Pulpaddict

The rapid rise of historic racing

This weekend my race season will get somewhat belatedly underway. I’m at the Donington Historic Festival where I shall be propping up the back of the grid in Carol Spagg’s U2TC (Under 2-litre Touring Cars) race, surely the most ferociously competitive series in historic motor racing and the Pre-’63 GT race where I’ll be demonstrating the folly of driving a 1.3-litre Alfa Giulietta in a field full of Cobras, E-types, hot Astons and Ferraris.

But on Friday night I’ll hopefully get among some of the bigger boys in Duncan Wiltshire’s gorgeous Woodcote Trophy race for 1950s sports cars thanks to the Ferrari 750 Monza it is my unimaginable fortune sometimes to race. The car is awkward, cussed, not to be trusted for a second and I love it as much as anyone could love anything without a beating heart.

And in all the time I’ve spent dreaming about returning to the track, so too have I thought long and hard about what in recent years has made such Festivals not only possible, but profitable. It’s easy to forget when there are vast Festivals at Brands Hatch, Donington, Oulton Park, Silverstone and Goodwood that before the first Coys meeting at in 1992, historic racing was, as Julius Thurgood rightly describes it, “a secret society. If you met someone at dinner and told them you raced old cars, they’d think you were slightly peculiar.” Last year 185,000 people attended the Goodwood Revival, every ticket sold in advance. That’s not just bigger than any other motor racing meeting save the British Grand Prix, it’s bigger than the Grand National, Derby or, measured in spectators per day, Wimbledon too.

I think the reason comes in two parts. From the competitor’s point of view there has been a shift away from race cards crammed with as many 10 lap sprints as the organisers can pack in. I once did a such a race on the Indy circuit at Brands which took up my entire weekend for nine minutes of racing. Longer races are better value and because many involve driver changes, far more social too.

For the spectators, I firmly believe they’d always have flocked to old car meetings if only they were aware of their existence. What happened was that first Jeffrey Pattinson and then Lord March revealed the world of old shed racing to a constituency of people who never knew it was there.

The rest was comparatively easy. Those who feared these vast events would kill club level historic racing were proven emphatically wrong: Silverstone and Goodwood didn’t eat all the pie for themselves, they made made a much bigger one for everyone to enjoy. People realised that old racing cars look far better than modern racing cars parked in the paddock, let alone when slithering though Redgate, Madgwick, Woodcote or Paddock Hill Bend.

Take this formula and introduce it to the world via that newfangled digital contraption called internet and the vast rise in interest in historic racing is not so hard to understand at all. Some have called it a blip that will pass but I don’t think so. The answer as to why historic motor racing is so popular today is simply this: it deserves to be.

For more on road cars from Andrew Frankel, click here.

Motor Sport Magazine – The original motor racing magazine

Source: Motor Sport Mag

Chevron works with Mission Motorsport

At Donington this past weekend Chevron’s cars appeared with Mission Motorsport logos, marking the British manufacturer’s support for the charity.

Jordan and David Witt are running a Chevron GT3 and GT4, respectively, in the GT Cup Championship this year under the Chevron Cars banner. “It’s a great association that we are developing with Mission Motorsport,” David said before the races, “and a fantastic charity to support. We will be welcoming service personnel into our team garage this weekend, and look forward to having members of Mission Motorsport working with us throughout the season.”

The charity’s main aim was laid out by former Army Major Adam Marchant-Wincott: “The guiding principle behind Mission Motorsport is to seek, through the automotive and motor sport industries, vocational opportunities to try and provide hope and a bright and exciting future for wounded, injured and sick personnel.”

Witt bought Chevron last year in an effort to keep the British car builder afloat, with the majority of the team that worked on the GR8s staying on. At Donington the company’s season got off to a great start with Jordan Witt posting two fourth-place finishes and a seventh after starting from the pitlane.

“To achieve three finishes in the top 10 is a fantastic result for us at the first GT Cup round of the year,” said David. “With 27 cars on the grid, which is a big entry, just to be up there battling at the front meets our main aim for the start of the season. We are extremely pleased with the progress we’ve made with the development of the GT3 and GT4 over the winter.”

“We have had a fabulous weekend and are immensely grateful to David Witt and the whole Chevron team,” added Marchant-Wincott. “We hope that through our work, aided by the generosity of Chevron and the GT Cup community, we can continue to provide recovery activities and, in the longer term, vocational opportunities in motor sport for our wounded, injured and sick service and veteran personnel.”

Chevron and Mission Motorsport will be competing again on May 11-12 when the GT Cup Championship visits Brands Hatch.

For more on sports cars, click here.

Motor Sport Magazine – The original motor racing magazine

Source: Motor Sport Mag

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