Donington Park Saturday 30th May 2015

Don't panic loyal readers.... This giant "Gillette" logo painted on the grass at the Craner Curves doesn't mean that Donington's beloved former operator has returned to run the circuit to dig parts of it up for no apparent reason! Thankfully it is a remnant from the World Superbike meeting a week before and by the looks of it will be difficult to remove for a while yet....
The Historic Sports Car Club were in charge for a 1-day meeting on the National circuit on this particular day. A proliferation of events for the older car has seen it possible for competitors to race almost every weekend both in the UK or in Europe so, to be honest, I've tried to avoid going to much Historic racing in the last few years. However the HSCC have managed to maintain a clubbie, low-key feel to many of their meetings and this 8 race meeting was testament to that philosophy.
It's actually quite rare these days to have a 1 day meeting. Circuit hire costs have risen to the extent that it's financially more viable to hire a circuit for 2 days and try to fill grid slots accordingly. The morning's qualifying took place in unseasonably cold conditions but thankfully it warmed up (but not by much..!) for the afternoon's racing.
Things didn't start too well though with a red flag on the first lap of the Historic F.Ford 2000 race following a 3 car crash at Coppice. The restart saw Andrew Park passing Callum Grant on the last lap to claim victory in a very entertaining race. This set the pattern of the day where it was the single-seaters that provided the best racing. Historic FF1600 put on a good show with 32 cars on track plus a cracking Classic Racing Car race to end the day with the top 2, Ian Jones & Andy Jarvis separated by 0.004 seconds at the flag!
I'm definitely not a fan of longer length, 2-driver races at Club level and the days only poor race was the 40 minute Guards Trophy race. The race was won by the Chevron B8 of Martin O'Connell who was a talented but perennially underfunded British F3 driver of the late 90's...another lost UK talent.
Given that the circuit hosted its main Historic Festival earlier in the month it was pleasing to see a decent entry for this meeting, which did provide some excellent racing.
Admission was £10 with the usual £5 DPRAC discount and I stuck to my guns and didn't buy a programme! One thing to note is that the Download music festival is not long away and construction of its stages and paraphernalia was in full swing around the circuit perimeter. It's not quite as bad it used to be when the stages were inside the circuit but disruption to normal viewing may be an issue for future meetings. So long as they don't hang lightbulbs from the catchfencing, like they did a few years ago, I'll be happy......