The Feeder Series

Go Motorsport: Marshal Training

In the last Go Motorsport article we looked at the campaign and it’s relevance to UK motorsport at the moment. It’s 3 focal points being; go see, go drive, go help, continuing the Go Motorsport series, today I visited Brands Hatch in Kent, for a BRSCC marshal training session. 

The BRSCC, British Racing Sports Car Club are one of the biggest motor racing clubs in Britain today and run a very sucessful marshal program, and today their pre-season marshal training took place to train up new and experienced marshals to help them gain experience and progress up the grading ladder, but more on that later. The day started with an early start and after a 40 minute hold up on the M25, we turned up (some would say) quite late but hadn’t missed too much. The group was split up into 2 groups; people without any training or experience and people with experience and previously qualified marshals. Previously qualified marshals I hear you cry? There is a grading scheme to help marshals progress to higher positions, ones of more responsibility, these include, track marshal, experienced marshal, flag marshal, incident officer and post chief. So as an unexperienced marshal I was part of that group, our first session was “Introduction to Marshalling” followed by a well earned coffee break. 

After that we went through “fire theory”, going through how to put out a fire and the types of extinguishers before we went outside to the fire ground for some practical fire training. We all split up into pairs, one given a foam extinguisher and one a power extinguisher, the marshals then poured petrol into a 4 square foot tray and set it on fire, pair by pair we came upon the fire trying to put it out. It was my turn, we went forward, set off the extinguisher over the fire and put it out, however the fire had spread to the ground and the tray set alight again, but the experience of using an extinguisher was the bit that mattered and it means that the first time that I have to deal with a car on fire isn’t the first time I have to use an extinguisher. An experienced marshal explained what we’d done wrong, so we’ll know for next time. 

Credit: Lou Johnson

Back into the warm surrounding of the MSV Centre we sat down for lunch, chatting with some marshals who were in our position just a year ago, marshalling sounds like such amazing fun and I can’t wait to get out there when the season starts. After a nice curry we were back in flag theory, and whilst I know all the flags from a drivers point of view it was great to hear it from the marshals point of view, because as our guide told us “marshalling isn’t a science, it’s an art form”, meaning that often its a marshals choice of the use of flags and that whilst 2 seemingly similar incidents may seem to require the same methods of flagging, they could be completely different in the way the incident is handled. We went onto intervention after this, going through how to deal with incidents and how to approach an incident as its happening and once the dust has settled.  A final Q & A session before we all headed home was in order to sort out any problems we’d had or questions that had been on our minds. 

Definitely a worth while day and one that has taught me alot that will help me when I do reach behind the barrier. 

To find out more about marshals, watch this short video from Volunteers in Motorsport. 

You don’t have to have attended a training day to marshal, contact one of the big motor clubs telling them that you would like to marshal; the BARC, BRSCC and 750 MC all have great marshalling sections, so pick a meeting and give them a call, Marshalling is free and fun, so give it a try, it may be the best decision you make this year.