The last bike event of the 2018 season to be held at Cadwell was the Auto66 Club Side Car Bash. As a session finale for motorcycle and sidecar racing at Cadwell , I was looking forward to this.

However, the weather gods were not smiling on me or the riders. The Saturday racing was disrupted by torrential freezing rain. Sunday didn’t fare much better. There were showers and a biting cold wind blew in from the north.

I checked the weather forecast and various social media feeds on Saturday. I realised quite early that there wouldn’t be much going on. So I decided that Sunday would be a better option for my visit to Cadwell.

I drove up through the beautiful Lincolnshire Wolds. It looked like I had made the right decision. The sun streamed through the clouds. The light looked good. Cadwell had tweeted they were looking forward to a full day of racing.

A quick walk around the soggy paddock was refreshing. Then, we went off to Hall bends to watch the motorbikes attack the damp and cold mini green hell.

When I say attack, I mean take it really rather steady and get round in one piece. Even in these cold challenging weather conditions, I was amazed by the lean angle you can achieve. A race-prepared motorbike paired with a good experienced rider makes it possible.  

Motorsport Photography in bad weather

The light was not good for the first race. I had to bump the ISO up to 1000 and add .3 to the ev. Modern cameras can handle high ISO with ease. Many people forget to change it. They are happy to open the aperture to get more light into the camera.

The problem with using a large or small aperture is that you can push the exposure into an area. This could result in a loss of detail in the shadows or highlights.

 It also affects your depth of field; a wide open standard sports lens of 70-200mm f2.8 will have a very small depth of field. The vehicle being photographed could have areas that are out of focus. These areas may be outside of the depth of field (dof).

Remember the exposure triangle, shutter speed, aperture and ISO. If you adjust one you need to adjust the others to get an acceptable exposure. This can easily be seen if you select shutter or aperture priority.

As you spin the command wheel on your camera in one of these modes, you will see a change. The modes are rear wheel shutter and front wheel aperture. In Shutter mode moving the command dial to get a faster shutter speed will result in a larger aperture (small DOF) to let in the same amount of light.

Let’s look at an example. If you wanted to keep an aperture of f8 in dark conditions but after but after increasing the shutter speed you notice the aperture is now wide open. Increasing the ISO making the camera more sensitive to the available light will close the aperture down (more dof) automatically, if using shutter priority, job done.

Back to the Auto66 Club Side Car Bash

Images captured, the race passed without any drama. Pictured is Neil Rutledge on his Yamaha R1. Rutledge was desperately hoping the weather would hold off. He wanted to complete his races. He needed the necessary ticks to lose the orange bib for next season.

Winning the first shortened race on Sunday for the Senior and Classic Superbikes was David Jackson on his BMW S1000RR. Followed by Mark Goodings on the Kawasaki ZX10R with Stephen Degnan also on a Z10R in third. Jackson won all four races over the weekend.

Next up was the first of the sidecars and the three wheel Morgans. And here is where it all started to go wrong. The weather started to close in. The rain poured down. Unfortunately, there was an accident. The race was red flagged as a result.

The race commentator tried his best to keep us entertained. By mid-morning, officials announced that racing had been suspended.

I hung around Halls chatting to the other diehard race fans and photographers. I tried to find a dry spot under the dripping trees, but to no avail. After a while, I gave up and went in search of a hot brew. 

Brew found and in hand I walked the paddock to see if there was anything interesting to capture.  Most of the riders had covered up their steeds. They had disappeared inside their motorhomes and tents. This run out was looking to be a bust.

The Air Ambulance returned in between the now quite regular showers. I was chatting with a few of the other photographers, so I missed the announcement on when racing would commence.

We noticed a few of the riders had started to pack up their belongings and were heading out. At this point, I decided to end the day. I returned to the warmth of my own home.

Not a very successful day out with the camera but you will get days like that. Fortunately, Brian from Brian Blackett photography was on hand as well and captured some great images to save the day. Sometimes events will be out of your control. There is nothing you can do about it. You just have to roll with it.

Sam and Adam Christie on the LCR 600 Honda heading to a race win in the F1 and F2 sidecars.

Number 33 Sean Hegarty and James Neave on the BMW K100 winning race 14 in the Classic and Vintage Bears.  

The next event we will cover is the Rally Cross from Silverstone. We should have a comprehensive article for your viewing pleasure next time. This is unless there is a weather event of truly biblical proportions. Look out for details on the Facebook page.