Feature: How racing returned
As British motorsport ended a 16-week hiatus, Castle Combe hosted one of the first events under Covid-19 restrictions and behind closed doors. Paul Lawrence donned his mask and headed trackside
The Castle Combe Racing Club ran one of the three UK race meetings held on the first weekend following the lifting of the ban on motorsport, and it was judged a resounding success despite some unavoidable timetable delays and persistent drizzle at the Wiltshire track.
This was a socially-distanced race meeting and both the club and the venue had gone to great lengths, and expense, to provide a safe environment for 90 competitors and around 120 officials. Across the paddock were hand sanitisers, face masks and controls on building access, but once on track it was business as usual as most drivers raced for the first time in nine months. “I’m very pleased to be back racing. What we’re doing in motorsport is very good,” says GT race winner Lucky Khera.
The circuit’s sales and marketing director Tom Davis says: “It has taken a lot of time for a small team. We’re the first ones out of the box and it is very, very different. We have a responsibility to look after everyone.”
For the circuit’s opening race meeting of 2020, the Castle Combe Racing Club kept it simple by running double-headers for each of its four home categories. As a result, the paddock was far less crowded than usual and that helped on the social distancing front.
The timetable was deliberately more relaxed than normal to allow more free time for dealing with unexpected issues and details like sanitising ambulances after drivers involved in incidents had been transferred to the medical centre.
With fewer marshals on post under the new guidelines, there is a higher probability of red flags – estimated at 15-20% – and two incidents punched big holes in Saturday’s programme. GT racer Jordan Billinton managed to drop his Lamborghini Gallardo leaving the pitlane for qualifying and took out four barrier posts, while a long tyre wall rebuild at Quarry after the first Hot Hatch race meant a total of around 75 minutes of downtime. On a typical event timetable, that would have been tough to recover.
Saturday’s race meeting ran behind closed doors, which engendered an eerily quiet feeling at what is usually one of Britain’s best-attended race tracks. However, in a remarkable piece of synchronicity, this was not the first crowd-less race meeting at the Wiltshire track as it opened its 70th anniversary season. Remarkably, 70 years ago today (Wednesday), Castle Combe hosted its inaugural race meeting on July 8, 1950, and that event also ran behind closed doors as a requirement of the then-governing body, the RAC. Until Saturday, no other Castle Combe race meeting had since run without the usual enthusiastic local fans.
Ken Davies, chairman of the Castle Combe Racing Club, says: “When the motorsport embargo was ending on June 30, we discussed very carefully what we were going to do as we had this date for an event on July 4. We had a unanimous decision to run the meeting. Steve Weston, our competitions secretary, is also the track manager and they started track days here in June so that was a preview into the things we’d need to do.
“Sue Smith, our chief medical officer, has been in the frontline of the virus and was the right person for the job and steered us in the right direction with the code of practice. We put together a video to give competitors advice on what to expect. Today was a voyage of discovery for all of us but we were determined to do everything we could to move this ahead. Spectator admission for future events will now be reviewed and we’re looking to be a bit more adventurous at our next meeting on August 1. This has been a very good start.”
Hugh Chambers, chief executive of governing body Motorsport UK, was on hand to see the implementation of the return to competition plan put together by national motorsport bosses.
“It is so exciting to be here. The curtain has just been lifted,” he says as the first qualifying session started at 0900hrs.
“It is a real testament to the enthusiasm of the club and the circuit and it is the result of a collaboration by so many people. Motorsport is about innovation and adaptability and the ingenuity of the community has found a way through this.”
One of the biggest changes for competitors was the lack of pre-event scrutineering. Instead, racers signed a declaration that their cars complied to the regulations and that their safety equipment was up to date. However, the scrutineers carried out spot checks during the day. Pre-event signing-on for drivers and officials was also done electronically but the noise test was conducted as normal.
Formula Ford team owner Kevin
Mills was glad to be back with a squad of four cars. “As a race team we’ve had no income since March so it’s good to be back earning. The self-certified scrutineering was a positive and the online signing on worked well,” he explains.
Formula Ford racer Felix Fisher also reckons that the new scrutineering and signing-on process was a good move. He says: “It was all pretty straightforward and it made the morning less of a rush.”
It was a learning experience for the marshals, who had given the event enthusiastic support and were pleased to resume their hobby. Marshals’ secretary Richard Beard says: “We looked at Motorsport UK’S guidelines on two marshals per post but asked for an amendment to have incident marshals in key positions. We had around 50 marshals on track and around 120 officials in total. For a normal meeting, that total is up around 200. The electronic signingon worked very well and could be used on a permanent basis.”
The final word goes to multiple
Castle Combe Saloon Car champion Simon Thornton-norris. He says:
“It was lovely to be back and it felt quite normal. The major difference was the lack of spectators. I was quite apprehensive before qualifying as I’ve been using a simulator and crashing a lot! As long as people are sensible, activities like this are fine.”