Like Mark, I've competed. Unlike Mark, I've never been a C of C, though I may have visited one or two
It's a weird, almost unique happening in my 40 odd years of motor racing experience and young Mr Cottle certainly deserves a serious slapping - if only pour encourager les autres - but in part, I'm wryly amused and it was far less dangerous that this chav drove his Polo into the race than either a pedestrian or an animal getting onto the track. You can see a car and it will roughly follow the line of the track so that if you come out of Paddock and see a white car trundling up the hill in front of you, you'd assume it was an ambulance or course car. Unusual but not unprecidented.
Equally I don't doubt the marshal's posts were going wild with yellow flags from the off, even before the C of C threw the red!
I'm not defending Mr Cottle but for what it's worth, it's far from the most dangerous incursion onto a circuit I've ever seen. The most dangerous thing would have been as he left the pit lane, which at Brands is blind [the joining car appears fom behind the pit wall] and is on the racing line. Mr Cottle probably didn''t appreciate that. He also bumbled across the track between the apices of Druids and "Bottom" Bend. Dangerous, but on Thursday night I saw Lucas di Grassi do exactly the same thing in a damaged works Audi during LeMans qualifying and he took out another competitor while he did it! For some reason the works Audi driver wasn't sanctioned by the ACO as he should have been; but the 18 year old who went off the road avoiding him was - quite unfairly!
Fortuitously for Mr Cottle, as it turns out, it was late in a VW FunCup race; the cars were spread out and they're not very quick racing cars anyway. If you want really dangerous, blame the paedophile BBC!! [Of course!] in 1975 they promoted the Radio 1 fun day at Mallory Park. Motor racing and pop stars! When the Bay City Rollers arrived in the middle of the circuit, hoards, dozens of besotted teeny boppers jumped the barriers and ran across the track to get to their idols immediately! Which was apparently much, much more than enough excitement for the FF2000 [wings and slicks single seater] drivers who were racing at serious speed and seriously competitively at the time!! That stood to be a really nasty bloodbath!
What's upsetting is that there will be more unfair H&S clampdown on motor racing "to prevent anyone else ever getting near the track". All my life, we'd chuck tyres and tools into a road car to get them to the back of the pitlane or trot backwards and forwards through the Brands tunnels doing business during race meetings. Worse, I feel sympathy more immediately for the FunCup competitiors who presumably had their hour's very expensive sport curtailed early by Mr Cottle's stupidity for which they don't get a refund!
