Kat has a new hobby!!

[Kat]

And yep it's motorsport related.

I spent a fantastic day at Donnington Park on Sunday doing a Marshal taster day.. and yep I'm hooked. Going to be doing Vintage Sports cars this weekend and several other events over the rest of the summer.

Brilliant way to get close to the action and for no cost!! Marshalls are all volunteers and they are crying out for them - so if you guys fancy taking part pop over to www.marshals.co.uk - I've only done a single day and I'm already hooked!

[Rouke]

Bloody hell that's way cool!
Great idea Kat, sounds like loads of fun. And you know what happens to the good crews right? they get invited to international events etc. so in a few years we might see you on Le Mans

[Kat]

Bloody hell that's way cool!
Great idea Kat, sounds like loads of fun. And you know what happens to the good crews right? they get invited to international events etc. so in a few years we might see you on Le Mans

It's not even often 'by invite' - 'some' events might request a certain grade, but that's both not hard to gain and fairly rare.

Even as a complete novice I could probably get into every race in the country except possibly F1.

[Grant Riddall]

That is cool indeed Kat never been to donnington but it is on my "tracks to visit" list along with Spa and Monza
Did you have to deal with any incidents? Where was you stationed? And when are you going to join us on bloody track?

[Kat]

That is cool indeed Kat never been to donnington but it is on my "tracks to visit" list along with Spa and Monza
Did you have to deal with any incidents? Where was you stationed? And when are you going to join us on bloody track?

I was stationed (just in the afternoon) at flag post 2, which is the outside of Redgate just by the end of the hospitality suites.

20s into the first race a bunch of SuperKarts approached T1, L1, FIVE abreast with 2 close behind.. the number 25.. locked up under braking and punted the 1 into the gravel 30 yards from me!! Yep number 25 won the championship as a result and I helped carry the Kart out of the Gravel.

Later on helped push a stricken sports-prototype out of the gravel after he got pushed off by another one near end of the race.

Donnington is awesome to drive around too - only got chance for most of a single lap and almost went off in copse!! (they corner is as tricky in RL as in sims) - although having a motorbike with poor rear brakes probably didn't help

As for joining you on track that requires a sim I own

[Ray Walton]

Well done Kat, I am impressed. An important volunteer job which your reward will be excitement, fun, comradeship meeting new friends you will work closely with, and great memories for you too. And of course you get to see a lot more motor racing too

That is rekindling my memories of my marshalling days back in the 70s. I assume they are giving you some training days. which you will need a lot initially and in fact regularly as well, to become proficient especially with fire marshalling as there is quite a lot to learn there about tackling big petrol and oil fires as a team. I remember we had those training sessions days and had to tackle real quick big and fierce petrol fires that they set up for us using old single seater chassis. We even had an amazing exciting day at one of the medway town's Kent Fire Brigade training areas with their fire brigade instructors to teach us new skills and knowledge.

Marshalling means there is a lot to learn and will be some while before you get onto flag marshalling, usually starting with yellow flag duties. Blue flag marshalling is highly skilful as you can then make or break a race so easily so mistakes have to be seriously avoided there. You need to be 100% aware of where every car is on track and once cars are being lapped it can get quite hard to keep it all under control. I did quite a few flag marshalling sessions at Brands with the smaller national and club meetings, at first under supervision and with ongoing training; a great challenge, rewarding and great enjoyment too.

Anyway who are you marshalling with ? BARC or BRSCC ?? I think Donnington is or was a BARC track tough things may well have changed of course over all these years.

I worked at Brands Hatch with BRSCC and as I said elsewhere here in our forum, I was invited by the RAC to marshal at two GPs first one was a paddock marshal in 1974 and the second on was as a fire marshal on post 1 (start line) in 1976 and both at Brands of course (much better for F1 than Silverstone IMHO). Also marshalled at several Race OF Champions there which were always held in March and a non championship full F1 event at Brands with all the F1 teams and their drivers racing. Great memories Kat and of course marshalled at many many club and BRSCC international and national meetings too at Brands. I retired form it in 1977 as job pressures and family issues at the time prevented me from continuing. As I say now I just have teh very fond memories of some of the highlights of my life, love it and have no regrets that I took on that rewarding volunteer job.

