@M.N.D Well I'm mostly recovered from the weekend now, so, some thoughts...
Firstly, Snetterton has never been my favourite circuit. Compared to the undulating greenery of Oulton Park or Brands Hatch, it is flat, slightly characterless and has little to differentiate it from a national level karting circuit, it's an airfield circuit like Silverstone, Thruxton and Croft - and to a certain degree they all suffer the same problem. Covid restrictions in place at the moment meant that a fair portion of the circuit (including the pits and paddock area) was closed off to the circuit, and one of the more popular spectating areas was administered as a 'one in one out' area, which meant queuing to get access to it. The upshot of this is a lot of the character of the event is also lost. I've never been one to set up a chair at one corner and sit their all weekend, I like to pound all the track side routes, explore the pits, and see as much of the venue as possible, so - given much of this wasn't possible, and it's not my favourite circuit anyway, my expectations were already tempered. Whilst I have to say my concerns turned out to be true, and the event felt frustratingly small (and with pretty much intolerable weather conditions), I was so happy to be back trackside that as the grid came roaring past on lap one of race one, I had a lump in my throat and could easily have cried tears of joy... I ****ing love it. Being honest, I actually bailed before race 3 on Sunday though - the heat had taken its toll and I felt dog rough from Saturday lunchtime onwards, with a 120 mile drive home I elected to hit the road sooner rather than later as my headache was only getting worse and worse.
From a photography point of view Snetterton isn't bad, but there's not much variety... around 8-10 spots to get shots from around the circuit, little variety in the attitude of the car other than Brundle/Nelson, and little variety in the foreground, or the background. With only 4000 spectators allowed, it was possible to stand in most spots and get some shots though, and the lack of catch fencing is an absolute relief. I took over 1700 photos, many of which were just experimenting with the stabilisation modes on the 'new' lens. I forgot all my polarizing filters though, which is a serious rookie error for a circuit like this on cloudless day with blistering sunshine. They help prevent some colours from washing out, and it allows for larger aperture (i.e. taking the background out of focus), and a relatively long exposure time (1/250-320), without generally overexposing the photos... sadly without the filters, and the camera already at it lowest ISO setting, it meant that the aperture was often up around
f8 to
f10... this isn't enough to soften the background as much as I'd like in many cases.
As far as the racing goes... no clue
It seemed fairly processional, with little overtaking, and this seemed true for many of the support races also... but... that's one of the drawbacks of being at one corner at a time, you don't always get to see much of what's going on. Looks like Sutton put in another fantastic drive though, so I look forward to seeing that when I watch the races on catch up. Strong weekend for the Bimmers in general, but with Sutton being on fire more often than not, I think Turk will have his work cut out keeping up with him.
Not gonna lie, the matte black livery on all 5 of the 330i's is not my favourite.
Anyway... some photos... going to be a while before I can sort out the rest.
looking forward to read your thoughts and impressions on Oulton Park round. I'll try to catch up with the races during next week.
