Donington Park Saturday 11th July 2015

After 5 weeks it was time to venture trackside again so The Spectator headed to his local circuit for the BARC organised Motors TV Live Raceday. Unusually the Saturday of this 2 day meeting was the better looking of the days with 11 races scheduled compared to 9 on the Sunday.
Motors TV have been televising the occasional club meeting now for several years and it is an excellent way not only for the humble club racer to gain their 5 minutes of fame but also show the viewer that club racing can be entertaining to watch.
On show on Saturday were the Caterham Graduates, Porsche Club Championship, Kumho BMW's, Avon Tyres Intermarque & Radical Owners Club.
After a relatively incident free qualifying in the morning there was a race for the Porsche Club before the lunch break with the remaining 10 races then live on TV from 2pm onwards. It was a shame the Porsche Club race wasn't televised as it was a cracker. Peter Morris's 996 just beating Gary Duckman's Boxster to the line having had a terrific battle all the way through the 25 minute race.
When racing resumed after lunch the first race "live" was for the Radical Owners Club. A rather curious series this with a sparse 12 car entry containing 3 Spire GT3's, a Radical-esque looking machine. Indeed the Spire of Tim Gray easily won both races and these races were easily the poorest of the day.
The Avon Tyres Intermarque Championship is a South-Eastern based series which caters for drivers with National Hot Rod machines who want to race them away from the confines of a tight quarter mile oval. 17 silhouette bodied cars took to the track this weekend and provided a decent spectacle with Matt Simpson's Vauxhall Tigra wining both races.
The Kumho BMW Championship has been a BARC stalwart for many years and 33 cars were split into 2 races for different classes.
Caterham Graduates always put on a show and there were 3 races on Saturday combining several of the strangely titled classes together. Sigma with Classic plus Mega with Super. The Sigmax class had a race by themselves! The use of Donington's National circuit helped keep the hordes of Caterham's together in their usual slipstreaming packs.
All in all not a bad day at Donington with the only minor gripe being the usual late finish, with the last race for Intermarque finishing at 6.55pm. The other usual thing to report at Donington is the lack of spectators. Hardly a soul was to be seen on this day. I hope the Motors TV director didn't tell a cameraman to look for crowd shots! Admission was the usual £10 with £5 DPRAC discount and I did buy a programme for £3

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Donington Park Sunday 29th September 2013

Image
Another Sunday, another visit to Donington....This time for a Motor Sport Vision Racing organised meeting where the headline event was the finale of the BRDC Formula 4 championship. 12 races on the bill included 3 for the Mini Challenge, 2 each for Production BMW's, F3 Cup and Radical SR3 Challenge along with the aforementioned Formula 4 plus a 1 hour Lotus Cup UK race. The BRDC F4 championship has been one of the season's highlights. Pitched against the newly winged Formula Ford at the start of the year for drivers wanting to start their climb on the single-seater ladder, the series can quite easily claim to have "won" the battle with grids hovering around the 20 mark for most of the year. 18 cars entered Donington as those drivers who'd got no say in the title race left for pastures new or ran out of money. To have 6 drivers in with a mathematical shout at winning the championship going into the final 3 races says much for the competitiveness of the series...
Read more

Donington Park Sat/Sun May 19/20 2012

Image
Back to Donington this weekend for the visit of "Superstars". No, not the famous BBC show of the 70's and 80's where top sportsmen of the day competed against each other in squat thrusts and Kevin Keegan falling off his bicycle... These Superstars are an Italian based championship for mighty V8 powered saloons, 18 of which were present. They made an impressive spectacle on a dry track as their first session on a damp Saturday morning made the cars look the unwieldy beasts they are. A star studded entry list with former British Grand Prix driver Johnny Herbert driving a Maserati Quattroporte, plus former GP drivers Gianni Morbidelli (Audi) & Vitantonio Liuzzi (Mercedes). Indeed Morbidelli was the star of the weekend as he won both races very easily in an Audi RS5 that was the class of the field. Fellow Audi driver, Johan Kristoffersson, (who started from the back in the first race due to competing in the Scandinavian Touring Car Champinship on Saturday) finished 2n...
Read more

Silverstone Saturday 5th September 2015

Image
After a 3 week "Summer" break, or should that be a 3 week Autumn/Winter break given the less than Summery August weather, The Spectator ventured to Silverstone for the first day of the World Series by Renault meeting. Starting at Donington in the mid 00's and then moving to Silverstone in 2008 the "Renault Weekend" was always a highlight in the calendar. Free tickets were given away in their thousands and huge crowds turned up every year. Featuring the core Renault championships of Formula Renault 3.5, Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup and a Megane based saloon series the UK saw a round each year until 2011. After a 3 year hiatus the Renault weekend was back . No free tickets this time around though but a very reasonable £10 on the gate each day and a weekend ticket for £12 if bought in advance. The enormous crowds of yesteryear were not in evidence on Saturday and a crowd figure of 20,000 was quoted for the weekend which would appear to be that 19,500 turned up o...
Read more