Autosport International 2013

Posted on 13th January 2013 by Lewis

The evening before I went to Autosport International, at the NEC in Birmingham, I’d been watching a video, posted on Bill Caswell’s Facebook page about Ari Vatanen’s Paris-Dakar Peugeot 405 being stolen from parc ferme, a randsom being demanded, the car eventually found but Vatanen still being disqualified from the rally. This wasn’t a story I’d heard before, but I wasn’t expecting to see the subject of the story the next day. At first I thought it was just another Paris-Dakar 405, but upon reading the plaque I realised that it was the exact same car, what a nice coincidence!

The rest of the show was good, especially seeing a Lamborghini Miura and a Toyota AE86 in the metal, two of my favourite cars, which somehow I’d never seen in real life.

Rally of the Midlands 2012: Escort mk1

Posted on 16th July 2012 by Lewis

Finally, on the third year of meaning to go, I managed to keep the weekend free and made it to the Rally of the Midlands. Having grown up in the McRae/Burns era rallying is probably my favourite form of motorsport, so it’s a bit rubbish that I haven’t been to many rallies. I’d decided to go to the Merevale Hall stage, as the only other Saturday stage open to the public was at Mallory Park and I’ve shot there before, upon arriving at the stage the first thing that struck me, as someone who has spent a lot of time at race circuits, was the lack of barriers, although there were some in the main spectator areas, most of the time the only thing between spectators and cars was common sense! The stage was run twice, once in each direction, my favourite angle was from the afternoon run, where a hay bale chicane had been placed infront of the main door to the hall, the gravelly surface allowed the cars break traction and the cars were running towards me, perfect!

Cholmondeley Pageant of Power: Works Mini

Posted on 25th June 2012 by Lewis

For Father’s Day I took my Dad to the Cholmondeley Pageant of Power in Cheshire which is a similar event to the Festival of Speed, albeit on a slightly smaller scale. In amongst the modern supercars and aero engined racecars from the 1930s (42 litre V24 engines!!!) my favourite car of the event was this little Mini Cooper which was driven by Paddy Hopkirk in the mid 1960s. Unlike a lot of the other historic vehicles there which looked like they had come straight out of a museum, with spotless engine bays, this Mini looked like it had been driven hard, the engine bay was suitable oily and the block painted in the original British Leyland green.

Other highlights were Bentley demonstrating the smoothness of their engine, by balancing coins on the rocker cover and the drive there and back with my Dad, we were in his Porsche Boxster with the roof down, managed to avoid motorways for both journeys and stopped for an Olympic Breakfast at the Little Chef on the way there, all ingredients for a good road trip!

A39 Road Trip

Posted on 10th June 2012 by Lewis

This is my friend Ali’s BMW Z4, the photo was captured near Porlock on Exmoor whilst we were on a road trip.

A group of us were renting a house in Croyde, which I’d spotted last time I was there and after spending a week living in it, it is still my dream house. The plan had been to get a lot of surfing done, but mother nature had other ideas, and there weren’t any waves the whole time we were there. After being shown an article about the A39 on the Greatest Driving Roads website about how despite being named as a major road the A39 from Barnstaple to Minehead was in places just a single lane and had 1 in 4 gradient hills up onto Exmoor, a road trip was needed!

Unfortunately, as we are taking my MX-5 to the Western Isles later in the year, I was driving Jen’s 500, Ali & his girlfriend, also called Jen, joined us in Ali’s Z4. The 500 coped surprisingly well with the hills and the views over Exmoor and over the Bristol channel to Wales were great, Minehead was less so, my advice to anyone doing this road trip would be to stop at Porlock, which seemed much nicer than Minehead and the last part of the A39 wasn’t anything special. On the return journey we stopped at the top of Porlock Hill and I asked Ali to drive the section of road a couple of times so I could take some photographs. I’m quite pleased with the final result, I’d wanted to capture the sort of image that is used in Evo magazine which I think I managed, the only thing I don’t like about the image is that the roof is up!