So I hope you get the excitement enjoyment and pleasure of close involvement to the motor racing scene as I did all those years ago. I wish you every success, it is an important job for which the drivers safety can be very much in your hands and those of your colleagues there too, marshalling is indeed team work. If you do a good job the chief marshal on your post will report good things back about you to your top head marshal and from that your name will hopefully eventually be put forward to the UK F1 governing body (is it still RAC??) as a recommend capable marshal by the racing club you marshal for. Then with any luck you never know you may get the supreme honour of being invited to marshal at the next full GP at Silverstone.

Be keen to hear your reports of your marshalling exploits Kat.

[Kat]

I'm going to be marshalling through the BMMC (see link in OP ) and yes they do do training days. In fact training is stipulated within the licence upgrade route.

Essentially as a trainee track marshall I need to do (from memory) 20 days marshalling, 1 days training, and be signed off for both flag and incident marshalling.

The BMMC supplies the majority of the countries marshalls, in some instances direct to the track, in others via the organising club for the event. Donny is unusual in that the incident marshalls are supplied direct to the track while the specialists are supplied to the organising club.

Not sure how things were in your era, Ray, these days you have two branches of marshalls.

Track Marshalls do the flagging and incidents.
Specialist Marshalls do pitlane, startlane, comms, pre-gridding etc.

[Ray Walton]

Yes it was similar structure back then. Track, or known then also as Course Marshals. were indeed spilt between incident/fire marshalling (we were quite well trained fire fighters, a skill and technology in itself even then, especially with octane fuel fires) and flag marshals, usually two per post one primarily on yellows and the more senior one on the important blue flag duties . It took a lot of experience to be able to be on the blue flags, but the yellow flags are relatively easy of course so that is usually where you start your flag duty training.

Then for sure we had start grid and pit lane specialists too and we also had Paddock marshal duties which were assigned to the track marshals, and usually you took turns per event as to being allocated to paddock duties, which was not my favourite job except if you got assigned to the F1 Hesketh team area as that was a lot of fun back then as your history books will show with champaign, women and partying

Have fun you will enjoy it I am sure. Will bring you many lifelong fond memories which can't be bad and you need them when you get older..

[Kat]

They seem to be currently running on one flag marshall per post although it does depend on staffing levels. Obviously not sure how they work through the flag training.

I know at training days they still have a bit of fun putting lots of petrol (usually left over race fuel) into a scrap car and igniting it as the training for fire marshalling.

[Ray Walton]

Always should have a second flag marshal as a yellow often needs to be waved urgently when an incident occurs in your area, whereas the main blue flag marshal needs to have the blue flag in hand all the time. So usually the marshal under flag training holds the yellow flag ready to use in an instant should an incident occur past his post. Sure you can get away with a single flag marshal per post but could in theory cause an few seconds delay with a yellow flag and that is a far more serious danger issue than that silly hour long IMHO insignificant unnecessary OOT armco repair at Silverstone at the last race.

Fire training is amazing, you will love it though it is not without it's dangers be warned.

Anyone else on here who would be willing to volunteer as a marshal I can highly recommend it and your fun then is also giving a lot back to the sport we love.

[Rouke]

I would not be able to restrain myself from doing silly things as a marshal, just for a laugh

[SteveC]

Funny you should say that Rouke. I live 20 mins from Donnington and have been thinking about this, but my mind quickly wandered onto the idea of doing a few days marshaling and keeping my nose clean, just to then kind of hijack a car and go for a burn! I guess that would be a sackable offense....

Ray, tell us the truth! Did you get backstage with is Lordship back in the day? We need teams like his back in F1 today

[Kat]

Funny you should say that Rouke. I live 20 mins from Donnington and have been thinking about this, but my mind quickly wandered onto the idea of doing a few days marshaling and keeping my nose clean, just to then kind of hijack a car and go for a burn! I guess that would be a sackable offense....

LOL - don't really get the chance to.. there's usually a driver in the driving seat kinda in the way

You do get the chance to drive on parts/all of the circuit as it's very much used as a link between parts of the circuit, marshals posts etc.

For example on arrival you drive up from melbourne, round the last turn and up to Redgate.. then to get to whereever your post is you might leave around the circuit.

And they have had to drag a marshals car out of the gravel!!!