Your first time - Dad content!!

[RichardGee]

I thought this would make an interssting first post. I've been gradually getting some material for a new New Zealand motorsports and motoring web site (www.petrolheads.co.nz) (Still looking for budding authors by the way) and I was thinking of an interesting forum topic for the site. I had been back to the UK a little while back (I live in NZ now) and had been chatting with my Dad about his first motor racing experience. I casually asked him if he wouldn't mind writing something for me, something that I could put on the web site and get people thinking about their first motor racing experience. I was a little taken aback when he sent the essay below for me to use. It struck so many chords with me and my first experience and I was fascinated to know whether we all share this intiial golden moment. My dad's was at a circuit in the UK called Charterhall. Hope it;s the right kind of thing for here. Please feel free to have a look at the site too and as mentioned, I'm deffo on the look out for interesting articles...

I wanted to put it all on here, but the site has a limit of characters. I've put as much as I can below, the full version with pics is here...

http://www.petrolheads.co.nz/content/view/302/1/

Sorry about that!!

One small boy in the company of gods

David Gee


At the time, I was a little lad of around 12 summers. Motor racing was my idea of Heaven, and motor racing drivers my own special gods – dwelling atop their high-powered, ear shattering Mount Olympus. I thought about little else, and much to his great delight, spent my free time cutting out motor racing pictures and motor racing articles from my father’s large collection of motor car magazines. This was before pasting them into a scrap book of truly gross proportions.

I lived on Tyneside in those days, and still do for that matter. Even then it was an area much more at home with Saturday afternoon football than the rich man’s sport of motor racing. Real enthusiasts for the sport were relatively few and far between. Motor racing circuits were as rare as those proverbial hen’s teeth we are always hearing about, and yet, for all that, our local Thompson Newspaper Group decided to sponsor a full international meeting at a remote circuit on the English/Scottish border called Charterhall. Everyone who was anyone would be there. The old man, God forever bless him, agreed that I should be there also.

My life was now complete for all I was still a wet behind the ears sprog with the smoothest face you could ever imagine. During the weeks leading up to the most important day of my life so far, I walked on air in daylight and at night dreamed of wondrous things mechanical.

The Newcastle Journal International Trophy meeting at Chartehall was on a Saturday, as were all such sporting events in those days, with Sundays set aside for more Godly pursuits. That particular Saturday the sun seemed to shine as it never had before and the sky was a perfect faultless blue. Never had there been such a Saturday. We drove from Newcastle to Charterhall in a Ford V-Eight Pilot at something like ten miles to the gallon. For all that, there had never been such a perfect Ford V-Eight Pilot. It positively flew, heading north, over the hills and far away to the land of the Border Rievers.

[slinkster]

Sounds like your Dad really enjoyed recounting that partiuclar day

My first time going to see motor racing must have been my Dad taking us to see the BTCC at Silverstone. I must have been about 10. I remember loving walking around the paddock and soaking up the sounds and smells. I also remember sitting in one of the stands and being terrified of falling through because it was all wood with massive big slats that you could see right through to the floor. Being only ten and pretty small, I remember holding on really tight to the wobbly chair in fear of vanishing through the bottom of the stand!

I also remember having one of those programmes that you could write down the racing order for each lap. Used to love that... my mum would call out the numbers and I'd write down the positions... but then of course I actually missed most of the racing!

aah... memories...

[CarlMetro]

It is very difficult for me to pin down my first motor racing experience because my family owned a car breakers yard and were involved in grass track and banger racing before I was even born.

[Mark in Oshawa]

My first motorracing experience was with my Aunt and Uncle. It was a warm but grey Saturday in September, I was six, and I was piled into my Uncle's 1970 Barracuda. I remember going into the track, (Mosport) and we were parked in a field where my Uncle and Aunt had a tent beside the car. I slept in the car, since I liked the back seat. The next day, we hiked up to the fence on the infield side of Corner 2, facing the infamous corner. I remember the race before the Canadian GP as just noisy, and I couldn't even remember what series it was. I do remember building a makeshift shelter over us with plastic tarps as the rain hit, and Jackie Stewart won going away in a Blue Tyrell with the 1 on the side and a big white Elf logo. I had no idea on what Elf was, or do I remember much about any of the other cars save maybe the Yardley McLaren's...(not sure why,maybe it was just sponsor identification that made them stand out) and I don't remember much else of that day, but I do remember I have spent a life time going back. Funny, never sat again at that spot at Corner 2 any more......the hillside has changed so much since 1971....cant even think of where we would have sat....

[Mark in Oshawa]

AS for my Dad, he never goes to the races...but likes them. He did take me to a local stock car track, but I don't have any real memories that stand outfrom that trip....

[walrus81]

I've only ever been to 2 race meetings. Both were ATCC final rounds at Oran Park (i think 1994 and 1995).