I thought I might start my first post on this forum by telling you how I got interested in motor racing, and maybe those who have a similar infatuation could recount their own stories.
My family background is not particularly car-orientated - I had an uncle with a small-town garage, and a half-cousin with another. My father was involved in selling garage equipment, like hoists and ramps, and would pay an annual visit to Earls Court for the Motor Show. He would bring me back the catalogue of exhibits, which was page after page of technical specs which must have been one of the most boring publications in history. Very few pictures for a kid. However, I was simply infatuated with cars, and was recognised at my schools as the car-mad nutter. I would watch anything on the TV about cars, but racing simply thrilled my soul. The BBC would sometimes cover an afternoon's racing at a national meeting, with each race taking about 20 minutes, and interspersed with other sport such as horse racing or swimming. As a consequence, rather than miss anything, I would sit static on the floor in front of the screen for an entire afternoon.
In July 1961 a fateful day occurred. My father, who had limited interest in racing, had been given a family ticket for a meeting at Snetterton. My parents and my twin sister were there, but might as well have been in another country. It was the most thrilling day of my life so far - I recently searched e-bay for a copy of the programme and managed to find one, and it's made my life complete
. Sadly the rest of my family quickly got bored, and I saw only 2 races, but the seed had been sown. At the age of 15, already a subscriber to a couple of magazines, I decided to venture out on my own, and began attending as many meetings as I could afford. I cycled the 18 miles to Snetterton from my home, leaving in time to watch practice, and going home to a late supper after the meeting had finished. This covered a period around 1965/67 and included such events as the European Saloon Car 500kms (Autodelta Alfas, Alan Mann Lotus Cortinas, hordes of Abarth 1000TCs). I stood all day on my own, not bored in the slightest, and I don't remember even bothering with a "comfort break". Happy days. Snetterton, like so many British circuits, is based on an old WW2 airfield. They needed plenty of space to safely accomodate the manoevures of a B17, so it's a pretty open place. When the sun shone, it was fine, but when it was cold and windy, Lord it was miserable. A well-known saying in British motorsport about the place -"There are only 2 trees between Siberia and Snetterton, and one of them has fallen over".
Then along came girls. Testosterone won.
I continued to watch the sport on TV, and continued to read Motor Sport magazine, but home ownership and women take a lot of a man's time. I've only seen a couple of live meetings since I was a teenager, and I think not being there changes your attitude - I'm in a sort of time-warp with my racing interests, which is why so many of my puzzles cover the 1940s-1960s that I favour so much. As a fan of the writings of Denis Jenkinson, I followed his lead in becoming disenchanted when sponsorship started to influence the sport and the way in which it was run. Cars painted as cigarette packets may have made commercial sense, but they had no soul. When we were told to call a race the John Player Grand Prix, that was the last straw. I still read quality motorsport journalism in the form of Nigel Roebuck's monthly summaries of F1, but even the club racing events in the UK are mainly one-make races, and although it makes for close racing, it lacks the interest that variety brings.
The great thing about an international website like Autopuzzles is that we all have a different story to tell. No doubt there will be some members who can sympathise with my personal tale, but there will be others, mainly younger I suspect, who disagree. I want this forum to hear from them all.
Please tell me your story. Let me know how you got involved in motorsport, what your experiences were, what you think of today's "circus", how you think things can be improved. The editors of Autopuzzles are very keen to see these sections of the site being used more than in the past. Feel free to start a new thread about anything related to motorsport, maybe something unique to your country - snowmobile racing in Canada, the Bathurst races, rallying in East Africa..........Over to you all.
