Stamp, stamp, clap. Stamp, stamp, clap.
When the public address system at Rockingham Motor Speedway near Corby blared out We Will Rock You by Queen in the early 2000s, it spelled doubly good news. Firstly, spectators sitting in the chilly grandstands could start to get circulation back into their feet. Second, it signalled that an ASCAR race was about to begin.
The largely unimaginative acronym stood for Anglo-American Stock Car Racing. As implied, this was about importing the NASCAR model. Big names, rivalries, plenty of noise, shunts and lots of turning left. Short-oval racers would graduate to a larger platform, while the audience would be so great and sponsorship money so lucrative that no driver this side of Formula 1 was unobtainable.
The opening line of Brian May’s anthem goes: “Buddy, you’re a boy, make a big noise.” That’s exactly what the fledging series intended to do. The Northamptonshire quiet would be shattered by small-block Chevrolet V8s reverberating off, and crashing into, the concrete walls of a £70million, 1.5-mile oval plonked on an ironstone quarry.
This wasn’t conceived to be a pure form of motorsport. Instead, shock and awe tactics would have the turnstiles spinning off their hinges.
“ASCAR is about delivering motorsport as entertainment,” said series CEO Mike Schmidt. “Teams should be prepared not to take themselves too seriously – that will endear them to the fans.”
It was all coming along swimmingly at the dawn of the new millennium. The machinery was sorted: Chas Howe Racing Enterprises of Michigan would construct a steel-tube chassis based on the design of the American Speed Association Series on the NASCAR ladder. This would be draped in one of three body styles – Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Ford Taurus and Pontiac Grand Prix – that resembled the contemporary Winston Cup cars.
Chunky tyre sidewalls would give the impression of brawn, but the skinny Goodyears would allow for exciting sliding. And, thanks to 565bhp, the test car was only 2.5 seconds slower than a Super Tourer around Donington Park.
An inaugural 2001 season was billed as a learning year, so teething problems were numerous. Rockingham founder Peter Davies pulled his private funding of ASCAR due to discontent with how it was being run. Although his circuit had capacity for 44 cars and 32 were targeted for the maiden venture, as race day approached, talk was of only 19 entries. Eventually, the series made its bow on Saturday 26 May with the Goodyear 100. This formed part of the Coys Historic Festival, the venue’s public debut after a behind-closed-doors national meeting to troubleshoot the infrastructure.
This crucial first impression would dabble with farce. Punters could buy radio scanners to listen to each team. What they heard was total frustration over engine oil surge, as the UK-specification motors couldn’t cope with the lateral forces exerted by the banking. Drivers were advised to avoid the 6800rpm limit for what became a glorified demonstration.
After a few V8s detonated in practice, just 12 cars took the rolling start. The AC Cobra safety car even had to be deployed to give the engines a breather. At least a high-profile winner was selected, with two-time British Touring Car champion John Cleland leading at the flag. Embarrassment aside, the Scot reckoned: “It’s going to be the biggest thing since Ben-Hur; we’ve just got to make the series work.”
After that rockiest of starts, an alternative engine was required. But with Davies gone, which hurt the fundraising, Schmidt quickly vacated his role as the ASCAR company ceased trading and the calendar was suspended for three months. Fortunately, team owner Bob Berridge came to the rescue at the helm of Oval Racing Management. The new promoter was financed almost entirely by the deep pockets of Rockingham to obtain a lease supply of less powerful 5.7-litre General Motors LS1 engines direct from the USA.
Then came take two. The revitalised ASCAR emerged on Bank Holiday Monday 27 August for two 70-lap sprints and was backed by a stronger entry list, with teams now having faith that the future of the series was stable. While there were only 14 starters, at least the cars were reliable, the competitors happy and 15,000 onlookers entertained. John Mickel chalked the first proper win and later sealed the inaugural title (his third of 2001 to go with his British and World Legends crowns) by a single point.
ASCAR had come too close to death in its first year. The only way was up. And with no-nonsense Berridge in charge, it rapidly climbed higher than anyone might have imagined. For 2002, Channel 4 picked up the TV deal, support categories were organised, and a £100,000 prize fund was on offer for the first female to win a race. Then, in the biggest coup of all, reigning BTCC champion Jason Plato was signed ahead of a showy season launch party at the Sports Cafe in Piccadilly, London.
