These days we bring you news as it happens, this is our first Classic Lines since March. With racing finished for a few months, now is the time to bring you a whole load of information at once, to ease the load on your inbox.
Contents include:
Track Days
Rule changes
Sponsors
2022 Registration open tomorrow (Tuesday 21st December)
Faxes and Cheques
Solar Panels
Woodland Trust
Marshals
Spa Francorchamps
Vehicle Passports
Clerks
Fire Extinguishers
Dinner Dance photos
Track Days
Entries are filling nicely for our two relaxed track days, on the Donington National circuit. Both days feature separate, 30 minute sessions for classic cars, modern cars and novices. Open to members and non-members alike, please help share these events with your racing friends.
With the cancellation of both Autosport and Race Retro shows, the next time we have the opportunity to see you, is at our trackdays. Enter now.
2022 Rule Changes
Whilst Covid stories continue to blight our lives, we are thinking positively, that come April we will be able to resume our racing with some sense of normality. Therefore (subject to change) our 2022 pit-stop regulations now honour the views of those members who took the survey at the end of 2019. At the end of 2022 you will be able to have your say once again, on this divisive subject.
Some series will remain a timed stop, whilst other revert back to a quick-as-you-can stop. Please see individual series regulations and the updated pit-stop regulations on our website, which will be updated tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday 21st).
Sponsors
Thank you to all of our loyal sponsors for supporting the club and each individual series. You help to subsidise each members costs, provide services, discounts, social media coverage and reputation by association. Every sponsor has agreed to continue with us in 2022, with just one exception. Cartek Motorsport, like many in the electronics industry, continue to battle to source components, but appear to be doing a great job in adversity, to maintain quality control. We can fully understand why they are temporarily pulling back some of their advertising whilst stock is limited and thank them for supporting our Modern Classics series. As they are no longer an advertiser, competitors in this series may remove Cartek stickers from their cars, if they wish.
We would like to welcome Speedpanel A2 as the new title sponsor for the Modern Classics series. You may remember that parent company, Speedclad supported the CSCC in 2021, with assistance towards our popular Live Stream at a number of rounds.
Liqui Moly continue their sponsorship of the Slicks Series alone next season, whilst freeing
up the New Millennium series for new sponsor TrackRoadRace (TRR). New Millennium competitors may now remove Liqui Moly stickers if they wish. TrackRoadRace are a new brand, headed by the familiar faces from SRR, a team best known for their successful work on modern MINI's, within our Motorsports School Turbo Tin Tops series.
2022 Registrations Open Tomorrow
Hannah has been working hard on making the online registration process that little bit easier and dare we say, fool proof?! If you have previously only registered by paper form, why not give the online system a try? The online form is found on our 'normal' website, not (yet) on the Prosolve race booking portal, with payment through Paypal. We know that not everyone has a Paypal account, nor wants one, so please note that you have an option to pay with your credit or debit card online. Online payment must be made at the same time as submitting the form.
As our Treasurer announced at the AGM, our membership and registration fees once again remain unchanged, for ten of our eleven series. The one exception is our Slicks Series, now that it has become an established part of the CSCC calendar, it therefore has the same fee as most of our other series. https://www.classicsportscarclub.co.uk/join-the-cscc
As in previous years, we allow those drivers that registered with us in 2021, the opportunity to retain their race number from last season. Please submit your registration by 31st January 2022 if you wish to keep your same number. Numbers will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis for registrations received from 1st February 2022.
Please bear with us while we process registrations. You will receive a confirmation email as soon as we have processed your application, but this may take longer than usual during this busy holiday time.
Fax and Cheques, Moving With The Times.
After receiving barely a handful of Faxes in the past 12 months, we are retiring the trusty machine and its dedicated phone line, making a useful saving on line rental. Even the t-shirt sellers and lease car companies seem to have given up sending us spam by fax, so it must be past it's time! With the closing of our local Bank, firstly in Corsham and shortly in our next nearest town, Chippenham, the journey to our 'local' branch is now around a two-hour round trip. Therefore, it is no longer time efficient for one of us to make this journey and be away from the office for this considerable amount of time (scanning cheques is not an option open to us). We hope those few members using cheques understand and can make payment with card instead.
