Right, this might turn into a bit of a luckyseven style epic but if I don't start I'll never get it done.
We enjoyed our day (sadly abreviated as it was) at the Donington Historic last year so made sure that we'd go again this year. Then a chance discovery of a rather limited offer for a subscription to Motor Sport including a pair of weekend tickets somewhat sealed the deal. Couldn't do Saturday but on Sunday I went up with alolympic (who kindly drove to save me doing it two days running) and then on the Monday went with Mrs and Ickle_Seth plus PaulW, all crammed in the Hillman.
At every event I go to I'll always start mooching about and then there'll be 'that car' that means I've got to finally take the camera out of the bag and take some snaps. This time 'that car' was THIS car. Maserati Quattroporte 2, parked in the paddock extension with a bunch of Maserati club cars.
It's the prototype of only 12 that were produced.
A Mexico for good measure.
There was a practice/qualifying session going on on track and I had wanted to head round to the outside of the old hairpin to watch the first races as it looked like it was probably quite a good spot. So as we walked round there I stopped a couple of times to take a few photos of the cars on track through gaps in the fence. Mustn't grumble at this for my first action shot of the day.
Anyway, there'll be more of this group later on...
Thie first race was for Historic F3 cars, screamers with sub 1 litre engines, often based on Ford pre-crossflow blocks I think. Single seaters have never really been my bag, and these ones certainly seem to have more handling than power so it generally felt quite processional as a spectator but here's a representative photo.
The second race was definitely going to floatour boat a bit more, '66-'85 touring cars. Before we could see anything there was already a mighty racket reverberating down from the pit area. It turned out to be that Capri.
However after this formation lap it disappeared and it was left to the Jag to stretch out into the lead.
Metro Turbo was indecently rapid too, and I think the only FWD car in the race.
The Capri reappeared after a lap or so and started carving through the field in a most spectacular fashion but was clearly having reliability issues as it soon dropped out again.
Best noise of all though I felt went with the Bastos SD1 that made a fantastic Rover V8 roar all the way down the hill towards us.
The Rover P6 won our award for just generally looking beefy.
Great livery on this slightly sideways Dolomite.
Alfa looked a bit too sports car like in this company.
XJS sounded pretty mega too.
So with those two races done it was already tie for the lunch break and car club parades so we left trackside and headed round to the paddocks for a nosey. Here's one of those F3 sub one litre engines, with the inlet ports bored straight down through the cylinder head and a twin choke carb with one side blocked off.
Plenty of activity going on...
but I still had the long lens on making shots of whole cars quite tricky.
I managed to get far enough back to squeeze all of this 288GTO in though!
A few cars started gathering for the first post lunch race.
Many flies were killed in the saloon race.
This Alfa was from the Alfaholics stable and was absolutely beautifully prepared.
We headed back to the track, going through the pedestrian tunnel and down to the inside of the same part of the circuit where we'd spent the morning. Next race up was the RAC Woodcote Trophy for pre-56 Sports cars. The be-finned wonder we'd spotted earlier is an RGS Atlanta.
Several Healeys in this race and more than one D type.
Rather ugly looking Aston Martin DB3 coupe
This Cooper Bristol reminded me of American sprint cars of that era.
Somewhat prettier DB3.
Once we'd had our lot of them we thought we'd go and have a look around all the car clubs parked in the infield areas. There were rows and rows of Jags, Stags, Austin Healeys and MGs.very few of which held much interest.
The was an early V8, possibly a genuine Costello conversion or possibly a replica of one. Egg crate grill gives quite a different look.
Datsun club had a pretty good collection of cars.
So pretty Lotus 7.
By this time the next race was underway, smaller engined, mostly 1970s sports cars so we took a look over the fence on the inside of the first corner for 5 minutes.
As you can see from those two photos, there were Porsches present. A LOT of Porsches.
There were also A LOT of Quattros.
