British Super Bikes Cadwell Park – A first timer’s thoughts

Report by David Harbey

13 September 2022

The problem with shooting somewhere for the first time is that when you review your output you want to go back and either do more of the same (or indeed, sometimes, do things differently) and BSB at Cadwell was no exception! 

This was my first time at Cadwell Park for a major meeting so it was an early start (alarm 05.30) as I don’t like queuing – and I didn’t except for the last few hundred yards. I was greeted in the car park by this though – that’s just not fair!

I’d originally planned to go on Sunday, when it was likely to be a little quieter and easier to get the shots I was after, but in the end, Monday wasn’t too bad for a major event.

Oh, and that bloke Toprak Razgatioglou, reigning World Superbike champion, and his Pata Yamaha team-mate Andrea Locatelli were going to be there.

I’d only previously shot cars at Hall Bends as my previous two-wheeled meetings had been during the pandemic when that area was off limits. I’d also not been able to shoot from the café back to the Mountain so that’s where I started the day with my fellow PistonClickers.

Davey Todd #74 is the man to watch, I was told – well, here’s my version of Where’s Davey … 

The BSB warm up was truncated by the rain showers that weren’t forecast and certainly added a random element to proceedings. I did manage to grab one shot of Leon Haslam who seemed to be having a better weekend, although he does have good form at the Lincolnshire track.

On the basis that the world and his wife would be shooting around the Mountain, I decided to head to Hall Bends first for the racing. Slightly surprisingly, there was no problem finding a space on the fence for some of my usual panning shots.

Then it was back to the Mountain for those line of riders shots. They were behaving and none were out of line this time.

I was suckered in to the flying bike shots ! Toprak pretty much nailed them on only his third lap round Cadwell.

After that, I headed off towards Mansfield and the Gooseneck for a couple of panning shots and then up to Chris Curve.

Here’s my parting shot as I worked my way round Charlies back to the car park; It had been a long day with a couple of hours drive still ahead of me, but well worth it. I’ll be back for the Party in the Park.

For the day I was using the Nikon D850 plus Nikkor 70-200mm and 300mm PF lenses supplemented by the 1.7x teleconverter