British GT Media Day
British GT Media Day
Snetterton
3 March 2020
The start of the 2020 racing season in the UK is traditionally declared not by the dropping of the start flag but by a round of media and test days. The British GT race series was the first to get out on track and let the fans see the new for 2020 car liveries, drivers and race teams at a cold and blustery Snetterton.
This year the GT Championships has more teams taking part than it has for some time. Fifteen GT4 and 19 GT3 teams will be doing battle over nine rounds at six different race tracks with two visits to Donington Park, the last one being the final round of the championships.
The GT3 and 4 cars will take to the track at the same time when racing, which for the casual spectator can be a little confusing trying to distinguish between the cars. To make life easy the numbers displayed on the windscreen in 2019 had different colours, fluro pink or yellow numbers depending on the class of car.
This year the class will again be on the back of the car but up front the sponsor's windscreen sun shade will be white or black with white numbers. However, the GT4 class can now have gold numbers to distinguish them from the GT3 cars with a few of the teams already adopting the new livery for the media day.
The gold badged GT4 class will include the Ford Mustangs, BMW M4 and the McLaren 570S to name a few. The McLaren 720S will be in the GT4 class along side Lamborghini Huracans, Aston Martin Vantage, Porsche 911, Mercedes-AMG and the great sounding Bentley Continentals.
If you are a McLaren fan you are in for a treat as over a third of the grid will feature this great British manufacturer.
So what did we learn from the media day? Well for one, not all the teams were present. The Coronavirus outbreak has started to affect motorsport with team cars stuck in countries that have stopped the movement of people. This is slightly worrying for this spectator photographer as I have had two events cancelled already this week.
I totally get the need for safety but it needs to be put in context. In the USA around 12000 Americans die of the flu each year with 61000 dying in 2017/18 out of 45 million infected. So far, 6 people have died in the USA.
MSV who run the majority of tracks have publicly stated that if any events are postponed they will honour your ticket if the event is rescheduled, or you will get your money back if cancelled.
This is all well and good but most of us don’t live next to a track so have to travel, and for the big events hotels, flights and ferries have to booked in advance to get the best deals, will these be refunded? With what happened to FlyBe I doubt it, only time will tell.
Meanwhile, back at Snetterton I didn’t hear a single sneeze all day, only the glorious sound of V10 engines coughing and spluttering on the over run into the Nelson corner complex. This part of the track is one of my favourites as you can get a number of different shots and get a great view of the cars as they thunder past. For this event they let us park infield.
This was great for a lot of spectators as they could sit in the warmth of their cars and watch the racing, and for me I didn’t have to hump my gear far.
It wasn’t just the Grand Turismo cars out on the Snetterton tarmac, the F3 single seaters were also testing so there was a continuous stream of automotive action all day. However, some of the F3 testing periods did seem to go on for a while. At one point a small boy asked his dad "when are they going to stop? I want to see the big pink car again".
It wasn’t long before the big pink 69 Mercedes AMG GT3 of RAM Racing was back out on the circuit keeping the small and not so small boys happy. The AMGs and Bentleys certainly have presence on the track and the GT boys do like a loud livery, but it was car 22 the McLaren 720S GT3 driven by Shaun Balfe and Rob Bell that caught my eye.
Red is just a great colour for a race car and with the TRON like white lines following the lines of the glorious body work made it stand out for me.
Just before the lunch break there was a parade lap. Having seen the same thing last year, I wasn’t too bothered about getting a shot as from trackside it’s not a great image.
What I was more interested in was getting around to the pits and getting up close to the cars. This is an ideal time to get those detail shots and more importantly, chat to the teams and drivers for a bit of insider information about these cars.
Heading round to the hill at Agostini we only shot a few frames. It’s a great view but you are a long way from the action even with a times two converter pushing the focal length to 800mm.
As the light started to fade we made our way round to the inside of Brundle shooting toward Nelson to capture the last of the action. However, the rain started to fall and the GT cars made the wise move of heading to the pits and we headed to the car for the long drive home after a good days' shooting.
Photographic Post Script
Snetterton is a great track for the spectator photographer. It doesn’t have much catch fencing and has great views, meaning you can take some great photos. You can get close to the action, so a short range telephoto lens will work for a lot of the track. On this occasion I wanted to practice my mono pod skills as I'm not usually a fan of putting a stick on the bottom of my camera, preferring the free movement of hand held.
This is all well and good if your lens doesn't weigh too much like the modern super zooms, but try hand holding a large prime for any length of time and you will be fatigued to the point of not being able to lift the lens and camera combination to your eye by midday. So, to force myself to use a monopod, I picked a 400mm f2.8 prime for all of the day's track side shooting.
A long prime will give superior image results to the superzoom but can mean you will miss the odd shot due to its fixed focal length. However, pick your spot well and the results can outweigh the odd missed shot. At one point in the day I was standing across the road in amongst the cars parked at the side of the track at Nelson just to fit the cars in the frame. This was not a problem at this lightly attended event but would be unusable at a weekend ticketed event.
Most of the amateur photographers I observed using a monopod had it in the vertical position. I just can't get on with this set up as it restricts my movement and throws the camera in a small but noticeable arc when doing just small panning movements, resulting in less than 100% sharp images. My top tip for monopod use is to angle it between your legs. This results in a smoother pan. You will need an adjustable head on your monopod, but for me, getting the vast majority of my images sharp is important.
In the pits I reverted to the standard motorsports 70-200 f2.8 which is a great lens for this type of work. A wide angle was also stashed in the bag but not taken out. This type of lens can be helpful if the event is well attended as you will need to get close to the cars, but on the day I was able to stand well back to get my shots.
If you have not been to Snetterton for a while and are not sure what corners I have been rambling on about, check out our circuit guides section. We have most of the UK tracks with examples of where to get the best shots from and what sort of lens was used.
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