Caterham Finals @ Rockingham

I like last minutes trips. Midweek I had a text from my brother saying he had a pair of free tickets to some Caterham racing at Rockingham. The track is a couple of hours away and its not the most exciting place to spectate at due to the fact its an oval with just vast grandstands to watch the action from. It does have the pitlane roof area as well as a small area out the back of the paddock from which to watch so all is not lost. We travelled up in comfort by Aston and discovered we were almost the only ones there, the car park probably had 20 cars in, the marshals, racers and support crew out numbered paying punters! We headed under the tunnel and emerged in the paddock to be greeted by Caterhams  new R600



The garages were all open and we were free to wander where ever we wanted. There were a couple of non Seven races so theres a lot of Caterham photos coming up!











During the day there were qualifying sessions and races for several variants of the Caterham. To be honest they all look very similar so heres a few racing pictures from the roof of the pitlane. It gave a nice 360° viewing platform and we soon joined the "back'n'forwards gang" walking from side to side to get the best view of the action.







Next up we had another walk around the paddock, supercar and race car spotting before catching the Intermarque race for silhouette cars.









It was then lunch time, in the break we headed off to get a race program, they only sold them at the gate so we fired the Vantage up and collected one before I nabbed the drivers seat to pilot us back (at no more than 20mph!) Then it was time for more Seven racing.









The first lap was a bit tense, lots of cars and not much space resulted in some interlocking wheels and a near flip, luckily the driver landed back on four wheels before slewing off the track.









We headed back to the closest viewing point to the track on the last straight and watched the tintop and next Seven race.











The front mudguard flipped up on this Seven about six laps from the end. By the time he'd got to Park Ferme there was some serious damage to the tyre that the driver only noticed when we pointed it out!









With more races to come but a two hour plus drive home we did a final walk round before heading home.







While the cars were all very similar and the viewing was very limited, the weather was perfect and the company good. Roll on the 2013 race season, unless I can squeeze anymore meets in before then!

The rest of the photos can be found here

Steve.