Chris Law

Better than the MotoGP

Another great weekend at Donington Park, having thoroughly enjoyed the MotoGP we decided to return for the World Series by Renault.  The tickets were free so we took the kids for their first taste of live motorsport knowing that if they got too bored we could leave without wasting serious money on tickets.  We needn't have worried as they thought it was great and I think we'll all be going to more events.

I'm not going to talk much about the races as to be honest I didn't have much of a clue as to what was actually going on much of the time, they gave us a little radio to pick up the commentary but they didn't work very well, we'll need to take our own next time.

When we went to the MotoGP it was very crowded and difficult to move around too much, so not knowing the circuit we stayed pretty much in one place for much of the time, this time though it was much easier to get around especially on the Saturday (as you'd expect).   We'd stayed in-field pretty much all weekend but did get right round the circuit a couple of times and watched various qualifying and race sessions from different spots, I think this'll help to get a better idea of where to see the action next time we're there.

Where To Go

There's a good map of the circuit here, which may help if you're going to read the rest of the article.

We watched some of the early qualifying from the banks near the start of the Dunlop Straight, you get a great view of quite a bit of the circuit from up there, you can just about see the cars coming down Craner, then they disappear for a bit before you see them climb up to Schwantz, from there you can follow them almost to the Foggy Esses.  However this isn't much good for photography, there's a big fence between you and the straight and you're really too far from the rest of the action.

The bottom of Redgate was great for the Clios, as they lift a rear wheel going towards Hollywood and you can get quite close to the circuit without any fences or other obstructions, much of that area was fenced off for the MotoGP which is a shame 'cause it would have provided some good opportunities for them too.   I had the Canon 100-400L IS and had taken my 20D rather than my 5D to get the benefit of the 1.6x crop (probably better than using a 1.4x TC on the 5D), but from there 200mm on the 20D was all I needed.  Although I was pleased I could zoom further when Carl Bradley went off in qualifying a little further down at Hollywood.

We spent a lot of Sunday near the Old Hairpin, the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 race had been stopped due to an accident somewhere down there.  We'd been near Goddards when the race first started but decided to get to the Old Hairpin before it restarted.  I'm glad we did, on the first lap there was a collision and Fabio Leimer ended up spinning through the air quite spectacularly, it's amazing what they can just walk away from.  I just happened to be pointing the camera in the right direction at the right moment and got some great shots, quite lucky for my first trip to a car race.  I took the 5D on the Sunday and the 400mm lens was definitely necessary to get reasonable coverage from the Old Hairpin.

We also spent some time on the inside of McLeans watching the Renault F1 Team demonstration and the Formula Renault 3.5 second race, again you're free of obstructions and fences and quite close to the circuit, this seems to be a very popular place for photographers who were ranged all along the barrier.  You don't get to see an awful lot of the action from here so not so good if you actually want to see the race.   400mm was pretty much essential for the 5D but you'd get some great shots with a 70-300mm on a 1.6x crop camera like the 20D.  You don't need super fast shutter speeds as you're better off panning with the car to get that feeling of speed rather than freezing the action.  Most of the time I was using  1/200 sec exposures and apertures of around f9.0 well within the capabilities of the popular 70-300mm zooms.

All in all it was a great, cheap weekend out so I expect we'll be applying for tickets next year as well, might even try camping there so we can stay a little longer.