BTCC Knockhill Marshal Comedy

[PetrolHeadSeb]

Was it just me or did anyone else think that the marshal's had an exceptionally bad time trying to recover cars today?!

Rob collards car being crashed into the barrier while being towed away

David Pinkney, first not having his car lined up correctly to be collected by the recovery truck. Then in the last race, the land rover towing him away getting stuck in the mud!

Made me smile anyway

[EDLT]

They also managed to snap the winch cable when they tried to pull Pinkney's car up the badly parked tow-truck.

[Dave Brand]

Just for the sake of accuracy it may be worth noting that the people operating the recovery vehicles are not marshals. (Unless Knockhill does it differently to other circuits!)

Edited by Dave Brand on Sunday 5th September 19:03

[fastfuse]

Yeah, saw all those incidents, couldn't help but laugh when the Landrover dug itself a big hole!

[skeggysteve]

Dave Brand said:

Just for the sake of accuracy it may be worth noting that the people operating the recovery vehicles are not marshals. (Unless Knockhill does it differently to other circuits!)

I agree Dave, I think that the recovery are paid to be there, marshals are not.
It was the recovery that made a few mistakes, but they were under pressure to clear up quickly because of the live TV. Everyone make mistakes.

Without the guys & gals in orange we would not have any motor racing so we should be thanking them not moaning about them.

[slipstream 1985]

without dave pinkney the marshals would have nothing to do all day!!

[PetrolHeadSeb]

skeggysteve said:

Without the guys & gals in orange we would not have any motor racing so we should be thanking them not moaning about them.

Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of appreciation for the marshals / recovery teams. I think they do a great job and I'm often impressed at how quickly they deal with most incidents.

Yesterday I think was just unfortunate for the guys, but at least they kept us entertained whilst watching it!

As Tim Harvey said, Dave Pinkney was probably quite appreciative of all the TV coverage his sponsors were getting

[jamiebae]

The Land Rover bit was particularly funny, the recovery crews had a bad day! That, and the Ford Explorer towing some mesh behind it who appeared to periodically stop, empty it into a gravel trap, then drag a new load of gravel onto the racing line.

Good day of racing though

[Scotfox]

That piece of mesh costs in the region of £5000 apparently. Used on airport runways as well.

[Graham]

LOL best part of 3 ton disco4, road tyres, the boggy grass at Knockers, that was never going to go well

[Don Veloci]

See that were at it again furth along replacing the plastic bollard contiuously at the chicane. If they really want to discourage that line then they could stick a big bale or something in there instead.

I'm sure a couple of times Shedden was almost inside where that bollard would've been with his catch up antics from the back, BTCC race 3.

[emicen]

The marshals and recovery crews are two diffents entities working together. Both under pressure from race control to sort everything as quick as possible.

My guess would be the guys who are there regularly would rather not have towed Pinkney's Vectra anywhere near the bog but were told to rather than taking the extra time to get it up to the rally cross track.

[IainW]

Don Veloci said:

See that were at it again furth along replacing the plastic bollard contiuously at the chicane. If they really want to discourage that line then they could stick a big bale or something in there instead.

I'm sure a couple of times Shedden was almost inside where that bollard would've been with his catch up antics from the back, BTCC race 3.

Funny how the drivers were penalised for all 4 wheels off track at Silverstone, but not that corner at Knockhill.

They could stick one of those foam blocks on the inside, like they had at Scotsman, but someone would wipe it out immediately. I noticed in the final race that there were only 4 cars (Neate, George, Nash and Smith) who didn't have a broken, folded in or missing left mirror from clipping the left block at the chicane.

[Davie_GLA]

I was there and for the time they spent recovering Pinkneys car i had the benny hill theme tune running through my head.

[Rude-boy]

Don Veloci said:

See that were at it again furth along replacing the plastic bollard contiuously at the chicane. If they really want to discourage that line then they could stick a big bale or something in there instead.

Not that you ever could but a steel pole driven 6 feet into the ground with 6 feet above ground might make then focus on the proper line a little more.

Failing that a pressure switch linked to a high pressure paint sprayer filled with anti graffiti paint to discourage and aid identification of the guilty.

That said I have always found the Stewarding standards of the BTCC somewhat at odds with those in evidence at almost every other event in the UK. I think they model themselves on F1 pre 2010.

[jamiebae]

It is very strange that blatantly cutting the chicanery is deemed OK but Plato was hauled up to see the stewards because of his pass on Kane in race 2 where the BMW basically stopped on the apex of the hairpin.

[IainW]

jamiebae said:

It is very strange that blatantly cutting the chicanery is deemed OK but Plato was hauled up to see the stewards because of his pass on Kane in race 2 where the BMW basically stopped on the apex of the hairpin.

From where I was sitting on the benches down there, it looked like he was pushing Kane for a bit and he had to try and stop the car before he ended up in the gravel, hence why he came to a halt like that.

[DiscoColin]

Rude-boy said:

Not that you ever could but a steel pole driven 6 feet into the ground with 6 feet above ground might make then focus on the proper line a little more.

I don't think that you need to be quite so creative. Raising the curb high enough to destroy a splitter/risk suspension damage would keep everyone well clear of the potential short cut. The changes to Silverstone includes some curbs that nobody is ever going to cut if they can possibly avoid it...

[jamiebae]

IainW said:

jamiebae said:

It is very strange that blatantly cutting the chicanery is deemed OK but Plato was hauled up to see the stewards because of his pass on Kane in race 2 where the BMW basically stopped on the apex of the hairpin.

From where I was sitting on the benches down there, it looked like he was pushing Kane for a bit and he had to try and stop the car before he ended up in the gravel, hence why he came to a halt like that.

We were right next to it, Kane got the line wrong and braked several metres earlier than normal, he almost had to come off the brakes to reach the apex! No penalties to the times, but JP got points on his licence, so I guess they weren't 100% happy with him.

[Rude-boy]

DiscoColin said:

Rude-boy said:

Not that you ever could but a steel pole driven 6 feet into the ground with 6 feet above ground might make then focus on the proper line a little more.

I don't think that you need to be quite so creative. Raising the curb high enough to destroy a splitter/risk suspension damage would keep everyone well clear of the potential short cut. The changes to Silverstone includes some curbs that nobody is ever going to cut if they can possibly avoid it...

Sadly that sort of thing at that corner is just not viable without significant improvements to the run off area and so forth as there will be some that will clout it and the potential resulting accident would be almost as bad as with my frustrated suggestion.