72 replies to this topic

[David McKinney]

More correctly a silversmith, I think

[MCS]

Correct, David.

I have to wonder how many trophies he created/produced?

Doubt we'll ever know sadly.

[rbm]

looks like a grid of 20+ 500 F3 for Cadwell Park on the 31st August, which should make for some intresting racing.

[Dutchy]

25 is what I heard at the weekend

[minigeff]

Living near to the circuit, I can personal vouch that its a great place. A good place to view is just before the mountain, not sure what that stretch is called, but from there you can see a load of circuit.

I used to go there with Dad and had loads of good times there, especially when my two cousins used to race in the monoposto championship. I've got a great picture some where of one of my cousins off the floor at the top of the mountain. Both of them went on to win the championship eventually, all be it a few years apart.

Anyhow, this is my first ever post on this forum, so hi people!

[drivers71]

My first ever visit to Cadwell Park was for my very first race as a driver, in April 1991, so it has very fond personal memories for me. I loved the circuit as soon as I drove it, and won my class on subsequent visits. I'd only picked up the GTV6 earlier that same week and hadn't touched a thing until turning up there and maybe checking the tyre pressures. Still resplendent in it's John Myerscough - Cubleys of Ainsdale livery. I finished, and didn't hit anything, which I took as a successful debut.
(it is the ex-Norris Miles 1984 Uniroyal Production Car championship winning car - famously rolled and destroyed by him at Brands Hatch) My photos recording this personally historic event are here:

http://s271.photobuc...d...k 28 April/

(Also indicatiing my ignorance of towing weight limits, at the time - Bit of a giveaway, trailering a GTV6 with a .............GTV6. Oooops!)

The other (more professional) photos of me at Cadwell:
1991 April


1992 May


1992 May


1992 August


Thanks for your collective indulgence.
Rich

[Andrew Kitson]

It would have been great to be at Cadwell yesterday. Cadwell Park and a Ferrari 512S.
http://www.motorspor...asp?NewsID=4627

[Dutchy]

It must have been fascinating - but what an unsuitable venue!
Nice to read Nick Mason being so complimentary about my favourite circuit - its a shame though that the VSCC meeting there isn't as well supported as it used to be.

[alansart]

Quote

Originally posted by Andrew Kitson
It would have been great to be at Cadwell yesterday. Cadwell Park and a Ferrari 512S.
http://www.motorspor...asp?NewsID=4627

Wish I'd seen that! I bet the Mountain and the twiddly bits were fun

[JtP1]

Quote

Originally posted by chris shaw
Memories of Cadwell as a kid in the 60s are bike meetings when all the stars were there. On the car side -

6. Seeing Roger Williamson total his F3 Cooper just before Mountain and then sitting on bank with head in hands - followed his career from that day.
Good to see it cared for by JP- remember seeing him race there in Marcos.

Did Roger Williamson not have an F3 March and race there in 72 (pos 71)? If my failing memory is working he thrashed everyone in F3 that day.

A Cooper in 72?

[Mallory Dan]

I think he had an old F3 Cooper in '69, the year before his 'Anglia-year'. It burnt out completely soemwhere I think.

[NanningF1fan]

Memories of Cadwell?

In the early 80s marshals used to take a carrier pigeon in their holdalls because you never knew if the phones would work. The place was primitive in those days. It was also fast and dangerous. My introduction was the famous Brundle v Senna race in British F3 in 1983. I had a puncture on the way and arrived late. Marshal's signing on was in race control which meant you had to cross the track at Mountain Top and go down the hill on the infield. Practice had already started by the time I got there so I decided to hang around with the guys on Mountain Top until the end of the first session. I had been there all of two minutes when Senna got it all wrong coming into the mountain but kept his foot in and tried to climb the hill on the grass. He hit a bump and got launched into the front of the marshals post. I saw him coming and jumped. Some of my colleagues were not so lucky. One guy ended up with a broken leg if I remember rightly. The marshals box was made of breeze blocks and concrete. It didn't bend but Senna's car did. The tub resembled a banana afterwards but he walked away. The session was black flagged and Martin Brundle stopped at the post instead of going back to the pits to see if everybody was OK. I respected him from that day onwards.

There were some other hairy posts as well. The one between Hall Bends and the Barn could be entertaining. There was a house on the left of the circuit in those days. It is no longer there perhaps because a Colt Starion went across the garden, through the front window and finished up on the dinner table. I can't remember who the driver was. It must have been around '85 or '86.

Another interesting place was Park right at the top of the hill at the opposite end of the circuit from the mountain. The approach was fast, uphill and blind into a 90degree right hander. If anybody missed their braking point they went straight on. I vividly remember an FF1600 doing this, climbing over the back of the car in front and cartwheeling through the air. He went over the marshals heads and landed upside down in the farmers field behind the post. The roll hoop dug into the soft earth. We could talk to the driver through a gap about 3 inches wide between the cockpit sides and the ground. He was OK but Cadwell always struggled for marshal numbers and there weren't enough of us to lift the car. There was also a strong smell of petrol. I though switch off the electric master switch only to find that it had sheered off in the crash. No problem I thought; just rip the battery leads off. But I couldn't find the battery! We never did. It is probably still pushing up the daisies today. Typically the phones weren't working and it seemed ages before a relay of hand signals attracted the attention of the rescue unit at Copse which came to help us. Anybody else remember this? I think the car was a Van Diemen RF87 and it was white. The driver was a foreigner. Rudy Eggenberger comes to mind but I am not sure.

Cadwell was a place for the brave and those with initiative and an independent spirit. In many ways it was a throw back even in the 80s but it had a great atmosphere and it is good to hear that it is still going strong.

[Macca]

The cottage that used to stand between the Hairpin and Barn.

