Donington Park is one of my favourite places to take motorsport photographs. In-front of the wire or behind as a spectator there are loads of great places to capture the action. When the Protyre Circuit Rally Championship headed to Donington Park last weekend I had to go and watch the next round, the Tegiwa Donington Rally.

The CRC is a championship that visits seven tracks around the country, using Cadwell and Donington Park twice for a nine round championship, this was to be round three. 

Organised by the Dukeries Motor Club, the Rallying at Donington Park incorporates sub rallies. The Alpha Concrete ANEMMC Stage Rally Championship, the Heart of England Rally Championship and the Military Tri-Services Coningham Cup and the final round of the 2024 Dukeries Motor Club Championship.

All of these come under the banner of the Tegiwa Donington Rally.

The cars utilise not just the track but also the access, gravel and slip roads. This means for the spectator you will have a totally different viewing experience when visiting this event, compared to a standard motorsport event held at Donington.

Paddock

The first and subsequent stages saw the cars heading off from the start to the wooded area behind the tarmac lake, where there was no access to the public.  

I studied the Tegiwa Donington Rally stage maps the night before. Which I downloaded from the Dukeries Motor Club website. Deciding to start the day at the top end of the paddock seemed like a good idea. After the wooded section the cars would be exiting the tarmac lake and using the emergency entrance to Redgate corner.

There is a stage pedestrian crossing point here, allowing you to spectate on the out side of the track. The crossing is only open between stages. 

I didn’t cross over having done that in previous years, the coned off track on the tarmac lake is not that interesting to watch so I moved around the inside of the paddock. The organisers have used this area a lot over the years. It has been great to spectate from as the cars slide round the corner onto the main track.

This year it was a little different, the rain from Storm Burt was still hammering down, so the drivers were taking it steady. It’s a long day and you don’t want to retire early with a high speed, front end tyre wall interface issue on stage one!

Competitors

With nearly a hundred cars starting, there was a wide variety of rally cars competing for the various different classes. Eight  in total taking part in five championships. The cars have competitor numbers on the doors. Numbers are allocated to the teams in seeded order, the fastest teams start first with the low digits on their doors.

As the cars came past here were some fast teams in some great cars to watch. Oddly the aggressive rally driving you expect from the top order seemed to dip off as the middle order came through. 

The slower middle order departed and the tail end of the start list appeared. As I took my photographs, which lets me get a close up view. It looked like all of the crazy drivers had been seeded together in this group. There was some great driving on show in the difficult conditions by the lower seeded teams. These teams might not have the latest top specification or fastest cars. However, there was plenty of bravery and rallying skills being demonstrated. Great stuff and very entertaining for the large crowd that had turned up to watch.

Off Road

Leaving the paddock area and heading to the inside of Donington via the tunnel next to the cafe, I headed for the main viewing area for the gravel section.

Next up a very wet “off road” section greeted us. Exited the tunnel I was looking forward to some traditional muddy rally action, I wasn’t going to be disappointed.

This area is probably the best place to view the rally cars in their natural environment. If you are carrying a camera it has lots of uninterrupted views of this part of the stage. I spent some time there.

This wasn’t just my conclusion, a lot of the other spectators had migrated here after the first stage as well and hung around for the subsequent stages.

Lots of people means it can be difficult to get a decent shot of the action as a photographer in the crowd. That wasn’t the case here the area is large and people were moving around to take in the different sections. With a little bit of patience, you could get to the front of the viewing areas with no issues.

Hard right, flat-out uphill section leading into a tricky S bend followed by another flat out, to a sweeping right, then left right into a tunnel, the gravel section was my favourite location of the day.

Melbourne Loop

For the next stages I headed back inside the circuit to the paddock and the Melbourne Loop. The Marshalls were busy and there was bit of a delay as the recovery crews collected broken down cars from the previous stage.

I joined in with the cars and did a bit of personal refuelling. Sitting on the benches near the cafe the sun made a most welcome visit for the fans that had turned up. On the other hand I was not so happy with the glorious sunshine.

The low sun was now in my face at the Melbourne Loop, so with no chance of getting a decent picture. I as any good photographer would do, moved so the sun would be at my back. Fortunately my shooting buddy for the day had covered this area while the clouds were out and the rain pouring down.

Esses

I headed for the outside of the Melbourne Loop, which is not a bad place to take a few shots. I was standing a long way from the action here so I headed for the Esses complex to get closer. Stopping from time to time to watch the cars speed past and grab a few pictures, but mostly watching.

I arrived at the Esses and it looked like I had made the right choice. The low December sun was still out and the light looked great. Usually there are loads of different locations here to capture the action. I noticed the Esses access tunnel was in use as part of the track. Therefore the spectator area was much smaller than is usual.

So up on the bank overlooking the track it would be for the final stages.

These were not the last stages, but as the sun went down and the winter cold crept back, it was time to leave and call it a day.

Results

The Tegiwa Donington Rally had nearly 100 cars taking part. Phil Hall and Nathalie Kelly Rutten were in car number 91. The RAF Motorsport Skoda Favorit were at the end of the seeded competitor list. They were not competing for the top honours of the day. They had their own much more important battle, the Inter-Services.

The Military teams all wanted the bragging rights at the end of this round and it was to be Phil and Nathalie who would have them, congratulations.

Overall winner in another Skoda, this time a much more modern one, John Griffiths and Emma Morrison in their Skoda a Fabia R5 took the overall win. Trailing after the first stages to the reigning Champions Michael Igoe and Will Atkins in their Citroen C3 Rally2, they pulled it back in the latter stages to win by 17 seconds. 

Car of the day for me was, Mark Jasper and Don Whyatt in the MG Metro 6R4. Regardless of how good the modern rally cars are a Group B machine being driven well from back in the day has it all, pose, power and presence. This icon of rallying was showing a few battle scars at the midway point but still went on to win Class B.

Car 18, the Porsche 911 RSR of John Yates and Alex Lee, was a close second mostly because of the engine noise, it sounded so good.

Tegiwa Donington Rally Photographic Post Script

The Photographic kit I used for the Rallying at Donington Park was the Nikon D500 with the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8E FL ED VR. This has a focal length range of 105–300mm when used with a Nikon DX-format DSLR. Also for a little more reach I used the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 300mm f/4E PF ED VR. Both of these compact lenses performed well having wide apertures so even when it got quite dark they produced very good results.

I did carry a Nikon 1.4 teleconverter but did not need it as you are quite close to the action. Most of the images here are clean shots not taken through safety fences, a few were, can you spot them? 

So in summery the Tegiwa Donington Rally at Donington Park is a good day out for the spectator photographer with a lot of interesting cars. Access and the facilities at Donington are good however, the car parking continues to be on grass.

This is not a problem when it is dry. At this time of year it did make me wince watching people park on the sodden waterlogged soft ground. As we left the circuit the Donington staff were standing by in a tractor and large 4×4 to tow out any stranded spectators, hopefully they all got out with not too many issues.

The next round of the Circuit Rally Championship will be at Brands Hatch 18th January 2025.

The PistonClick previous Rally Reports can be found by clicking the image.