We came to the conclusion that the owner of this Ferrari 250GTO had made not such a good job of making it look like a Mazda MX5. He's got the doors spot on but more effort required in other areas.
Swallow Dorrettis.
Back past the Datsuns and in particular that Skyline.
There were still four races to go and we set up camp on the infield section again. First up was the Motor Sport 90th anniversary Trophy for pre-war Sports Cars. I put the camera down and just sat back to enjoy watching these as I knew I'd get a chance to photograph them again on the Monday. Then came the Lotus Cortina under 2 litre saloon car Lotus Cortina race for Lotus Cortinas.
Somewhat pleasingly this was actually hard fought for the first few laps between an Alfa and BMW, the Fords getting left behind. Which Alfa? Oh, that one we'd spent ages looking at in the paddock earlier. So, brilliantly put together and super fast as well. It went on to win.
Four wheels on the ground is overated.
Four Three wheels on the ground is overated!
Next up was a relatively small field of cars across three decades, the common factor being that they were all Maseratis, eg.
Birdcage.
250F
Mark Knopfler in a 300S
Final race of the day was for the big bangers, the cars we'd caught the end of qualifying in the morning. Le Mans-style Sports Cars and 'Group 4' Cars '62-'74. Seven Lola T70s, numerous Chevron B8s and B16s, a GT40 and a coupe of 911RSs with more thrown in for good luck.
Formation lap for the rolling start:
Then with a massive roar coming from the pit straight behind us they were Go! Go! Go! Basically this kind of racing is just such an awesome spectacle you really need to go and see/hear/smell it.
Totally lost track of who was doing what, other than that the yellow 911 was super well sorted and seemed to be performing well against some pretty tough, and much lower competition. Pretty sure it was Lolas well out front though.
We had to get going before the noise was over and on the walk back towards the tunnel I managed to capture the pretty Fair Lady with the wider lens, now that it wasn't surrounded by Z cars.
And the sun was going down over the emptying paddock.
Still, I had another whole day on Monday to look forward to! To be continued...
We enjoyed our day (sadly abreviated as it was) at the Donington Historic last year so made sure that we'd go again this year. Then a chance discovery of a rather limited offer for a subscription to Motor Sport including a pair of weekend tickets somewhat sealed the deal. Couldn't do Saturday but on Sunday I went up with alolympic (who kindly drove to save me doing it two days running) and then on the Monday went with Mrs and Ickle_Seth plus PaulW, all crammed in the Hillman.
At every event I go to I'll always start mooching about and then there'll be 'that car' that means I've got to finally take the camera out of the bag and take some snaps. This time 'that car' was THIS car. Maserati Quattroporte 2, parked in the paddock extension with a bunch of Maserati club cars.
It's the prototype of only 12 that were produced.
A Mexico for good measure.
There was a practice/qualifying session going on on track and I had wanted to head round to the outside of the old hairpin to watch the first races as it looked like it was probably quite a good spot. So as we walked round there I stopped a couple of times to take a few photos of the cars on track through gaps in the fence. Mustn't grumble at this for my first action shot of the day.
Anyway, there'll be more of this group later on...
Thie first race was for Historic F3 cars, screamers with sub 1 litre engines, often based on Ford pre-crossflow blocks I think. Single seaters have never really been my bag, and these ones certainly seem to have more handling than power so it generally felt quite processional as a spectator but here's a representative photo.
The second race was definitely going to floatour boat a bit more, '66-'85 touring cars. Before we could see anything there was already a mighty racket reverberating down from the pit area. It turned out to be that Capri.
However after this formation lap it disappeared and it was left to the Jag to stretch out into the lead.
Metro Turbo was indecently rapid too, and I think the only FWD car in the race.
The Capri reappeared after a lap or so and started carving through the field in a most spectacular fashion but was clearly having reliability issues as it soon dropped out again.
