In the paddock: Marcus Simmons

The sale of Rockingham and its closure for racing has to be seen as a sad development. It may not be a firm favourite, but it has provided some good racing memories

“THE VARIATION IN EXIT SPEEDS MEANT THE RACING WAS SUPERB AND INCREDIBLY DRAMATIC”

Rockingham Motor Speedway has had more than its fair share of detractors over the years – many of my colleagues included – but I’m particularly sad to hear that the venue’s sale last week has resulted in its closure as a motorsport venue. Not just because I’ve seen some great racing there, but also because I have a personal connection to it.

You can read about the current situation at Rockingham on page 56. And whatever the drawbacks – Corby is not exactly the most picturesque of towns; the circuit is stuck on the edge of an industrial estate; the infield layout isn’t exactly very exciting; it’s difficult to work at – we should always lament the passing of a racetrack.

My link to Rockingham is that through the majority of the planning stages my father was the chief executive of the local council. Now, dad had always dreamed when I was a kid of buying a place with enough land to build a kart track for me to mess about on (that never happened – thanks to my mum and sister, the family resources were diverted into ponies. Bah!). Fifteen years later, a certain Peter Davies appeared at the Civic Centre trying to get a genuine car-racing track – then titled Deene Raceway – off the ground. This was the early 1990s – Davies had been a parttime racer and had acquired some land to fulfil his ambition. My dad had taken his role at Corby in late 1987, at which point the town was on its knees owing to the recent closure of the steelworks. Land was cheap, new factories were being built in a bid to redevelop the town, and now dad had something much more exciting than an ersatz kart track on his hands…

Councillors are usually reluctant to encourage a noisy, polluting activity like motorsport – it’s bad for their election chances – so my dad made it his mission to talk them around, persuade them that it was a good thing, and that it would provide much-needed employment in an area still reeling from the steelworks closure. He also played a part in discussions in vain with a Formula 1 team that was looking to acquire its own test track, and befriended Donington Park owner Tom Wheatcroft with a view to cross-promotion of the venues.

Christopher Tate, who would eventually become managing director at Donington, had come on board with Davies, and the plans continued. In the meantime, my dad left his position at the council in 1997, fell ill in ’98, and died in late 2000. Several months later, Rockingham staged its first race meeting, and

I was saddened that he couldn’t be around to see it.

My first visit was in June 2001, for the British Formula 3 Championship. It’s always exciting going to a new venue, and as I headed towards the track I realised I was on the same roads

I’d driven in the late 1980s, when as a student I’d been one of the young adults working on the council’s summer playscheme for kids. (Halcyon days of hide-and-seek in the sunshine, boozing with the other playleaders in the evening, and driving around with the Stone Roses’debut LP blaring out of my VW Beetle’s stereo). I went to the inside of the circuit, wandered to the end of the pitlane, stood by the fence, and realised that the chicane off the banking was going to be the place to watch.

For those of you unfamiliar with the initial infield layout, this was where the cars dived off the banking at Turn 1, through an insanely fast chicane and into the end of the Indycar pitlane, before heading down to the Deene hairpin. Cars were going airborne, underfloors were getting damaged, and all the F3 teams were moaning about the costs of replacement parts and that we should never come back – while conveniently forgetting that they’d be going to Macau a few months later…

Because of that chicane, and the large variation in exit speeds directly correlating to the bravery of each driver, the racing was also superb – and incredibly dramatic. Takuma Sato won both F3 races in 2001, and I was a fan of Rockingham. Two years later, at the ’03 British F3/GT event, I sat in the Turn 1 grandstand and it was absolutely rammed – the circuit was hosting a Sugababes gig later in the day, and legions of fans of what

I always regarded as the thinking man’s/woman’s girl group were watching motor racing. How great was that?

But for much of its history Rockingham has struggled. By the time it opened, Davies and Tate had been ousted in a boardroom coup, and there would follow a big turnover of directors, although some stability finally emerged when a Northern Irish consortium (including racer Will Buller’s father Alf) took over.

To my regret, I never got to see the Indycars – the whole USP for Rockingham’s opening. I was committed to covering a British Touring Car Championship round at Donington Park on the same weekend as the first Indycar visit in 2001 (it rained there, just as it did at Rockingham).

It was probably something similar in ’02, the second and final CART visit. But I have enough fond memories of the ‘diet’infield course to regret losing the place.