Coys historic festival preview

Three days of historic and classic race action will herald the opening of Britain’s new motorsport complex at the Rockingham Motor Speedway near Corby in Northamptonshire. The Coys Historic Festival will include 14 races over the Bank Holiday weekend of May 26-28 as the wraps are taken off the racing venue that has been more than 10 years in planning and construction.

Saturday is the day of the official Rockingham opening ceremony with a variety of track demonstrations and air displays, including the Red Arrows, between 11.30am and 2pm. However, before and after that, there will be qualifying for most of the races as well as the opening race in the Ascar series, the UK version of NASCAR.

The 14-race programme through Sunday and Monday includes an excellent array of saloons, sportscars and single-seaters as well as the Transatlantic Trophy for 1970s four-stroke motorcycles. Star billing on four wheels goes to a recreation of the 1957/8 Monzanapolis ‘Race

of Two Worlds’ for sportscars and grand prix cars. Several period Indycars will contest this event, including Don Orosco’s Scarab, the Norm Olsen Special of David Clark, the rare McKay of Robin Lodge and the newly-rebuilt Kurtis ofJohn Guyatt. Many of the meeting’s events have a race each day, including the Motor Sport-supported Brooklands Revival Race for pre-war racing cars. Rockingham represents only the second banked racing track to be built in Britain.

The Coys of Kensington Daytona Cup will feature two races for the Group 4 cars from the European Sports Prototype series, while the Rockingham Shelby Challenge caters for pre-66 GT and sportscars.

Pre-66 single-seaters have a pair of races, while a 50minute mini-enduro event concludes each afternoon’s track action; on Sunday this will be for 1950s sportsracing cars and on Monday it’s for pre-65 saloon cars of more than 2400cc. Paul Lawrence