British motocross GPs
Published: 14th September 2007
Author: Sean Lawless
I’ve seen the future of British motocross GPs – or rather I’ve seen bits of it, quick flashes of colour between the heads of other fans who made it to Donington Park. Okay, so I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek here – and not entirely fair either – but you can’t argue with the fact that spectator viewing was a little on the limited side, especially compared to Foxhill, Gore Basin and Matterley Basin where the natural lie of the land made visibility so much better.
Ever since we got a British GP back on the calendar a few years after the Y2K Foxhill wash-out we’ve been bumped around the country – from the Isle of Wight to Winchester via Ringwood and while the tracks have been great, the facilities (or the ferry crossing) have let them down. Let’s face it, no-one wants to witness Sunday night scenes of spectators being towed out of muddy car parks so the future of big race meetings in this country has got to lie in the direction of purpose-built facilities with plenty of hard-standing, good transport links and decent access roads. Just like, er, Donington Park!
Arriving and leaving was an almost surreal experience – I kid you not, 20 minutes after getting in my car I was on the main road and heading home. Compare that with the two weeks it took to get out of the MXdN and you get an idea of how a facility like Donington ticks so many of the right boxes. But it doesn’t tick them all and this is where a few lessons can be learned.
I know the theory behind contained circuits such as Donington being great for the TV audience (and for the people filming the racing) but television viewing figures aren’t the be all and end all of GPs. It’s also vital for the sport that the events get a good spectator turn-out – the number of fans make the difference between losing money and never running a GP again or making money and doing it all over the following year. But to get the fans back you’ve got to look after them, make their day – or weekend – worthwhile and I didn’t see too much of that at Donington.
I’m not going to get into the whole ‘tickets were too much’ argument – motocross is still comparatively a cheap sport to go and watch – but whether you’re paying £5 or £35 to get in it’s only fair to expect pretty basic facilities such as enough toilets. If we’re to turn a British GP into a proper family day out – and maybe even attract families from outside the sport to come and have a look – then the last thing they need is to be forced to wait in line for 20 minutes to relieve themselves, especially if all they’ve got for in-queue entertainment is the sight of a row of men going for the al fresco option.
Okay, that’s what I didn’t really want to see covered so let’s go back to what I did want to see – and didn’t get to see a lot of – and that’s the racing. I bumped into an old mate of mine and his son on the Sunday afternoon and he reckoned that unless you staked a spot by the fencing early doors then you were never going to get a proper look-in. Having the fans corralled around the outside of the circuit is always going to restrict viewing and – even worse – having the perimeter fence so far from much of the actual track is going to kill much of the atmosphere as well. I’m not 100 per cent sure of the reasoning for this but as an educated guess I’d say health and safety had something to do with it. Now given the scenes the previous weekend in Ireland, lending a bit of thought to H&S isn’t a bad thing – so why were there so many people blatting around on pitbikes all weekend? Even at, say, Foxhill where you could virtually reach out and touch riders as they went past the chances of a fan getting wiped-out by a racer were minimal. Especially when compared against the chances of getting T-boned at Donington by a 10-year-old with whisky throttle!
Right, now that all the negativity has left my body it’s time to say a huge well done to Tommy Searle for his Donington overall. Cairoli may have been racing in the MX1 division but Tommy beat everyone who was there to be beaten and he can’t do any better than that. But while the ‘future’ of British MX did the business, one of the highlights for me was watching the ‘past’ of British MX doing the business n’all! There were grown men with tears in their eyes as Dave Thorpe rolled back the clock and raced to a fourth world crown in the new FIM Senior division and even the Berkshire Bomber himself looked a little emotional at the end. Well done DT!
PS Finally this month, I’d just like to say a quick hello to the motley Cornish crew I, ahem, stumbled across during the early hours of Sunday morning. Good to meet you lads – and thanks for the helping hand…