Race Retro 2020
Photographing Race Retro 2020
Stoneleigh Park
Images by RP Watkinson Photography
21 – 23 February 2020
Photographing Race Retro last year, we were blessed with glorious sunshine and favourable conditions for the winter spectator photographer wishing to grab some historic rallying . Light is our most important asset, so to get a repeat performance this year gave us no excuses not to capture some great images of the iconic cars on show.
Race Retro at Stoneleigh Park is the largest Historic motorsports show in Europe. This year over 24,000 people visited over the three days the event was held. The show is broken down into three main areas.
The Halls, where Classic cars ranging from F1 to vintage Bentleys are housed, are a maze to explore and where every turn is a classic you would want in your 20-car garage. 20 cars? I couldn’t pick just 5 or 10 from the gleaming models on show it would have to be more, a lot more.
The Rally stages are the best part of the show for action shots. This is where you can capture the cars that were making the rally headlines when some of us were small children.
Last year there was a good number of great cars to capture, 127 to be precise. This year the places were over subscribed and limited to 145 participants including the mad Group B cars.
It was not only the cars on show, the drivers and co-drivers that took these off road rocket ships down the special stages were back behind the wheel. Reuniting the stars of yesteryear with their cars is not exclusive to Race Retro but is a nice touch.
Last year the rally stages were very linear with restricted views for the fans. This was due to a number of things but mainly construction of the HS2 train line and it's logistics being located within the park.
The organisers had listened to the fans' requests for better viewing areas for the rally stages and had duly sorted last year's problems. The power of the internet can be a good thing, now let’s start badgering MSV about the march of the safety fences around their tracks.
Inside the halls there are plenty of opportunities to grab some arty static shots. This year there was a celebration of 70 years of the F1 series with a display of “the greatest grid”, showcasing the evolution of F1, and with a good smattering of winning cars.
The Silverstone Auctions were also at Race Retro with some stunning cars up for grabs. The market for classic road and race cars has not diminished with a Porsche 356 and Ferrari Dino 246GT both selling for well over a quarter million pounds.
Too rich for you? There were many stalls selling models of the cars on show and books to read all about them.
If you had the boot space there was also a great auto jumble with those hard to find items for your restoration project. This hall is also a great place to test your creative photography skills. The halls at Stoneleigh have skylights casting natural light so look out for interesting angles and lighting conditions.
Back in the main hall, a display of cars driven by two-times British Rally Champion Russell Brookes had been organised to celebrate one of the British icons of rallying. Brookes started his career in the classic mini, moving on to the rally favourite the Ford Escort that is still entertaining the rally fans today.
It’s the Heat for Hire liveried cars that Brookes will be most remembered for, with a great selection of these iconic cars on display. Russell passed away last year but I’m sure he is chewing up a cloud or two in a special stage in the sky.
Russell Brookes 16 August 1945 - 30 October 2019.
Photographic Post script
Pre-booking your tickets for Stoneleigh will cost you £23 to get in, is this good value for the spectator photographer? I think so as you can get quite close to the action and there is a lot of it. You will probably get better Rally pictures for your portfolio by tracking through a forest down a muddy path but this is a good substitute. A mid range 70-200mm and a shorter wide angle zoom for inside the halls is all you really need.
Head on shots with a chance of flying debris, fast shutter speed, side on panning as slow as you can go keeping the subject sharp, start at a 250th and drop down when you have some keepers in the can
I would recommend lenses with a f2.8 aperture as the lighting can be challenging in the halls and February is generally not the most luminous month. Check your white balance before you start shooting. Auto these days will do, but do check as a mix of sodium and natural light in some of the halls can give odd casts.
Top tip, get it right in camera, life is too short to be spent editing badly exposed pictures.
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