FAREWELL TO ROCKINGHAM REFLECTIONS ON DOOMED CIRCUIT’S HISTORY
Matt james look sat the history of the northamptonshire oval
The first seeds of the idea for a race track in Corby – which was originally going to be called Deene Raceway – were sewn by former racer and entrepreneur Peter Davies in early 1990. He had a vision to bring a test race to the outskirts of the town, but the idea soon escalated. With encouragement from his contacts in USA, Davies got going on a race venue.
Detailed planning permission was granted in 1993 but the funding was not in place and, even when the first earth was turned five years later, it was only a token effort to appease planners and make sure that the conditions of the application were met to keep the scheme alive.
It did eventually reach fruition in 2001, but by that time Davies had stepped aside even though he had brought major US motorsport player Gerry Forsythe onboard.
Guy Hands had come in as the main financier for the £50million venue and former British hillclimb champion David Grace was also co-opted to help the project reach fruition and host the big race.
The first race weekend was a trial Barc-organised clubbie in the middle of May in 2001.
The opening race was scheduled to be a production BMW contest for the Kumho series. However, the winner’s place in the history books was to be denied due to a firstcorner accident. The race was red-flagged and the category was put to the end of the day’s schedule.
Instead, the Clubmans series was to have the honour of being the first showdown on the circuit. It was won by Peter Clark in his Mallock.
He remembers the day well. “It was an amazing track, something totally different,” he says. “There was lots of sawing and banging going on even as we were racing there as they were clearly trying to finish it off, and the traffic organisation was somewhat chaotic – quite a few people came to that first meeting out of interest. I also remember a pinging sound as the sun hit the grandstand and the aluminium grandstands were getting warmed in the afternoon sun.
“We had a mad scramble to get ready for the race. I think the BMWS had three attempts to get going and there were either crashes or a car stopped on the grid. Then all of a sudden we were on,” remembers Clark. “We rushed around to get everything ready. I had qualified on pole by 1.6 seconds and I was usually known for good starts. However, on that race I got a really bad one and dropped to third and had to fight my way back to the front.
“I wasn’t even thinking that I would be the first race winner there. I just concentrated on the race, and when I got back to the pits, there were all kinds of people there with notebooks and cameras and I realised I had a little place in motorsport history. It was quite a day.”
While the national racing scene got off to a dramatic start, so did Indycar, with which the circuit bosses had signed a five-year deal to host a round.
It came in September 2001, and the American series was in shock after Alex Zanardi’s dreadful accident at the Lausitzring just the week before. Rain, and the difficulty in drying the track ( see column, right) meant there were lots of frustrations. Cars lapped at an average of 215mph and the speeds were astonishing – although the format of the track was criticised by some. Indycar returned in 2002 but the crowds were down from 40,000 to 25,000 and the writing was on the wall.
The Indycar deal was switched to Brands Hatch in 2003 and Hands realised the game was up. He sold his shares to Ashley Pover and Joe Dickinson in 2004 for a small fee and walked away from the track.
The circuit ran its own NASCAR sanctioned series under different names – ASCAR, Days of Thunder, the SCSA series – from 2001 until the end of 2007 on the Rockingham Oval.
Combined with music events from artists such as Blue, Girls Aloud and The Darkness, huge crowds turned out.
Leading Days of Thunder racer Ben Collins thought it was a breakthrough. “It was a great initiative to combine the race days so it offered more than just racing,” he says. “The crowds were strong at that point and those race days have a really good feel about them.”
A Northern Irish consortium took over the track in 2006, but times have been increasingly hard for the Northamptonshire circuit. The grandstands at Turn 1 were the final ones aside from the main Rockingham building to be condemned by health and safety and the circuit was a shadow of its former self.
The venue did operate successful corporate events and has been used as a filming venue for several programmes, but these opportunities eventually died out.
The British GT Championship and the British Touring Car Championship remained loyal visitors to the track through to 2018, and the circuit was a regular with club racers. The oval was still used by the Pickup Truck Racing Championship, with the last race on that layout taking place in September. Paul Tompkins was the last race winner on the Oval on his way to the Rockingham Championship.
That is in the history books. The decision to mothball the circuit was taken this year. The venue will now be used as a car storage facility. The story of Rockingham might have been turbulent, but it delivered a dream very few UK race fans ever thought was possible.