launched into a series of rolls. He spent the night in hospital by all accounts but was released on Sunday. As with their English counterparts 2 weeks ago the Legends put on a show and deserve to be applauded for their commitment in travelling a long way, with a timetable that had them on track either at the crack of dawn or in the evening gloom....

The HRDC Allstars race provided a varied grid of historic cars and was won by the TVR Griffith of Mike Whitaker, energetically followed in 2nd place by the AC Cobra of Michael Squire.

All in all not a bad weekend but I wouldn't be surprised if the Superstars package doesn't visit the East Midlands next year. Donington had marketed the meeting heavily and a larger than normal crowd was in attendance. The spectator banks were almost empty by the time the second GT Sprint race was about to start though surprisingly...Most regular race goers know that the most entertaining racing is usually to be found at club meetings so why circuits heavily promote International meetings that don't provide the thrills is a mystery. A timetable that had several large gaps between races on the Sunday wouldn't have helped keep the crowd entertained either. 

Admission was free for me having been given a ticket when I attended the first Run in the Park evening and I wouldn't have liked to pay £25 which it was on the Sunday to get in. As for the £5 programme.....quite possibly one of the worst I've seen for a while. Donington's promoted meetings programmes are produced by the same company ( I won't give them the publicity by mentioning their name here) and are awful. A tribute to the modern obsession with style over quality the entry lists are printed in white lettering on a black background so I must remember to bring my white pen with me next time! The entry lists printed for the Superstars and GT Sprint are possible contenders for the next Man Booker Prize as they contained more fiction than seen in many novels. Somebody had simply gone onto both series websites and copied and pasted random drivers and numbers without any thought to if they were actually in the UK this weekend and if they were, to put them in numerical order...

Finally a bit of good news to report on the circuit's slow return to former glories. The infamous "Gillett" tunnel between McLeans and Coppice has been worked on for a while now and for the first time since 2008 you are able to walk unmolested by the side of the track. Coppice corner is still the windiest place on earth though and on Sunday it resembled the Sahara with dust blowing in from the bone dry Infield!