Campaign to celebrate Britain’s pre-eminent international motorsport reputation and encourage more to participate
While sports fans across the country anxiously anticipate the fortunes of the England and Scotland football teams as they compete in the Euros, another sport in which Britain holds global pre-eminence, is aiming to convert fans and spectators into active participants with a nationwide awareness campaign this summer.
Motorsport remains at the beating heart of Britain’s sporting psyche, with events from grassroot level upwards celebrated across the country on an almost weekly basis, rain or shine. From the bustling community of competitors and volunteers to the fervour around the Formula 1 and the British Grand Prix, National Motorsport Week will celebrate motorsport in all of its four-wheeled glory.
This summer’s campaign is the first in a three-year series of national awareness weeks designed to shine a light on one of country’s foremost sporting capabilities. Celebrating motorsport, and all the roles that it offers, through a series of events across the extensive national network of 676 motor clubs from the Caithness Motor Club in Thurso to the Jersey Motorcycle and Light Car Club in Les Charrieres du Bouley in the Channel Islands.
The second aspect of celebrating motorsport and the opportunities that it provides, will be a national awareness campaign across owned, shared and earned media to provide beginners with information and insight on the multitude of ways to compete with very limited funding and even without a driving licence! With 13 categories of competition and multiple individual disciplines that are open to competitors from the age of six upwards, Motorsport UK will be launching a new website to bring together all of the pathways available to inform and help new starters to give motorsport a go. And to reduce the friction points for beginners joining the sport, Motorsport UK will continue to offer free membership and licensing for many grassroots categories of competition, including AutoSOLOs, Production Car Autotests and Trials.
Alongside immersion and information, National Motorsport Week also aims to inspire participation. The campaign starts in the run-up to the pinnacle events in the UK track racing calendar, Goodwood Festival of Speed and across the following ten days that concludes on race day for the Formula E London E-Prix, no less than 103 Motorsport UK-sanctioned events will take place. These range from entry-level karting events such as the British Indoor Karting Championships with qualification ongoing at TeamSport locations, to sports car racing with the British GT Championship at Snetterton to forest rallying with the Nicky Grist Stages in Builth Wells. Every event will be a muster point to inspire spectators to swap seats in the grandstands for a seat behind the wheel.
For those with an interest in the sport but not disposed to competing, National Motorsport Week will also be signposting a wide variety of other ways to get involved in motorsport. These opportunities range from participating in engineering education for school-age and undergraduate students through schemes like FIA Girls on Track UK, F1 in Schools and Formula Student to the opportunities to be on the front-line of club and international events as an all-important volunteer marshal.
Driving uptake of motorsport participation through a focused period of immersion, information and inspiration is the key to keeping the UK at the forefront of international competition as well as sustaining a powerhouse technology and engineering industry that supports more than 40,000 highly-skilled jobs and a net annual contribution of £9 billion to the national economy, even more prevalent in today’s current political climate, with sustainable alternatives and mobility solutions at the forefront of Number Ten’s agenda.