First bash at motocycle racing

Some shots from the combined vintage bike and scooter practice day,never tried this sort of thing before so had a lot of fun trying out different techniques.Although these chaps aren't as fast as a full blooded 1 litre superbike they dont exactly hang about...ended up using my k10/bigma/bushhawk combo TAV mode max shutter 1/125 at f11 with af.c selected no shake reduction.Have to say the bigma is probably overkill in this situation-at small circuits your reasonably close to the action so something like a 70-300 would probably be fine if only because its not so flipping heavy!

[juanraortiz]

Fantastic series. The second one is my favourite for its sharpeness and the angle

[Jimbo]

Great series. Really like the third one. JIM

[reeftool]

Very nice shots.

[roentarre]

Very very well done. Quite a few nicely done panning and the bikes are definitely very different and versatile.

[xjjohnno]

Nice pics, I'll be off to a similar event next weekend. I suppose you chose one of te slower corners on the track and you shoot location?

[pcarfan]

very nice, thanks.

[vespa]

Thanks for the nice comments folks,the best thing about this kind of event is bikes are circulating all day giving plenty of chances to change locations.They run in grid sized groups of roughly similar performance for 10 minute sessions with a short gap between.At mallory park the whole circuit is in a natural "bowl" with quite steep embankments very close to the track.This lets you change the shot completly just by walking back 20 feet.All my shots were taken from one of 3 locations-exit of 180 degree hairpin,exit from chicane and the start finish straight.

Exit from hairpin-bikes at slowest,cranked over and upright outaccellerating others.


Entrance to chicane-often bunched up lots of out braking going on.head on shots.
Tried using a tripod and prefocussing found bikes tend to move through POF too quickly!


Exit from chicane-overtaking,rear shot used the bank to get above them here.Panning essential!


Start/finish straight-high speed shots most of the scooters were above 80mph at this point-panning essential,shutter speed BELOW 1/125,also potential for atmosphere shots of lap boards marshalls etc.

[J.Scott]

Great series! Looks like a lot of fun!

My favourite is the 3rd shot. Reminds me of younger years when we'd try to push our bikes to the limit and crouch down to squeeze all the speed we could out of them.

Thanks for sharing.

[daacon]

Indeed very good series. Like others I think #3 is great - squeezing every ounce of speed outta that bike. Well done.

[drmartin]

I took off races only pair of one times for the life and know as it hardness. and I like this series. Favourite number three, because it was very beautifully succeeded to pass to the spectator speed of racing driver.

[sprint06]

Aahh Mallory park, spent many a weekend watching those old bikes when they were new.went to the classic 1000 bikes llllllast year and got up close with Ago and John Cooper.
Some good action shots , thanks for the memories.

[scott-devon]

Vintage bikes and cars, gotta love it. Nice shots!

[vievetrick]

Fun series. Looks like things were moving not to fast on some of them Nice work