Every weekend during the thick of the national racing season there are scores of events taking place that feature a stunning array of cars and some brilliant battling. Yet it’s no secret that, at many of these race meetings, very few people are spectating trackside and get to witness this action – it might just be the marshals and a small number of family and friends of the participating drivers.
But leading circuit operator MotorSport Vision has been trying to change that for the past decade, by organising an increasing number of special, themed events that have attracted thousands of people through the gates and showcased the wonders of club racing to a whole new audience.
“We’re fortunate we have so much national racing compared to a lot of other countries, and the racing at some events is really superb, and the hardest thing as a circuit operator is to attract spectators to race meetings,” admits MSV group motorsport event manager David Willey.
“The way these festivals and car shows work is we’re attracting people who have an interest in a certain theme or car or manufacturer, bringing them to our event and they see some relevant racing – we’re attracting people that wouldn’t usually come to a race circuit.”
While MSV does not publicise attendance numbers for such events, the sizeable crowds are hugely important for the whole motorsport industry.
“Your first experience of a race track hooks you for life and that’s the aim,” explains Willey. “It might get people wanting to start racing themselves – whether you become involved in the industry as your career or as a volunteer or marshal or spectator, it’s a great way to develop people’s interest.”
With circuits offering huge open spaces to fill with car clubs, family entertainment, trade stands and caterers, it’s no wonder Willey says venues such as Brands Hatch lend themselves perfectly to such festival-style events.
“We’ve got a fantastic creative team at MSV,” he adds. “We are the circuit owners and operators so we have the control to do what we want, so it’s a very blank canvas.”
That blank canvas was first filled by a special themed event back in 2012, with the inaugural running of the Mini Festival at Brands Hatch.
“At the time, I was working a lot with the MSVR side of the business and we just took on the Mini Challenge back then,” recalls Willey. “It’s a great race series and we thought if we got Mini Challenge, the Mini Se7ens and Miglias, Super and Mighty Minis plus a one-off pre-’66 race, that makes one hell of a race meeting. There’s lots of Mini shows but the unique element of our event is it’s giving racing and a car show.”
"For us, it’s become a mainstay event and we base our calendar around it"
Mini 7 Racing Club's Colin Peacock on Mini Festival
The event has evolved from there and continues to be enormously popular. Off track, hundreds of Minis are assembled and thousands of brand enthusiasts attend. On track, a diverse range of Minis compete, including the modified beasts of the Fastest Mini in the World race. The Mini 7 Racing Club is another that provides plenty of race action and it views the Mini Festival as an important event in its season.
“It’s the focal point for Mini racing and it’s a real treat to go to,” says the club’s commercial manager Colin Peacock. “It’s tremendous racing in front of the crowds and it’s great for our sponsors – Mini Spares love it. For us, it’s become a mainstay event and we base our calendar around it.”
Encouraged by the potential shown by that very first Mini Festival, MSV decided it was “a good template” that could be used to create other special meetings. Next to join the roster was American SpeedFest in 2013.
“At the time, we had EuroNASCAR that was supporting DTM in 2011-12,” recalls Willey. “This race series, while it’s great to support DTM, we thought it can probably hold its own and thought an American event would be incredible. We took the template of the Mini Festival, having American racing and American car owners off track.”
Now, in June each year, the Kent circuit is transformed to completely embrace the Stars and Stripes theme. Legends, Pickups and some of the American muscle cars found in the Bernie’s V8s series support EuroNASCAR on the race timetable, while special off-track displays have expanded to even include a country music festival for the 2024 edition.
In the decade since SpeedFest debuted, the number of specially promoted MSV events has risen to 14, but few have enjoyed quite the instant popularity that Super Touring Power achieved last July. The big-spending era when star names did battle on UK shores is widely regarded as a halcyon period of the British Touring Car Championship, and it was little surprise that fans flocked to Kent in their masses when a special event was put on to celebrate these machines and their drivers.
“With Super Touring Power, we worked very closely with Stuart Caie from the Classic Touring Car Racing Club,” explains Willey. “I met with Stuart a year or so before the event last year and said, ‘Your club has got some amazing cars, it would be fantastic to develop some sort of classic touring car festival.’ There seems to be a real following for these cars, and the team at MSV and CTCRC worked really hard to get as many display and demo cars.”
To have the likes of Antipodean aces Greg Murphy, Steve Richards and Paul Radisich competing at the inaugural edition was a major coup, while plenty of tin-top legends could be found away from the track, too.
“It was a major highlight,” enthuses Willey. “I’ve never been to an event that was so full of enthusiasts and everyone had a smile on their face. It was like going back to the ’90s – people were seeing their idols and it was just magical.”
Events such as Super Touring Power show that it’s not just MSVR’s own categories that benefit from the increased exposure and promotion of the special festivals. Another example is Brands Britannia. This was also launched last year and runs alongside a Classic Sports Car Club race meeting while embracing the heritage of the British motor industry. CSCC director Hugo Holder describes it as one of the highlights of the club’s 2023 campaign and the event is set to further develop for this year.
“We had gridwalks and Morris dancers on the grid and that went down really well, and it’s going to come back bigger and better,” he says. “We’re tailoring the racing to get a whole load of British cars racing on the same day.”
But whether it’s the Italian exotica of Festival Italia or the American might of Oulton Park’s US AutoShow, all of these special events require a huge amount of preparation in order to attract the crowds.
“We’ve got a great team, led by Alex Robinson, who organise and put together all the content we have at these events,” says Willey. “They look after the entertainment and display cars, the car clubs and owners. They’re dealing with hundreds of cars and owners’ clubs, live music, themed catering and trade stands.”
Months of planning is undertaken, and each member of the team is allocated specific responsibilities on the day of the event, whether it be looking after the music stage, coordinating the artists and engineers, or overseeing the successful creation of a craft tent. Once everything is set up, the whole team then comes together to ensure the large car parades are organised to precision. Inevitably, the popularity of these events does create its own challenges.
“We have to balance the venue space available for clubs and owners against other entertainment content that adds value, and most of our events are at capacity now,” says Robinson. “We help to manage this by being very strict on the entry criteria, particularly for historic festivals like the Gold Cup at Oulton Park. Ford Power Live at Brands Hatch is our busiest event, and the one that fills fastest, with well over a thousand Fords.”
A third American-focused fixture is being added for 2024 – this time at Snetterton, where MSV is hoping to capitalise on the numerous US Air Force bases in the area to help generate interest
Despite all of this success, Willey and the rest of the MSV team are certainly not taking anything for granted.
“Hosting this type of event does take a huge amount of work and investment in terms of marketing and promotion,” he acknowledges. “We’ve been pretty successful in doing that, but it only takes bad weather and you can get unstuck.”
So far, MSV has been able to avoid such pitfalls and these festivals’ popularity has demonstrated that there is still a clear appetite for motorsport and motoring in the UK, even when there are so many other competing demands for people’s time. And, with each event targeted at a subtly different audience, there is always one eye on the future and what other themes could be introduced.
For example, a third American-focused fixture is being added for 2024 – this time at Snetterton, where MSV is hoping to capitalise on the numerous US Air Force bases in the area to help generate interest. But all of this has come a long way from the uncertainties prior to the first Mini Festival back in 2012.
“We marked out the spectator areas for all the clubs we contacted,” recalls Willey. “I will never forget thinking, ‘I hope all these Minis turn up for the displays.’ Fortunately, they did.” And Willey and the rest of the MSV team have not looked back since.
