Rockingham Rocks

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Rockingham Rocks

The view from my seat as the Champ Cars round turn four at 215 mph

I have not been to a Grand Prix for a long, long time. I seem to remember that Jackie Stewart was still racing and I was part of an MCC marshalling party organised by Tucker. Since then, it has not had a lot of appeal for me, but I have become increasingly attracted to American Oval Racing. I have never been to a race over there, although I did manage to attend qualifying at Indianapolis in the mid-eighties when I was in the States on business.

So I was fascinated when I heard that the UK was to have it’s own banked oval at Rockingham near Corby and the Americans were coming over for a round of the CART Championship. Junior and I got tickets over the Internet and set off for Rockingham on Saturday 22^nd September. Qualifying was to have taken place on the Thursday and Friday but the weather put paid to that. Heavy rain the previous week was causing moisture to come up through the tarmac. Wheepers the Americans called them, and oval racing doesn’t take place in the rain.

We arrived at around 10.30 on Saturday to see crowds of workmen and the Santa Pod jet dryers all working to prepare the track. They finished about noon and the American circus set out to do all their qualifying and race on the same day. Once the action started it was pretty exciting. The circuit is 1.6 miles long, with four corners, banked at eight degrees. It was certainly fast. The top cars circulated in 24 seconds during qualifying. That’s 215 miles an hour!

The race didn’t start until nearly five o’clock and was shortened to 140 laps, but that was enough for plenty of excitement. The cars ran pretty close together for the whole race and were periodically bunched up when the yellow flag came out. Gil de Ferran was the winner in one of Roger Penske’s Honda powered Reynards, having swapped the lead twice with Sweden’s’ Kenny Brack on the last lap to win by half a length.

It was a great day. The racing was really interesting and exciting and the facilities were very good. Even the loo’s were clean!

October 2001 - Part 3 (published 3 November 2001)

Rockingham Rocks

The view from my seat as the Champ Cars round turn four at 215 mph