About
StockcarGOLD 2021
This is a further incarnation of my collection of photographs from the world of BriSCA formula one stockcar racing.
StockcarGOLD is not a reference to the pictures being gold quality standard. It is more to do with the time period they cover. I was fortunate enough to be a regular at Aycliffe when it ran as a pirate track on Saturday nights through to its closure. As Aycliffe moved into BriSCA so did I from 1967 and most of my pictures cover the 70s & 80s. It is this period I consider to be StockcarGOLD with the likes of Stu Smith, Doug Cronshaw, Jim Esau, Len Wolfenden, Mike Close, Frankie Wainman and John Lund… The list is endless.
That is not to say the current era and today’s talented drivers make for any less of a spectacle. It’s just I travel far less now and with current Health & Safety regulations caging in the cars, I do not have as many opportunities to snap away to get acceptable shots. I am not brave enough to ask for permission to stand in the centre let alone actually stand there. I will leave that for the professionals.
Gallery
What will become apparent is that there are 2 distinct phases. The early years are scans of photographs from film cameras. The originals are different sizes and quality and so the results differ. Also my filing and records are non-existent resulting in a mishmash of years, tracks and meetings. This becomes evident in the gallery as there’s no rhyme or reason to the order. Other than the odd few world final nights that I can identify, I’ve added the rest randomly.
As we move into the 21st centuary so the equipment becomes digital. I resisted and persisted with film for a long time thinking celluloid was the pure form of photography. A combination of costs and needing digital images of my wife’s handmade cards for a website I’d built for her convinced me of the need to move with the times. What I then found is that I was not limited to 24 or 36 images at a time as the memory card could hold what was for me an infinite number of images. What is more they were downloaded to PC automatically recording the date taken, along with other techincal information that bores the pants off non-photographers. So the latest images have accurate filing information to help with putting them in some sort of order.
December 2020
I am re-working the gallery and had hoped to publish something before Christmas 2020. I failed when I had to buy a new pc due to the old one cutting out at inopportune moments. Then we had a loss of internet service due to a break in the fibre in a junction box a month after installation. As of the end of December 2020 I’ll kick off again. In the meantime I hope you stay safe and we can get back to normality. It would be great to have a full season of BriSCA formula one stockcar racing in 2021.
If you’ve arrived here out of curiosity and want to find out more about BriSCA formula one stockcar racing, the drivers’ association has a useful beginners guide here.