Solar Panels
The CSCC office now has 16 shiny new solar panels on it's roof. This was a tax efficient upgrade to the building, longer term offering an energy saving, whilst providing a cleaner method of producing power for us all. The scaffolding also gave David a different angle to photograph his car!
Trees
Over the last two seasons, many of you have made donations to the Woodland Trust, when entering races with us. Your money is safe and allocated for this purpose only, however, when Covid hit, the Woodland Trust suspended new dedications. They hope to resume new planting soon, we will keep you updated. We will once again be grateful for your donations to our Woodland Trust and Marshal fund in 2022.
Marshals
A further thank you to those of you who have donated monies to our Marshal fund, when entering races. Your funds have directly gone towards a cash contribution to each Marshal when signing on, or a breakfast, as at Snetterton, breakfast and lunch at Knockhill and an evening meal at our Anglesey night races. We have continued our support to the BMMC, with each set of Marshal overalls being subsidised by the CSCC and other clubs, giving each Marshal a completely free fire-proof all-in-one.
Spa Francorchamps
In the first month or two of the year we intend to bring you more information about getting you and your car across to Spa for our wonderful event in June. We will bring you first-hand information about how others have faired, getting across the channel since we left the EU and what we think you should do. There is all sorts of speculation online about Carnets, insurance, confiscation of sandwiches and more! We will do our best to cut through the myths and bring you the best, first-hand advice we can (although the French reserve the right to be awkward and ignore our advice if suits them).
Vehicle Passport
It is our strong recommendation that all club members should start the process now, of applying for a vehicle passport for their race car.
Motorsport UK wish to make Vehicle Passports for Circuit Race Cars mandatory in the future, so it makes sense to beat the rush and start now.
There is a one-off fee payable to the scrutineer of £45, part of which goes to Motorsport UK. The resulting official passport should make the scrutineering process easier, both for you and our volunteers in the future. For those of you taking their car to Spa, the official paperwork of a vehicle passport, may go some way to smoothing the way across the channel (officials do like to see an organised collection of papers).
To start the process, please contact a scrutineer in your local area, arrange a time convenient with them (remember, these are volunteers) and ideally bring the car to them in the daylight (they will need to take photographs). A donation for their time would be welcomed, but not obligatory. You could also ask if they would consider coming to your workshop if you offer to pay them mileage.
If you have a current MSUK licence, you can find a list of all scrutineers with their addresses and contact details on the MSUK website. Just login with your licence number and password and click on 'officials'.
You will require a technical Scrutineer of National grade or higher.
To see the passport application form and to get an idea of what is required please see here:
The form asks for a DVLA registration number but you do not need one, if you do not have one for your car.
The process of inspection is not a matter of a few minutes so there will not be enough time to do one at a race meeting, so we suggest starting as soon as possible in the new year.
Clerks The club would like to say thank you to Robert Williams and Mike Heath for their efforts in Clerking for the club over many, many seasons. We recognise we couldn't have held the race meetings without them. Both have held the role of Chief Clerk, with Robert Williams also sitting on the CSCC Committee too, helping to shape the regulations we have in place now. We wish them both well in the future.
Experienced CSCC Clerks Terry Scannell, Richard Beard and Andy Cox will continue helping us, providing continuity for the club. We have taken this opportunity to invite 'fresh blood' to the race control room, with additional experienced Clerks joining our club for the first time, welcome and thank you in advance.
Our Chief Flag for many seasons, Philip Dunlop, now starts his two year training to become a fully fledged Motorsport UK Clerk, handing his start-line flags to Terry and Sue Mullen at most rounds.
