I remember a lad I used to work with going to a night stage at Kielder Forest. What was it like I asked the next day at work. ' It was freezing, pitch black, then you heard a whistle, got blinded by the car head lights and then bombarded with stones as they roared past.' Sounds good i said.
My friends didn't understand the appeal of watching at night. The banter was great too- Grizedale in the dark, hundreds of spectators on opposite sides of a great ampitheatre firing rockets at each other before the cars arrived was great fun.
Spectating in the dark always highlighted the senses. The smell of bacon frying on a stove, torches bobbing up and down coming from all directions, then the distant bark and banging of an engine followed by lights sweeping across the sky in the distance as the cars got nearer. The chatter of the spectators dropping as the car got closer, the crash of a sumpguard on gravel, then a blinding light, a shower of cold gravel, the noise, the flames, the camera flashes, the smell of burning mud on hot exhausts, then the exited chatter of spectators once again drowning out a car still on full throttle dissapearing through the trees.
A short Quattro on gravel driven by Mikkola or Rohl was one of lifes greatest pleasures. Fantastic!