After the photoshoot we went to Lynmouth for a cream tea and walk along the harbour, before heading back to Croyde. So even though we didn’t get to surf a road trip to Minehead was a great way to spend the day!

Fiat 500 Demo Car

Posted on 9th May 2012 by Lewis

Through my day job I managed to get access to this Fiat 500 demo car on my lunch break, the matte black wrap made it look moodier than normal Bossa Nova White Fiat 500s (such as Jen’s, previously featured on this blog) so that was the feel I tried to go for with the shoot. Other than the wrap/wheels/body kit, it has a custom interior, including remodeling of the dash and custom Recaro seats with the backs painted to match the car, but the Alpine audio system is really the centre piece, with so much equipment in the back that it makes my MX-5 look practical.

Southwold Road Trip

Posted on 8th April 2012 by Lewis

This picture was taken at Southwold in Suffolk, the destination of the 2012 “Fish and Chip Run” an annual event of the MX-5 Owners Club Northamptonshire Area.

The day started off with an early start and a dash to the layby on the A14, where we would be joining the convoy, which was already at least 30 strong, increasing to over 100 cars as we headed east towards the Suffolk coast.

When we got to the harbour at Southwold we parked up and headed straight to Mrs T’s Fish and Chip Emporium, to get what is probably the best fish and chips I’ve ever had!

It was with fully bellies that we took a stroll down to the beach, dodging the MX-5s that had taken over the whole harbour area. Just before we left I was able to pull my car out in front of some boats and take this photo, without causing too much of a traffic jam!

The drive home, via meeting up with one of Jen’s friends near Thetford and the B664 (Uppingham to Market Harborough) was one of my favourite drives of the year, with flowing roads, hardly any traffic and perfect weather!

Volkswagen Eos

Posted on 4th April 2012 by Lewis

My friend took us out for a spin in his new (to him) Eos the other week, whilst it isn’t an MX-5 it did feel good cruising around Liverpool with the roof down. We ended up in Crosby at Antony Gormley’s Another Place and while our girlfriends weren’t looking for a few minutes we managed to set up this shot.

Wide Angle Pan – From the archives

Posted on 6th March 2012 by Lewis

I was discussing panning motorsport shots with a colleague, which reminded me of this photo which I took at Snetterton a few years ago, before they changed the layout. The Esses is one of the few corners on UK tracks where you are allowed to be positioned quite close to the apex, close enough to be using a wide angle lens anyway. I’d previously shown an image taken slightly tighter, on the blog post for the Ma5da Racing meeting at Snetterton, but I’ve always liked this one more. It breaks a few rules for instance the car has got more space behind than in front, but rules are merely guidelines and I think it works.

The full Ma5da Racing Snetterton 2010 gallery is available in my archive.

MX-5 Underground – iPhone

Posted on 1st February 2012 by Lewis

I dropped Jen off at the supermarket and was told “I’ll be back in 10 minutes”, so what else was I going to do when presented with an underground car park and my MX-5? This shot was taken and processed (and car returned to where I’d dropped Jen off) before she got back. Much more fun than shopping!

Hopefully I’ll get a chance to shoot here with my proper camera soon.

British Formula 3 – From the archives

Posted on 25th January 2012 by Lewis

I was looking through my email the other day and found that I’d sent this image to someone – I didn’t even remember taking it! As soon as I saw it I knew why I’d emailed it, the brightly coloured cars with the gloomy light (it looks like it was raining) and the, rare for Silverstone, clean background.

I was covering Ma5da Racing, which was one of the supporting series at the British Formula 3/British GT meeting at Silverstone in August 2010, so other than this and the Ma5da Racing images (available in my archive) I hadn’t processed any extra shots. The driver is Jazeman Jaafar (Malaysia) driving for Carlin.

Lewis Craik

Category Archives: Cars