Some of Britain’s Best Racing Is Happening This Weekend. You Can Watch It for Free.
Motorsport is expensive. I know this because I spend an unreasonable amount of time looking at my bank account and wondering how I can afford to drive around in circles again. Watching motorsport can also be expensive. Unless, of course, you know where to look.
This weekend, Silverstone is hosting two days of proper wheel-to-wheel racing. There are Minis, Mazda MX-5s, Fiestas and a whole collection of cars that look suspiciously like something you’d find in the local Tesco car park. Except these ones are racing. Several championships are going down to the wire. And you can watch the entire thing live for free. Which raises a fairly obvious question.
Why aren’t more people watching club racing?
Three Points. An Entire Season.
The BRSCC is holding its Silverstone Finals Weekend on 10–11 October. It’s not exactly a quiet little track day. There are multiple championships, some of which have spent the entire year travelling around Britain only to arrive at Silverstone with barely anything separating the leading drivers.
Take the City Car Cup. Richard Jepp leads Alistair May by three points. Three. They’ve spent an entire season racing little hatchbacks and they’re now separated by the sort of margin you could lose through one silly mistake.
Meanwhile, the Mazda MX-5 SuperCup has five drivers still fighting for the Pro championship. William Antrobus leads Thomas Langford by ten points, with Daniel Parrans-Smith another point behind. The championship could still go in several directions. And all of this is happening while most of the country probably has absolutely no idea these championships exist.
Apparently Small Cars Can Race
One of the stranger things about motorsport is how much attention we give to the performance of the cars. People want horsepower. Downforce. Top speed. Cars costing more than a moderately sized house.
Which is all very exciting. But none of those things guarantees good racing. Sometimes the most entertaining thing you can watch is a group of people trying to overtake each other in relatively ordinary cars.
The Mazda MX-5 championships are a good example. They’re not exactly slow, but they’re hardly going to trouble an F1 car. What they can do is race closely. And when everybody has roughly the same amount of performance available, overtaking becomes considerably more interesting. You can’t simply press a button and disappear down the straight. You’ve actually got to work for it. Which, personally, I think is rather the point.
The Minis Are Back Too
Obviously, I’ve now developed a slightly unhealthy interest in Classic Minis. This weekend has both Mini Se7ens and Mini Miglias competing. They’re different championships from the Classic Mini Racing Championship I raced in at Brands Hatch. Yes, there are multiple championships dedicated to racing old Minis. And yes, it is becoming increasingly difficult to explain which one is which. But I’m not complaining.
There’s something particularly entertaining about watching a collection of cars originally designed when Britain was still getting excited about colour television being driven as though they’re qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix. They’re small. They’re noisy. They’re surprisingly quick. And the racing can be absolutely brilliant. I might be slightly biased now.
Fastest Doesn’t Always Mean First
This was something Brands Hatch taught me rather effectively. I went there in August having never driven the Mini before qualifying. Qualified seventh out of 17. Then finished fourth and fifth in the two races. I also set the fastest lap in both. Now, you might reasonably ask how somebody manages to be the fastest driver in two races without actually winning either of them.
Excellent question. I’m still working on that. But it demonstrates something I think people sometimes overlook. Racing isn’t simply about who can drive the fastest lap. You’ve got to overtake. Defend. Manage traffic. Deal with incidents. And occasionally spend rather more time than you’d like staring at the back of somebody else’s car.
At Brands, I managed several overtakes around the outside at Druids and one at Paddock Hill Bend. Those were the moments I enjoyed most. Not the fastest laps. Actually racing people. And you don’t need a 600bhp GT3 car to experience that.
Club Racing Has a Slight Marketing Problem
I think this is one of the biggest challenges for grassroots motorsport. There are some fantastic championships in Britain. But unless you’re already involved, how are you supposed to know they exist?
Formula 1 gets enormous coverage. The British Touring Car Championship has a proper television following. British GT has a reasonable profile. Then you start moving down into the club championships. And suddenly you have to know what you’re looking for. It’s not necessarily because the racing is worse. It’s because somebody has to actually tell people it’s happening.
A typical club racing weekend might include several different championships, each with qualifying and multiple races. The paddock is full of drivers, teams, mechanics, families and volunteers. There are proper championship battles. There are rivalries. There are people spending their life savings trying to finish seventh. And then everybody goes home. Meanwhile, the wider motorsport audience often knows virtually nothing about it. Which seems a shame.
You Can Actually Watch This Stuff
Here’s the good bit. You don’t need to travel to Silverstone this weekend. The BRSCC is livestreaming the whole meeting. Saturday and Sunday. Both available through YouTube. There’s a proper timetable, commentary and live timing. You can follow individual championships, watch the racing and work out who’s fighting for what. You don’t even have to watch the entire weekend. Pick a championship. Watch a race. See what you think.
If you’ve never watched club racing before, I’d probably start with the MX-5s or Minis. Although the City Car Cup could be particularly interesting given how close the championship is. And if you find yourself shouting at the television because somebody has attempted a completely optimistic move around the outside, congratulations. You’ve discovered motorsport.
The Drivers Aren’t Necessarily That Different From You
This is another thing I wish more people understood. Club racing isn’t exclusively populated by professional drivers. There are people with ordinary jobs. People running businesses. People who have spent months saving for the next round. People trying to find enough money to replace an engine. People doing one or two events a year because that’s all they can afford.
Obviously, budgets vary enormously between championships, and there are some very serious teams operating at club level. But it’s still one of the places where somebody with a normal life can become a racing driver.
I’m a fairly good example. I work in IT at a school on Islay. I don’t have a racing team. I don’t have a fleet of mechanics. I don’t have a particularly large motorsport budget. And yet, somehow, I ended up racing a Classic Mini at Brands Hatch this year. Against people who’ve been doing it for years. And I was competitive. Which is why I’m now trying to buy my own Mini. An excellent example of how enjoying yourself can lead to a series of increasingly questionable financial decisions.
Maybe We Should Watch More of It
One thing I’ve learnt from going racing myself is just how much effort goes into making a club meeting happen. The organisers. Officials. Marshals. Scrutineers. Timekeepers. Teams. Drivers. People working away in the paddock trying to persuade an elderly hatchback to function for another 20 minutes.
All of that effort produces some fantastic racing. It deserves an audience. And the interesting thing is that the audience is probably already there. There are thousands of people interested in cars and motorsport who might absolutely love watching a group of MX-5s fighting over fifth place. They just need to discover it.
So this weekend, instead of automatically watching highlights of something you’ve already seen, have a look at the BRSCC’s Silverstone meeting.
It’s free.
There are championships to be decided. And there should be plenty of racing.
Worst case, you spend 20 minutes watching some people driving small cars around Silverstone.
Best case, you discover a whole new part of motorsport.
And then perhaps, like me, you decide you’d quite like to have a go yourself. That’s when it starts getting expensive.