Best noise of all though I felt went with the Bastos SD1 that made a fantastic Rover V8 roar all the way down the hill towards us.
The Rover P6 won our award for just generally looking beefy.
Great livery on this slightly sideways Dolomite.
Alfa looked a bit too sports car like in this company.
XJS sounded pretty mega too.
So with those two races done it was already tie for the lunch break and car club parades so we left trackside and headed round to the paddocks for a nosey. Here's one of those F3 sub one litre engines, with the inlet ports bored straight down through the cylinder head and a twin choke carb with one side blocked off.
Plenty of activity going on...
but I still had the long lens on making shots of whole cars quite tricky.
I managed to get far enough back to squeeze all of this 288GTO in though!
A few cars started gathering for the first post lunch race.
Many flies were killed in the saloon race.
This Alfa was from the Alfaholics stable and was absolutely beautifully prepared.
We headed back to the track, going through the pedestrian tunnel and down to the inside of the same part of the circuit where we'd spent the morning. Next race up was the RAC Woodcote Trophy for pre-56 Sports cars. The be-finned wonder we'd spotted earlier is an RGS Atlanta.
Several Healeys in this race and more than one D type.
Rather ugly looking Aston Martin DB3 coupe
This Cooper Bristol reminded me of American sprint cars of that era.
Somewhat prettier DB3.
Once we'd had our lot of them we thought we'd go and have a look around all the car clubs parked in the infield areas. There were rows and rows of Jags, Stags, Austin Healeys and MGs.very few of which held much interest.
The was an early V8, possibly a genuine Costello conversion or possibly a replica of one. Egg crate grill gives quite a different look.
Datsun club had a pretty good collection of cars.
So pretty Lotus 7.
By this time the next race was underway, smaller engined, mostly 1970s sports cars so we took a look over the fence on the inside of the first corner for 5 minutes.
As you can see from those two photos, there were Porsches present. A LOT of Porsches.
There were also A LOT of Quattros.
We came to the conclusion that the owner of this Ferrari 250GTO had made not such a good job of making it look like a Mazda MX5. He's got the doors spot on but more effort required in other areas.
Swallow Dorrettis.
Back past the Datsuns and in particular that Skyline.
There were still four races to go and we set up camp on the infield section again. First up was the Motor Sport 90th anniversary Trophy for pre-war Sports Cars. I put the camera down and just sat back to enjoy watching these as I knew I'd get a chance to photograph them again on the Monday. Then came the Lotus Cortina under 2 litre saloon car Lotus Cortina race for Lotus Cortinas.
Somewhat pleasingly this was actually hard fought for the first few laps between an Alfa and BMW, the Fords getting left behind. Which Alfa? Oh, that one we'd spent ages looking at in the paddock earlier. So, brilliantly put together and super fast as well. It went on to win.
Four wheels on the ground is overated.
Next up was a relatively small field of cars across three decades, the common factor being that they were all Maseratis, eg.
Birdcage.
250F
Mark Knopfler in a 300S
Final race of the day was for the big bangers, the cars we'd caught the end of qualifying in the morning. Le Mans-style Sports Cars and 'Group 4' Cars '62-'74. Seven Lola T70s, numerous Chevron B8s and B16s, a GT40 and a coupe of 911RSs with more thrown in for good luck.
Formation lap for the rolling start:
Then with a massive roar coming from the pit straight behind us they were Go! Go! Go! Basically this kind of racing is just such an awesome spectacle you really need to go and see/hear/smell it.
Totally lost track of who was doing what, other than that the yellow 911 was super well sorted and seemed to be performing well against some pretty tough, and much lower competition. Pretty sure it was Lolas well out front though.
We had to get going before the noise was over and on the walk back towards the tunnel I managed to capture the pretty Fair Lady with the wider lens, now that it wasn't surrounded by Z cars.
And the sun was going down over the emptying paddock.
Still, I had another whole day on Monday to look forward to! To be continued...
