Cadwell Park....
27th August 2008
...was a complete disaster. Me and my mate Chinny popped up for the Sunday qualifying session only to find out they were trying the new F1 style system of qualifying for this round.
Although the system sounds good, looks good on paper and no doubt it works, the morning practice session turned out to be a joke. It had been raining when we arrived and by the time it was the Superbikes turn for their free practice, hardly anyone came out! At one point the track was empty for at least 15 minutes which is something I didn't travel and pay to see.
The problem was the top teams knowing full well they would get into the last top ten in the afternoon session if they decided not to come out and save their tyres instead. If they did come out they'd do a couple of laps then disappear again, to say I was p****d off was an under statement..
This left me with a handful of shots all from the same area from the morning session and set the tone for what turned out to be a poor days shooting.
Chinny and I had hoped we'd get a chance of a walk around the pits and maybe with a bit of luck a chance to shoot the action on the mountain track side. Chinny had bumped into a North West 200 Ducati mechanic in his local indian take away and got talking to him about the racing, he said he would see if he could get us in but unfortunately nothing came of it - to be fair he did say Cadwell was pretty much a closed shop when it came to this sort of thing. It's not the quality of your images that counts, it's who you know!
I'd pretty much given up by now and had lost all interest, the place was packed solid with fans and spaces on the mountain scarce. I grabbed a few shots shots of the boy's getting airborne but it wasn't really what I wanted and my heart wasn't in it.
I spotted Jamie Whitam explaning the technique of jumping the mountain to the TV crew.
plus a couple of Honda team managers, Neil Tuxworth and Simon Buckmaster. That's how interested in the bikes I was!
I finally put one last effort in and walked up to the far end of the circuit for a few more shots from a different bend.
I must admit I sometimes wonder why I bother with all the hassel of it, plus to top it all off I never got enough different images for a portfolio in my gallery section... :-(
Although the system sounds good, looks good on paper and no doubt it works, the morning practice session turned out to be a joke. It had been raining when we arrived and by the time it was the Superbikes turn for their free practice, hardly anyone came out! At one point the track was empty for at least 15 minutes which is something I didn't travel and pay to see.
The problem was the top teams knowing full well they would get into the last top ten in the afternoon session if they decided not to come out and save their tyres instead. If they did come out they'd do a couple of laps then disappear again, to say I was p****d off was an under statement..
This left me with a handful of shots all from the same area from the morning session and set the tone for what turned out to be a poor days shooting.
Chinny and I had hoped we'd get a chance of a walk around the pits and maybe with a bit of luck a chance to shoot the action on the mountain track side. Chinny had bumped into a North West 200 Ducati mechanic in his local indian take away and got talking to him about the racing, he said he would see if he could get us in but unfortunately nothing came of it - to be fair he did say Cadwell was pretty much a closed shop when it came to this sort of thing. It's not the quality of your images that counts, it's who you know!
I'd pretty much given up by now and had lost all interest, the place was packed solid with fans and spaces on the mountain scarce. I grabbed a few shots shots of the boy's getting airborne but it wasn't really what I wanted and my heart wasn't in it.
I spotted Jamie Whitam explaning the technique of jumping the mountain to the TV crew.
plus a couple of Honda team managers, Neil Tuxworth and Simon Buckmaster. That's how interested in the bikes I was!
I finally put one last effort in and walked up to the far end of the circuit for a few more shots from a different bend.
I must admit I sometimes wonder why I bother with all the hassel of it, plus to top it all off I never got enough different images for a portfolio in my gallery section... :-(
