Here in the UK we get a four-day “long weekend” with public holidays on Good Friday and Easter Monday, apart from a few minor events this is the traditional start of “the season”; it is a running British joke that these holidays will bring awful weather, well- not this time at Donington on the Friday and Saturday; with warm sunshine and crystal blue skies.
The Masters series has been ongoing for some years now and runs on circuits in the UK, as well as across Europe and now two support races are planned in the USA. Over the years the categories have changed and evolved; the categories at Donington were:
- Historic Grand Prix Cars Association, Front-engined vehicles.
- Historic Grand Prix Cars Association, Rear-engined vehicles.
- Gentlemen Drivers.
- Masters Endurance Legends.
- Masters GT Trophy.
- Masters Sports Car legends.
- Masters pre-66 Touring cars.
The fields for the two “Grand Prix” events were both good, the front- engined category included two Kurtis Indy roadsters plus a Scarab along with a 1935 ERA; these provided some variety in a field of our more normal BRM, Ferrari, Maserati & Lotus Grand Prix cars, along with a beautiful polished alluminium Lister Jaguar Monza GP.
The two-geared Indy cars really should not work on our twisting and undulating UK circuits but they do! Sheer power overcomes the disadvantages of bulk and weight; it is spectacular to watch them roar away on the straights, only to be caught through the corners by the more nimble lightweights!
The slightly newer rear-engined GP cars had a full field of around 30 cars; predominantly Cooper, Lotus, BRM and Brabhams, with a couple of “specials”, a Walker and a Neutar. On the anniversary of twice World Champion/Indy winner/all-round top racer Jim Clark’s death it was great to see one of his cars, a Lotus 21, being driven really well. As a seventeen year-old I was stunned to learn that my boyhood hero had been killed at only 32-years old back in 1968, we shall not see his like again; there was also a Lotus Cortina which he had driven in the touring car race (although we called them Saloons back then)!
The Gentleman Drivers category comprises road-derived/developed sports cars: Ginetta, Cobra, Elan, 911, Corvette, TVR, Healey, Jaguar and one you may not have come across- Turner. These were quite rare back in their day and I don’t recall ever seeing one on the road; Turner seem to have been in business from about 1951 to 1966 and cars were available as kits, complete without engine or as fully finished cars. I still have not seen many at the races but each one I’ve looked at appears to be a different collection of parts under a glass- fiber body. As an Elan owner I recognized the front suspension as similarly being from the Triumph Herald/Vitesse but I’ve seen them with Ford, MG and even Climax engines!
With a huge grid of 36 cars this was an excellent race and great entertainment for the reasonable sized crowd who attended; the public can identify with these cars as they were on our streets when those of us of a certain age were growing up.
The Masters Endurance Legends race was for Le Mans Cars and none of those entered were particularly old, the earliest being 2005 and the most recent 2017 (which probably comply with current regulations). The series has been running for seven years but on this occasion was not well supported, 13 cars were entered, 12 practiced but only 6 started the race, which soon became 5. It seems strange to me that cars designed to last 24-hour endurance races should have such a rate of attrition after only two 30-minute qualifying sessions; the mood amongst the spectators I chatted with was not positive, like me they found the hour-long race totally underwhelming, in fact it was a bit of an endurance for us! The cars are fabulous and we just need more of them to enter because there are plenty of them still around, there is huge potential here.
The Masters GT Trophy was for cars between 2007 and 2018, the likes of Lambo Huracan, Porsche 997, Ginetta G55, Ferrari 488, BMW M3, Aston Martin Vantage, etc. Again there really were not enough of them, on even the short National circuit of just two miles, the race appeared to be a procession, although some good individual dicing was going on.
Masters Sports Cars Legends, these were the sports-Racing cars such as Chevron B16, Lola T70 Cooper Monaco King cobra and McLaren M1B. Yet again only 11 cars entered and not all turned up- where are the GT40s and Ferraris etc. which used to turn out regularly? I suspect that we really still are feeling the after-effects of the Covid pandemic plus the UK is teetering in and out of recession, with pretty dire economic forecasts and the effects of Brexit which only our failing Government appears to regard as a success. Corporate budgets have been scaled back across the board and I guess “luxury items” like motor-racing will be first to feel the economic pinch, let’s hope things improve as the season progresses.
The Masters pre-66 Touring Cars race, however, did live up to expectation, plenty of entries and excellent racing, although it seems to have become an almost all-Ford affair! There was only one Mini and one BMW 1800 the rest were Lotus Cortinas and the big-bangers from the US, Mustangs and Falcon sprints. It is great to watch these cars with different handling characteristics on a sweeping/undulating circuit like Donington Park, they all have the same objective but go about it in different ways; arguably the best race of the week-end.