Never one to mince his words, Plato was clear that ASCAR would serve as a means to an end: “The main reason I am doing ASCAR is because I am desperate to get to America. I want to live there and race there but the longer I focused on touring cars, the harder it was going to be to get into US oval racing.”
To the series, that ulterior motive didn’t matter in the slightest. Plato’s defection was a huge shot in the arm. And they kept coming. Crack tin-top squad RML was to form a team, ex-Formula 3000 racer Darren Manning signed up, so too did 1993 British Formula 3 champion Kelvin Burt, McLaren F1 tester Darren Turner, Toby Scheckter (son of 1979 F1 world champion Jody) and so on. The star names had people interested. A £15 ticket for adults and under 16s going free converted that intrigue into bums on seats.
Ousted Chip Ganassi Racing CART pilot Nic Minassian explains his involvement: “I arrived by reading Autosport. It was just beginning and when I saw that Bob was recruiting so many high-profile drivers, I called him. He offered me a drive. I could see with the push they had that it was going to be fun. To bring oval racing to Europe, I thought, was a very good idea.”
But in what was already becoming a tradition, things couldn’t go off without a hitch. The opening race was put under threat due an eleventh-hour need to resurface Rockingham. This was to resolve ‘weepers’ on the brownfield site. Water oozing through the asphalt wasn’t new. It did, though, become a major problem when the cracks were filled with a sealant, which had all the grip properties of glass, for a bodged fix.
During a test in a couple of two-seater ASCARs, Mickel and Paul Sheard followed one another into the wall. Plato, a nervous passenger anyway, was riding shotgun and cracked two ribs and a vertebra in the smash. That probably wasn’t what the glossy pre-race advertising campaign meant when it proclaimed: “Jason Plato, watch it. These cars BITE!”
Short-oval king Colin White won the first bout before Minassian triumphed. Plato managed sixth and eighth in the double-header. He declared: “ASCAR is definitely the way forward for motorsport. It’s hard work, but it’s going to be a cracking year. I’m glad I got out of touring cars – this is the best.”
The series then docked in Europe for the first of three meetings scheduled at the Lausitzring in Germany. But in another long-running flaw, inclement conditions scuppered plans. Sunday action was lost to a downpour as drivers instead played football in the pitlane. For the next round in Corby, the second race was canned for similarly slippery reasons. The equipment was too basic and tracks too dangerous to risk it on slicks. Goodyear did develop a wet-weather tyre that might have been used on the infield layout at Rockingham, but it wasn’t much cop and never progressed beyond testing.
A second visit to the EuroSpeedway ran well enough, but a third in late September was cancelled when ASCAR couldn’t put together a cross-Channel support package, with CART having already pulled out of its event due to the circuit filing for bankruptcy. At least Berridge and co had sensed that the championship was too reliant on one venue, so recces were completed of the planned tri-oval in Abbeville, northern France and of Venray in the Netherlands. If the calendar could grow, ASCAR might keep kicking its domestic rival when it was down.
“We just happened to launch when BTCC was in one of its natural troughs [following the post-Super Touring manufacturer exodus and the sale of TOCA by Alan Gow],” says Berridge. “ASCAR was accidentally launched at the perfect time.”
Helping matters, the entry list was increasingly star studded. Matt Neal and Kevin McGarrity made cameo appearances, as did 1995 World Rally champion Colin McRae, who recruited compatriot Dario Franchitti to be his spotter. Grids were still far from chocka, but there was no shortage of compelling plotlines. For one, Turner had been unable to contest the early rounds while budget was sourced, and his car shaken down. He then turned up, won a remarkable six races and should have been the 2002 champion only for the points system to heavily favour consistency, so his early absences couldn’t be overcome.
It’s also said that tweaks to the rules governing the rear wing, whether directly aimed at his ultra-efficient Pontiac aerokit or not, hurt Turner the most. To bunch up the pack, it was also not unheard of for a yellow-flag caution period to be spuriously thrown for a piece of non-existent debris just out of Source: Autosport