Ma5da Racing got their 2010 season off to a great start, with 62 cars and 6 exciting races on a sunny Brands Hatch Indy circuit. The new race day format spliting the drivers into 4 groups, with each race consiting of 2 different groups, there was plety of action and overtaking.

Race 1 featured Tom Roche and Jonathan Greensmith’s groups, so we were treated to a classic Roche vs Greensmith battle, as we have seen so often over the 2 years that Ma5da Racing has existed, Tom won this time, but as ever it was a good close race. Further down the field there was plenty of close racing, with a lot of new cars and new drivers.

Race 2 I moved round from Druids to Paddock Hill bend and it was only Scott Leach that ended up in the gravel (as usual ending up infront of where I was standing on the previous lap) at the top of the field Rob Boston lead the race, after starting 2nd next to his team mate Dave Connor, and built up a massive, by Ma5da standards, lead of 9s. Charles Plumley was in second place, with new driver Matt Davies (albeit in Steve Greensmith’s old car) had a great debut in 3rd place.

For the afternoon I moved round to Clearways, luckily unlike the launch day the sun stayed out and the track stayed dry for an afternoon of close racing.

Race 3 was the Blendini Motorsport show, with the green liveried cars of Tom Roche and Charles Plumley leading from start to finish, although Chris Dawkins and Dave Connor were never far behind, but locked in their own battle.

Race 4, the last of Saturday’s races, looked like it was going to be a re run of the last race of the 2009 season, with Rob Boston up against Jonathan Greensmith at the front of the field, however, by the time the cars had got round to me, Rob had slipped down the field, but had made it back to second, albeit with a large gap, by the time the safety car came out for an incident at Paddock Hill bend. After the safety car came in Rob was able to overtake Jonathan and stay in front for the rest of the race.

Further down the field there was a great 4 way battle for third place with Chris Woodger, Ben Robinson, Mark Pierpoint and Martin Stevinson (finishing in that order). This race Scott Leach made up for putting it in the gravel a lap too late for me, by running over the gravel trap right in front of me, also this time he was able to continue with the race.

Race 5 came after two races which had been red flagged on the first lap (the second one also got red flagged on the restart), so there were a lot of people waiting anxiously for the Ma5das to get round the first lap, all in one piece, they managed Paddock Hill Bend and Druids without any problem, but David Neville span off on the exit of Graham Hill Bend/the Cooper Straight, hitting the armco fairly heavily, causing the safety car and then the red flag to be used. Then all track activity had to stop, for the Kent Air Ambulance to pick up a casualty (not related to any of the on track action). With the amount of delays, it was decided to shorten the afternoons 15 minute races to 10 minutes.

From the restart it was Jonathan Greensmith who led the pack away and won the race, although Charles Plumley was challenging hard for most the race, even taking the lead from Greensmith up the inside at Clearways, only for Greensmith to win the position back and then Plumley to lose a few more positions with a mistake at Paddock Hill Bend. This promoted Adam Gore, on his first race weekend, to the second step of the podium and the driver of the day award.

Race 6 was the one I’d been looking forward to, Tom Roche and Rob Boston each had two wins each from the Saturday and would be going head to head. The first lap passed without too much incident, only Ben Robinson ending up in the gravel trap at Druids, second time round Gary Hufford and Andy Coombs ended up nose to nose right infront of me, but managed to escape and rejoin the pack, which was now behind the safety car, after Martin Tolley and Kevin Taylor collected eachother at Paddock Hill Bend.

When the marshalls had cleared up, there was only time for a few laps of the shortened race, which provided an excellent dash to the line, both times Tom and Rob came past me they were side by side, which continued to the finishing line as they were only separated by 1/1000th of a second, with the yellow and black car of Rob Boston just infront.

A full gallery of images from the weekends racing can be found on my website.

The clocks had only just gone forward for British Summer Time and it was time to get back to Brands Hatch, after what seemed like only a few weeks since the Ma5da Racing Winter trophy 2009. The format for the day was simple, an open pitlane trackday with the championship launch briefing during the lunch break, a good chance to catch up with everyone before the season starts.

The track started out damp, but dried out through the morning session. There were lots of new cars on he track, but without race numbers (I’d not been to the pits at this stage) it was hard to see who was in a new car and who was new to the championship.

After the championship launch briefing, and a quick look round the pits at who was driving what, it was time to head round to Clearways for the afternoon session, but when I got there, the rain was bucketing down, with only a few cars out on track it was an easy decision to stay in the car until it had died down a bit. The spray made for some interesting pictures as did Rob Boston’s oversteering, luckily Rob has a tinted visor, so I was able to spot him in his new car.

My favourite shot of the day however, was when Jonathan Blake was out in the new mk3 race car, set to make it’s debut at Snetterton later this month, I saw the picture on the back of the camera and knew it was the shot of the day.

A few weeks back I entered the novice competition at Dunchurch Photographic Society (Novices as in never won one of their trophies, so pretty much open to anyone), I was both surprised and pleased when my “MX-5 Follow the Leader” image was placed 3rd in the print category, as motorsport images aren’t usually the judge’s cup of tea.

This image is my favourite of 2009, by a long way and am glad that it has got some recognition: