Club Focus
Community Focus
Wigton MC paid for 15 of its youngsters to have a 15-minute session at the local Rowrah kart circuit
“ THE FACT YOU CAN JUST TURN UP IN YOUR ROAD CAR AND DO THINGS MAKES A BIG DIFFERENCE”
“ Then we had a grass production car autotest, which had free entries to anybody who hadn’ t done any kind of motorsport before, and there were some experienced people taking part who were able to navigate for the newcomers. We had seven people signup, and they’ re all keen to do it again.” Forrester has already seen new membership increase following the campaign with momentum expected to carry into late summer with the club’ s Cumbria Classic and Motorsport Show.“ It’ s our main feature promoting the club,” Forrester says.“ We have 850 cars and we put on a special display of competition cars. We expect about 5,000 people to be at that show.
“ I think tagging the National Motorsport Week logo onto some of our press releases added a bit of impact. Certainly, it’ s appeared on some of the online news features.”
The club is actively involved in promotion throughout the year, ensuring that it appeals to new audiences.“ When I started it was very much about stage rallying and a lot of our members did speed events,” Forrester continues.“ At the moment it’ s AutoSOLOs and targa rallies, but the touring assemblies and classic cars always get a very good entry.
“ The fact you can just turn up in your road car and do things makes a big difference. In my 20s and 30s I’ d spend hours in the garage preparing the car for stage rallies, and I would come back and do the same again. There’ s a syndrome of immediate gratification now, so I think StreetCar is very good in that respect, and certainly in the AutoSOLOs we’ ve been making sure the cars are standard.”
Forrester says that the biggest challenge now is finding venues for events.“ In the north of England so many excellent clubs that were flourishing 20 years ago can’ t find anywhere to run even an autotest anymore. We’ ve got to stop relying
The grass production car autotest was run with free entries for first-timers in motorsport
52 Revolution Magazine