750 Motor Club - A Postcard from Cadwell Park

Report and Images by David Gowshall of DEEGEE: Motorsport Images

 21 September 2022

Last weekend I had a choice.  With only Saturday available to myself for photography was it to be the return of motorcycle racing to Oliver’s Mount at Scarborough or a visit to my home circuit at Cadwell Park to take in the 750 Motor Club’s annual visit?

The need to wake early and a two-hour journey to get to Scarborough meant the opportunity for a lie-in swung my choice and I headed just up the road from my home, deeper into the Lincolnshire Wolds, for some four-wheel action.

The 750 Motor Club, which was originally formed in 1939, proudly promotes itself as “The Home of Affordable Motorsport”. It provides a seemingly endless variety of relatively inexpensive classes to compete in a huge range of different cars, and there are no shortage of drivers willing to take up the challenge.

Full grids for all classes provide lots of interest for spectators and photographers alike, and this, combined with some good weather, and the aforesaid lie-in was a good reason to spend a day at the picturesque mini-Nürburgring.

The main event of the day’s action was the 90 minute “endurance” event - the Gaz Shocks BMW 116 Trophy, a one-make series, which got underway 

The action came thick and fast and the similar performance of all the cars meant there was some very close action, making the racing very exciting.

Red flag periods interrupted proceedings at regular intervals, helping to keep the field compact. It was a red flag incident leading to the introduction of the Safety Car rather like last season’s F1 finale at Abu Dhabi.

It looked initially like it was to have a big influence on the result with the long-time leader Peter Keen (#150) missing out on what looked like victory when he found himself overhauled (much like Lewis Hamilton) by car #34 driven by Toby O’Reilly and Sam Carrington Yates on the entry to Hall Bends on the very last lap of the 90-minute race. 

However, the 0.6 second gap between the two front runners at the finish was reduced and more importantly reversed when the race stewards imposed a 1 second penalty on car #34 for “gaining an advantage”, presumably unfairly at some point during the frantic last lap.

The remainder of the day’s racing was highly entertaining with the Mighty Mini’s and the MX-5 Cup competitors, in particular, keeping the relatively small crowd’s attention.

As a photographer, I have always found it much more difficult to portray a sense of movement with circuit car racing than that involving, for example, rally cars that throw up dirt, or vehicles with two or three wheels.  The lean angles of bike riders and the extraordinary positions that sidecar passengers get into do photographers a huge favour to help them capture a sense of speed.

To capture motion with circuit car racing involves panning, which is a technique that requires lots of practice. It is very important and in-depth knowledge is required to be able to seek out locations on the circuit where car wheels, for example might lift as they corner.

Luckily the woodland section of Cadwell Park provides a few opportunities to catch such moments with Hall Bends and the Hairpin being two good spots to catch an airborne wheel. Or at Park Corner where excursions onto the grass verge are a regular occurrence and where there are good opportunities to pan cars as they approach the corner braking from high speed. 

I came away from my day’s work having been thoroughly entertained with the day’s racing and reasonably happy with the images I captured.  I must admit even though I have been taking motorsport photographs for a number of years now circuit car racing is still a personal challenge and there is undoubtedly still room for improvement on my part.

A special thanks to the two very knowledgeable commentators  - Ian Sowman and Craig Cook, who were excellent, particularly during the BMW 116 Trophy, which with all the pit stops and driver changes would not have been possible to follow without them and to the hard-working vehicle recovery crews and marshals who were kept busy throughout the day.

You can see more of David’s work here