Originally Posted by Mr H
it was my first time at rockingham, mainly because its a 3 hour drive, but i'd say its one of the best out of Silverstone, Thruxton, Brands, Donington and Oulton Park.
Its rare to be able to see all the track like you can at rockingham by sitting at the top of the grandstands, and the pit roof - great idea!
I think BTCC is the most accessable of all racing, what with paddock walk abouts etc, and its so entertaining!
Remind me what car Wells is driving??
First off nice pics ....
I've been doing BTCC at least 2 meets a year for over 10 years now and I went to rockingham the first time BTCC went there - I really didn't get on with the place it felt as if the "inclusive" nature that pervaded BTCC at the time was not present.
IMHO The nice thing about the tradiitonal tracks was you can get close to the track and the action - and over the day move around and see different bits. When I was at rockingham apart from the pit lane walk and the start finish straight - you might as well have been watching TV, as they only had the main grandstand open you just sat down and that was it for the day.... As for taking photos of the action most of the rockingham photo's I took had parts of the protective wire screen that shielded the grandstand from disintigrating motors on them.. (as you see in photo 861). It may be better, but I know a significant amount of BTCC regulars didn't like the first rockingham visit and when they'd sorted out the row with Knockhill rockingham dropped off the calendar.
Some lessons may have been learned - but give me Oulton or Donnington or Mallory (shame BTCC don't go there). The park circuits are amazing venues on a lovely summers day.
As for pricing the BTCC used to standardise the price - the only one that used to be more than £20 quid for many years for early booking was knockhill - looking at prices today I'm paying 21quid for a Oulton Park ticket - The year I went Rockingham was the same price as Oulton. I'm only do one race this year as The guys I go with and I are doing LeMans - and we don't have the brownie points saved up to do more than this ...
They did used to have it as under 16's free - but it's been under 12's for the past few years - that's a bit of a shame but still a damn good value day out.
As for Kelly Jane Wells - she's a pickup driver according to her website and is at rockingham thins coming weekend driving this -
http://www.kelly-jaynewells.com/car.html
Simes.
: Really good interesting piccies, enjoyed looking at them, cheers