Fire Extinguishers
All cars racing in the UK now require an in-date, serviced, FIA plumbed-in extinguisher. The old, 2.25AFFF systems are no longer valid. They may make a handy emergency spare in the garage/when refuelling/in your tow car, though. The regulations are as detailed in the current yearbook (Blue Book) in section K 3.1 – 3.3.3. Please ensure you use a system from either FIA list 16 (foam) or 52 (gas), please ignore the final column on the right-hand side of the list, entitled “homologation end”. This refers to the end of homologation date, which is for the manufacturers who cannot continue manufacturing that particular system, it does not mean that the system should not be used after that date. Make sure that you install the supplied hose(s) in the new kit, method of activation (pulls/trigger) and all nozzles as supplied and in the locations that the instructions for your system describes. Just because your mate’s system has X number of nozzles doesn’t mean the system you have should be fitted with the same number. A fire extinguisher system will no longer be considered homologated, if the system is not fitted as per the manufacturer's installation instructions. For those of you who already have an FIA extinguisher, ensure the bottle has been serviced in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions (most manufacturers now require their authorised agent to service the bottle, not a local fire company) and that the relevant sticker on the bottle is easily viewed by a scrutineer. Generally, foam-filled bottles are lifed for 10 years from the date the system was produced, the system requiring a service every two years from the system production date. The date information is detailed on the label on the fire extinguisher body.
CSCC sponsor Advantage Motorsport offers members a genuine discount on new systems, including Lifeline, FEV and SPA. They are service agents for these systems too. Advantage are attending both our Donington trackdays, to perform refills/servicing, as well as bringing new systems with them to purchase. Please contact them now: https://www.advantage-motorsport.co.uk/car-prep/fire-extinguishers.html
Dinner Dance and 2021 Awards
Those 180+ members, volunteers and their family members who attended our end of season Dinner Dance appeared to enjoy themselves. A new venue, welcome drinks and half a bottle of wine all helped of course (hic)! Steve Soper gave an honest account of his racing career, particularly the Le Mans 24hr, whilst his video highlights reel reminded us of the glory days of 80's touring cars, 'Grandstand' on a Sunday afternoon and Murray Walker.
Jeff Bloxham was there to take photos, feel free to view and download photos free of charge. Various awards were given out on the night, just a friendly reminder that the CSCC doesn't run Championships, therefore awards given out are for various reasons such as car presentation, driver skill, attitude and more. There are no points awarded, instead just enjoy each race on a round by round basis through the year.
Our two main awards, as voted for by your Committee are: Barry Carpenter Award 2021
This annual award goes to a non-driver that most embodies the ethos of the Classic Sports Car Club. We think that all the volunteers, of which there are so many, that give up their time and expertise selflessly, so that we are able to go racing, should each be given an award, but we can only choose one.
This year the Barry Carpenter award went to someone unable to attend the Dinner Dance, due to work commitments. He has to earn the money when he can, that pays for his travel to and from our race meetings. This gentleman lives in Northern Ireland but travels to all our meetings in the UK as our Chief Flag, starting and finishing your races from the gantry. He is there very early in the morning to look after the radios for the organisers and marshals and is always one of the last to leave at a race meeting, helping us pack equipment away. Next season he has applied to become a trainee Clerk with the CSCC, so he can carry on working with us. This year the Barry Carpenter award goes to Philip Dunlop.
Spirit Of The Club Award 2021 (aka Member Trophy)
This goes to a member who best embodies the club ethos and helps above and beyond what is expected of a driver. This year’s winner is responsible for introducing us to two series sponsors, as well as actively bringing a large number of drivers to the CSCC from other clubs. I approached this man in the early stages of the RX-8 Trophy class, to see if he would build a car, to help prove the concept and have a second car for publicity shots. Well, he got a little too excited on Ebay and ended up buying more than a dozen! He almost certainly made a loss on every Mazda sold, but he did it for the love of the club.
This years Members Trophy goes to Matty Evans.