Paul M

[Dutchy]

Such a shame the cottage and the barn have now gone.

I went for the first time in (I think) 1976 when the VSCC went for the first time also. After the previous year's season closer at the truly dreadful Llandow, Cadwell was a breath of fresh air. Even then I was amazed that the RACMSA deemed it safe - but obviously very happy that they did. In those days the circuit had a 2 litre limit and the VSCC was granted an excemption. Charles Wilkinson, the owner, lived in the gorgeous house by the startline that is so sadly now boarded up and unloved. It would make a wonderful driver's clubhouse I think

[simonlewisbooks]

Quote

Originally posted by Dutchy
Such a shame the cottage and the barn have now gone.

I went for the first time in (I think) 1976 when the VSCC went for the first time also. After the previous year's season closer at the truly dreadful Llandow, Cadwell was a breath of fresh air. Even then I was amazed that the RACMSA deemed it safe - but obviously very happy that they did. In those days the circuit had a 2 litre limit and the VSCC was granted an excemption. Charles Wilkinson, the owner, lived in the gorgeous house by the startline that is so sadly now boarded up and unloved. It would make a wonderful driver's clubhouse I think

It seems bizarre that over the past decade in which property prices went crazy that one house adjoining the track should be knocked down and the other left boarded up...not to mention the demolition of the famous barn.

Thats a hell of a waste or potential income for the owners or perhaps a canny but drastic way of keeping out the NIMBY brigade....?

Either way it's a shame that these long-familiar and unique features should have vanished. :

[Dutchy]

Sadly attractive surroundings aren't high on the list of circuit owners' priorities. Portakabins are usually the preferred structure.

[Geoff E]

My first visit to Cadwell I believe, 3rd August 1946, six months before my birth.

[john winfield]

1968, and some more two-wheelers at Cadwell

 

[john aston]

For those who haven't visited recently - or at all- I can report that Cadwell is in rude health. Interesting to see some posts re how shabby it had become and I don't disagree, having first gone there , crikey , almost exactly 40 years ago. Under Jonathan Palmer's care the place now looks better than it ever has for as long as I have known it . Fresh paint , beautifully landscaped , no litter whatsoever and  courteous staff. Better still , the daft hoardings which the previous management had erected which stopped a clear view from Mountain to start/finish have been removed .

I am less keen on the new bridge to Coppice and start finish as I liked the  quaintness of walking over the circuit between races . As ever , the track majors on bikes but it does offer wonderful racing and HSCC and VSCC meetings in June are absolute unmissables - no circuit in UK offers prettier or closer viewing  . It doesn't have a dress code but I can struggle by without one. As Simon Arron said in Motor Sport, one of racing's best sights last year was Jon Milicevic's Cooper T59 through the Hall Bends -just  mesmerisingly quick . It is also a great circuit to drive, if only to confirm my suspicion  that I shouldn't give up the day job......Not much margin for error and just terrifying in the wet- the conditions where I once saw JJ Lehto give an absolute master class in car control in FF2000 . My pace in the Seven was a little more ..err..pedestrian    

[john winfield]

This isn't really 'nostalgia' but I do love Cadwell.

 

Last Sunday I thoroughly enjoyed three and a half laps of the circuit in our road going Suzuki Swift, courtesy of MSV's 'Drive' offer. Fifteen cars at a time, no overtaking, trundling around at a 'family friendly', sedate pace behind their BMW Safety Car. This probably sounds all very tame for those who have done proper Track Days but it really was fun, let loose on a track I know well as a spectator, with my wife as co-driver, getting a feel for what the Mountain, Hall Bends, the Gooseneck etc are really like.  And just by backing off a little from the car ahead you could have a go at the tighter corners, trying to find a good line through Mansfield and the Hairpin, or slithering through the left/right of the Mountain bends before leaping (?) over the crest.

 

The circuit was in beautiful condition as ever but the track seemed even narrower than I expected. With no danger of being overtaken I could experiment with, and pretend to take, the best racing line through each corner but can hardly imagine what it must be like battling wheel to wheel in, for example, the very competitive, heart-stopping Historic Formula Fords. The thought of blasting down the start/finish straight, choosing the perfect line to swoop up Coppice only to find a Hawke inside you and an Elden on your outside is enough to make you shiver. I'll stick to gentle track days!

 

This year MSV introduced Drive* at several of their circuits - Brands, Oulton etc - as, presumably, a means of earning some income during Covid. I hope they find space on the calendar in future to keep it going. We bought it as a joke Christmas present, but the January slots were postponed until now because of lockdown, which worked out well as, having stunned the Cadwell crowds with my driving incompetence, we had fish and chips by the sea in Mablethorpe, a stroll on the front in Cleethorpes, and a late cup of tea near the cathedral in Lincoln. Yes, we know how to live. But it was better done in May than late January!

 

* We payed £25 back in December. I think the rate for all circuits is now £35 but the MSV website will have the details.

[Risil]

That sounds brilliant John!

[john winfield]

Recent racing, but nostalgic machinery, showing how it's done. Here's Cameron Jackson in 2018 showing how to dominate from the front in his FF1600 Lola (?)

 

 

plus Steve Platt and his Singer Chamois in the thick of things back in 2013:

 

Edited by john winfield, 25 May 2021 - 16:48.

[john aston]

I am there for two successive weekends in June, for HSCC and CSCC.  My 46th straight year of attendance ,and I can still recall the sense of joy the first time I went. What a contrast to the flat acres of Rufforth, Croft and Silverstone I'd grown used to, with Brands , Mallory and  Oulton the circuits my then favourites .  Cadwell, for me, remains  the best circuit of all- with a nod to Goodwood and Anglesey.      

Edited by john aston, 25 May 2021 - 16:19.