Nadine Lewis
The British Motorsports Marshals Club chair on racing’s ‘new normal’
“There have been some long delays, but some have just been unfortunate circumstances”
Marshalling is a bit different in lots of ways since the restart of racing. I’ve done one meeting at Oulton
Park and I did both of the grands prix – they were very surreal without spectators – and it felt good to be back! In terms of Oulton Park, I was at the British Racing and Sports Car Club meeting. I work with the BRSCC North Western committee so was involved in the lead-up to that meeting from an arrangement and organisation point of view so knew what to expect but also didn’t fully until we got there.
We decided we would allocate locations on the day, not in advance. I think it worked really well – we had all the PPE and made sure everyone collected that. Everyone realised they were being given very specific points, not ‘you’re on Cascades, find it out when you get there’, it was ‘you’re on this flag point or this post chief’s box’, which everyone understood.
When I went out on the post, the weather was grim. I was post chief and I had a flag marshal and incident marshal, because the rules had just changed to have more than two people on a post. Normally, the post chief would be in the box but the box was shared with the flag marshal and we couldn’t keep two-metre distancing, so I was like ‘you have the box and I will stay outside’. We worked together and still managed to socialise by keeping distance between us. There’s a lot of camaraderie among marshals and we chat between sessions about what’s going on and our day jobs and we still managed to do that.
One of the differences is it’s a case of trying to remember you’re not supposed to be pushing cars if you’re not wearing a face mask. You instinctively react how you normally react to an incident so stopping that becomes difficult! Also, at the BRSCC meeting, we sent marshal reports via Whatsapp – we did the report, took a photo and sent it that way. Clubs are also using different technology – one club may use Whatsapp and another uses email. But that’s a positive thing – people have found ways around not having the paperwork. Everyone is already signed on in advance and there are other bits and pieces that people are like, ‘why didn’t we do it this way in the past?’.
There have been some long delays recovering vehicles, but some of these have just been unfortunate circumstances that we couldn’t do much about anyway, even without the restrictions. Everybody is getting to the incident as soon as they can but it’s unfortunate high-profile events get seen and commented on.
We’re still very much restricted in the sense we can’t have lots and lots of marshals there, primarily because of the distancing – you can’t have five people pushing a car, for example. People are able to get to incidents and contact the drivers to see if they’re OK but can’t then intervene in the sense of pushing the vehicle as much as they used to be able to. It means we have to call a recovery vehicle and that likely leads to a safety car and a delay to the recovery.
What’s encouraging is there’s been an increase in the number of people wanting to become marshals – we had a lot of enquiries after both of the grands prix. Ben Edwards mentioned us on
Channel 4 and that sparked some interest. The following weekend we got a mention on Sky and we got another 200 clicks with that. We’re now working with Motorsport UK about what we can do with those new recruits. We can’t run taster days because of the current circumstances but don’t want to lose people. We’re looking at whether we might be able to do some online training and at least give people a flavour of what they can do.
Everyone’s now got through these initial meetings – there were a few teething issues and now it’s getting better. Our thanks have to go to Motorsport UK as a lot of work was put in to make it happen. I was involved in writing the guidelines and a small group of people put that together, which a lot of people don’t realise – a lot of their staff were on furlough. The motorsport community all held their breath and are now letting out a deep sigh. Everyone made the changes and is prepared to accept, with the restrictions on numbers, they may not be selected for an event every time. Given the tendency of the human race to complain, we haven’t had that many complaints! Everyone wants it to work. I think it’s fantastic, through that community spirit, we’ve been able to get back racing. ■