British GT Championship - Media Day

Donington Park

14 March 2023

You can never guarantee that when you go to photograph a motorsports event that you are going to come away with an image that is going to make it all worthwhile. The GT media day at Donington could guarantee one thing - head turning cars that look great parked in the pits and amazing out on track.

Having a subject that looks fantastic from every angle helps the trackside photographer get that great photograph, but you do need some skills to capture these cars. They are thoroughbreds that will charge out of a corner with surprising speed, and considering some of them are the size of a small bungalow, you need to be on your game to get the shot.

The PistonClick team were out in force for the media day looking for that shot. We pride ourselves in being able to capture the action from the view point of the spectator as we only shoot from behind the safety fences and barriers. From this aspect we are able to take in the action and comment on the day from the perspective of the paying spectator, who is all important.

High end race series need their fans and, as we have no affiliation to anyone, we are in a position to give an honest opinion. So, what was our thoughts of the media day? Well, it was a positive one. It was free to get in and a consistent flow of pristine stunning looking cars kept us and the fans around us very happy, no complaints there.

Using the longer of the two tracks available at Donington was great. The GP circuit has some of the best viewpoints for spectators and therefore for the photographers, of which there were plenty who had made the trip, and like us, were trying to get that shot to remember the day.

On quite a lot of test days just the National circuit is used, probably to keep costs down. The National doesn’t take in all of the Esses or the Melbourne Loop, which is a great location, as it is close to the action, safe and the noise as the cars powers out of the loop is lovely!

Add in a bit of “racing", well you can’t put a load of race car drivers out on track without them wanting to get the better of the car in front, and you have the making of a must go to event. As a bonus over lunch the pit lane was opened for the fans to get up close to the machines.

I always enjoy looking at naked cars with the bodywork removed. The engineering that goes into making these beasts go fast, turn corners fast and stop fast keeps me interested for ages. Unfortunately, the time in the pits came and went too quickly but was long enough to feed my insatiable appetite for automotive engineering and for me and the team get the odd snap.

As we were leaving the pits the up until till then great weather changed dramatically from the sunshine of the morning to snow and hail. At this point I thought well that's that, huge horsepower and a cold wet track does not make good bed fellows.

Well, I was wrong. Almost straight away the Barwell Motorsport Black Bull Scotch Whisky-liveried Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 was out drying the track with its massive tyres pumping the standing water into the air. It was closely followed by the majority of the 29 cars that had made the trip to the midlands circuit.

Now the Barwell Motorsport Huracan is a great looking machine, but what do you the fans think is the best looking car this year? This will be a tough one. There are a few sporting homage liveries from the 1990s ITC/DTM which looked great. If you have an opinion, and even better, have a picture from the day head over to our Facebook page and comment in the thread from this report.

So that was our review from the side of the track as a fan, spectator and photographer but what's it like on the tarmac during a test and media day? The RACE LAB-run McLaren Artura GT4 team were good enough to put a race report together for us. 

Race Report Car 29 - RACE LAB-run McLaren Artura GT4 

Drivers Ian Gough and Tom Wrigley

The Race Lab run Artura GT4 driven by Tom Wrigley and Ian Gough had a competitive first outing at Donington Park. The Media day was the first laps for the new car, with delivery just 72 hours earlier from McLaren. The exciting new driver pairing completed over 300km of trouble free laps, working through a specific program designed to understand the parameters of the new car.

Ian Gough commented;

“It was a fantastic day out there today. The mixed conditions were a bit frustrating because you want to see incremental improvements to your driving and to the car set up, so it was hard to track our evolution. But there were still clear positives. I think we were generally in the mix for top 5 pace when we are out on track, particularly Tom who was setting purples when he was on track at any given time. It doesn’t really show up in the final times, that’s the changeable conditions for you.

From my side, it’s just my third time in a car with a roof! And my first time at Donington in I think close to 10 years. Overall I’m happy with the pace we unlocked and I know there is more to come. The Artura is giving us a lot of feedback and the team have been able to manage the car incredibly well, we didn’t experience any gremlins which you might anticipate with a new car. So respect to Race Lab and McLaren for their work on that.”

Outside of the car, the Race Lab Artura is fighting to raise awareness for mental health and in particular, Suicide Prevention. Something that Ian was keen to point out in the official press conference.

“Sadly, suicide is the biggest killer of young men under 45 in the UK. So we are partnered with an amazing charity, The Lions Barber Collective to raise awareness. The charity raises awareness, trying to change the stigma around mental health. But they also train barbers who already have close relationships with their clients to offer more than a great cut, they teach them to be able to recognize, ask and listen when a customer might be showing signs of difficulty. 

So our campaign is raising awareness and we are delighted to bring a first to GT racing – we will have pop up barbers at every race weekend. On Saturday’s free haircuts are offered to team personnel and on Sunday’s our barber is open to the public. We will also have a beat the pro race sim! So make sure you check out The Lions Barber Collective activations at each of the rounds this year.”

Photographic Postscript 

The Pistonclick team have a great network of fellow photographers to call on when we need an event covering but it’s always good to see snappers who don’t stand trackside as a rule trying out our chosen discipline.

Chris Jackson joined us at Donington with his Olympus OM System OM-1 matched to a  40-150 f2.8 pro lens. 

Chris Jackson commented; 

I am first and foremost a nature photographer so a trip to Donington was quite a change for me. The OM-1 has a number of AI subject detection and tracking options, one of which is cars. I was keen to give this a try as the bird focus tracking is a game changer!

Learning how to set up the camera took a while but once I got my eye in and my panning movement going I was getting a steady flow of keepers. The shutter speed I used ranged between 1/125 and 1/250. My only regret was not catching more and better shots of the Mercedes.

As there was so much action at Donington and there was also a test day on the following Thursday which Ryan, one of the founder members of the PistonClick website, also attended we will be producing a second report before the season kicks off properly on the 8-10 April at Oulton Park.

In part two we will be looking at the teams with an another exclusive race report and of course great spectator photographers images. Thanks go out to Ryan Frost, David and Andrew Harbey and Chris Jackson for the images supporting this report. You can see more of Ryans and Davids work by following the links below.

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