GT Cup Archives - PistonClick Archive

Photographing the GT Cup Donington Park

Report by David Harbey

5 Apr 2025

The GT Cup is a slightly strange beast – it’s not the full fat British GT Championship – but it has clearly acted as a feeder series over the years. It’s a bit more relaxed and the support races are much more to my liking.

Grids for British GT seem to have reduced slightly in 2025, but GT Cup seems to have increased. I first shot GT Cup at Silverstone in 2019 and have seen them at least once every year since then.

The GT Cup is generally a ProAm or AmAm series and offers plenty of on track action for the aspiring racer in powerful cars on good circuits. It used to offer a weekend of four races – two sprint – aimed at the Am and two pitstop races for the ProAm combination.

For 2025, the organisers are innovating with a longer 100 minute races on the second day of some of the meetings. Having not been out to shoot racing since the truncated Boxing Day meeting at Mallory, I was keen to get back into the swing (or perhaps, pan) of things and sunny weather beckoned albeit with a decent breeze

Support Races

First though the support races. Legends on a race meeting bill is always an attraction for me; if accompanied by Caterhams, we are promised double the entertainment. I’d decided on a morning around the Esses (the full GP circuit was in use) with the 500mm prime.

I hadn’t been to Donington for quite a while and was disappointed to see the new higher fencing on the exit of the Esses. that even from the top of the spectator banking, there is no clean shot of the cars exiting the chicane. It is possible to stand behind the marshals post and shoot through, what is now, a more substantial fence.

I moved to the inside of the track (walking through the Esses Tunnel). Heading to a spot near the marshal’s post (area I on the PistonClick guide). It really requires the step here to get enough height for a rear shot of, in this case, Caterhams and Radicals.

Donington Park Goddards

I then ventured towards the start line. There is a tiny gap in the fence where you can just squeeze in a shot of the cars coming through Goddards. It needs the long focal length lens and you will need to crop to remove fence blur, but I was actually quite pleased with this shot.

Moving on further towards the start are head on shots of the cars in Goddards. “When I were a lad”, you stood behind a little wooden fence a couple of yards back from the low concrete wall. Back then we were shooting with 35mm film with no autofocus and all that cleverness and you’d have to wait and see how your photo came out a few days / weeks later.

I have tended to shy away from this area simply because the new wooden fence is set back a long way from the new high fence. However, I was quite pleased with these three images.

Donington Park Esses

For the last race before lunch it was back to the Esses and some more Caterham mayhem.

GT Cup Donington Park Afternoon Session.

The afternoon kicked off with another Legends race for which I stood at the exit of the Melbourne Hairpin. I was shooting into the sun (not ideal), through the fence (not ideal), but it was a typically frantic affair and well worth watching.

I had swapped to my trusty 70-200mm zoom for the afternoon and travelled light without the step planning to start out at the Esses and then head up towards Coppice. As the cars came round for the start, it was clear that one Ginetta had issues. With a couple of other entries choosing not to do the longer race, the grid was a little depleted.

The good news is that this area is free of fence for the spectator snapper with a variety of angles available of cars and with the sun behind you around the middle of the day. The background can resemble a beach at some angles, but slowing the shutter speed down can improve the image.

Of course, you can go even slower on the shutter speed … these three are 1/15^th second.

Donington Park Coppice

Time for a little wander up to the inside of Coppice. With no step, it meant that my shots would not be quite clear of the black wall there so why not make it a feature of the shot ?

Opening up the shot and slowing the shutter speed again can create a pleasing image (and even disguise the bright green and yellow recovery vehicle !).

Donington Park McLeans

A short walk down towards McLeans also offers fence free shooting. I quickly twigged that the Lamborghini Huracans were popping flame out as they downshifted for Coppice. So, up the frames per second and shoot away – its digital ! Of course the best flames sometimes come when you don’t nail the rest of the shot – so turn it into “art” – see the footer shot of this report !

Returning back via the tunnel to the paddock and keeping an ear on proceedings it was clear that #88 McLaren was catching the leading #10 McLaren at a rate of knots. The #10 just hung on – by 0.024 of a second. Sadly the fencing on the start / finish straight meant it was impossible to capture this as a photo (of the) finish ! I did, however, get to see the podium for the top three in the race.