"What have YOU done today to make you feel proud?" Heather Small (2000)
"What have YOU done today to make you feel proud?" Heather Small (2000) |
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4th March 2002 |
I’d been a keen follower of motorsport since the age of 6, when I saw a black and white TV showing the Italian GP with Raymond Brookes commentating. From that point I was hooked, and would study my dad’s Motor Sport magazine every month. It wasn’t until I was 19 that I got to see my first circuit racing, and what a meeting to start with, the British GP at Brands Hatch. To show how old I am, the cost of the 3-day ticket was £30! Plus £2 for the campsite. From that point on, I attended the GP’s until 1983 when a new passion arose – Le Mans! I managed to go to 3 on the trot, and really enjoyed the experience (and I managed to see the entire 24hrs in 1985!). But then life got a bit difficult (money, lack of!) so TV viewing was my only outlet. I met my wife Jackie in July 1987, and was lucky enough to find that she also was fascinated by motorsport, in particular TRUCK RACING! So that August we went to Silverstone to see the Truck GP, and from then on we would attend various meetings at Brands, Silverstone and Donington Park. Come 1991, and finally I found an avenue I could get myself into involvement with motorsport – marshalling for karting. A local off-road motorsport facility were advertising for marshals, so I applied and a fortnight later was standing on a sequence of 3 corners with some flags and sort of left to get on with it. However, I’d seen enough marshalling to have a good idea of how things should go. Within a couple of months, Jackie too was involved, principally as lapscorer and occasional marshal. For the next 5 years we would almost become full time employees, working at the kart circuit, stock car oval and moto-cross events, often as the senior event coordinators, but also as start/finish marshal and lap scorer, but there were always doubts in our minds that safety was being compromised by profit. So at the end of 1996 we made a stand against this, found the landowners not prepared to change, and so were left with little choice but to move on. Not very far, as in the year previous a new RAC affiliated kart circuit had opened and they were looking to recruit good marshals. So we transferred our efforts to there, and from being a marshal I rose through being an Observer to my current role of Clerk of the Course, whilst Jackie went from lap scoring to Paddock marshal and also to Chief Marshal. But we were still paying out lots of money to attend BTCC meetings, and so thought it a good idea to marshal at circuit racing too. At the Autosport Show 1998 we saw the BMRMC stand and made enquiries, and a couple of weeks later were standing at a freezing Donington Park infield fighting fires and learning the basics again. We both did some 40+ days of motorsport in our first year and almost 50 in our second year. During that time, we have been to every circuit south of Donington Park (with the exception of Castle Combe, as their dates always clashed with karting events) and met many new friends, all sharing our passion for the sport. And we concluded our 2nd year by marshalling at Kyalami, South Africa, for the ISRS Sportscar race meeting. Absolutely brilliant. For 2000, we’d picked some 25 days of circuit racing and about 25 also for karting, but the early part of the year was affected, as Jackie required an operation, which she had at the end of April. So come June she was fit enough to start travelling (but not marshalling) to events and we got to the Goodwood Festival of Speed, which was a new event that we’d not done before.
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