Roaring Races and Two Free Nights at the Circuito de Jerez – Ángel Nieto

Zagan the motorhome’s just enjoyed two free nights parked right outside the gates of the Circuito de Jerez de la Frontera, under the watchful eyes of the friendly security guards at the circuit entrance (N36.70958, W6.03913). Not just that, the circuit was holding three days of motorbike qualifying and racing, which was completely free to attend, including access to the paddock and stands. Woo hoo! The circuit is a few miles to the east of Jerez, the Andalucian home of sherry, and is named after a 13-times World Champion Spanish GP rider who passed away in 2017 (long after he’d retired from racing), Ángel Nieto Roldán.

We’ve a couple of weeks now before the Malaga Half Marathon, and were eyeballing the map working out a route to follow around to the Atlantic and back up the Costa del Sol when Ju spotted the free racing going on this weekend at the Jerez circuit. Of course we needed to double and triple-check: it didn’t seem to make much sense that such a high quality circuit, used to holding events as big as the MotoGP with 125,000 screaming fans in attendance, would be letting us in for nothing? Yep, it appeared we were right, too good to miss this! Checking park4night.com, there’s a huge car park a few hundreds metres from the gate entrance so we decided to head for that, with a back-up plan to drive into Jerez if we couldn’t stay there.

The drive across the the A384 took us past Arcos de la Frontera (these places are all called ‘de la Frontera’ as they were once on the frontier between the two warring parts of Spain: Christian and Moorish Spain). There’s a blog post here relating how previous versions of us, unarmed with databases of places to stay as we are now, utterly failed to park up in the town quite a few years ago. This time around we’d the racing to head for so bypassed the town, although it looked attractive from the roadside view. The only other thing to report from the drive was the blokes we saw here and there holding out bunches of asparagus to passing motorists. On occasion we spot locals foraging, and guess one of the things they find is wild asparagus to eat or sell on?

Arriving at the circuit we drove past the main entrance, spotting that it was open, and on to the GPS location of the parking. Sure enough, there’s a car park big enough to launch an Ariane 5 rocket, but it looked a bit unattractive and some distance from view (with the associated security risk) so we chanced our arm and headed back to the main gates. We’d half an idea they might let us inside but in the end Ju wangled the next best thing with a spot just outside. Again, difficult to imagine Silverstone letting us park up for the weekend outside the gates, but they’re far more relaxed out here about that kind of thing. With the fridge flicked on to gas again, sadly they didn’t provide us with electricity :-), the solar panel sucking in battery juice, and tanks full and empty, we were ready for a few comfortable and safe nights off-grid.

After a brief foray into the circuit for a look around we came back to Zagan to find another British van had arrived. Nipping over for a chat they were very happy to discover the free event was on, having just arrived with the hope of eyeballing the circuit from a gap in the fence. Mark, Becky and their 13 year old son Jack (who has a wicked sense of humour – check out his Instagram page at jackinavan) are on a 6 month tour of Europe and North Africa, and once they’d spotted the ourtour.co.uk decals on the side of the van produced a copy of Motorhome Morocco: they’d also spent a few weeks in Africa and asked us to sign their copy! That settled it, we pulled out our ramps and got level and settled in for a couple of days of motorbike testing, qualifying and racing in the spring sunshine.

About 15 years ago I had the briefest of forays into the world of bike racing, having converted a VFR400 road bike into a track bike. I’d always wanted a motorbike but my folks were dead against it, so I only got one in my mid 20s, a Yamaha 100cc two stroke road bike which I used for commuting to my technical writing job in Derby city centre. From that I shifted to a 500cc bike, then a 600cc and back down in size to the VFR400 as it was a kind of race replica, very good at getting around corners quickly. I loved it, and headed off to track days with friends, which are held on racing circuits like Cadwell, Croft and Donington, but you’re strictly not allowed to race, which means laps cannot be timed. Once I’d started to get the hang of riding on circuits, I wanted to go fast and riding on the road was just asking for trouble so I decided to have a go at racing.

Back then you needed a provisional racing license, which you got by taking a special eye test to check you’d no blind spots, and then applying for the license. No training or any such, nah, you just had to wear a high vis bib during the races and have a bike which was properly adapted with lights and speedo removed, various bolts drilled and held in place with lock wire, special plastic fairing which captured any leaking oil and race numbers painted or stuck to the bike. I sorted all that and converted an old trailer a mate’s dad gave me so it could take the bike and off we went racing.

In the end I only managed two races in my entire career, and they were both on the same afternoon! With some friends to help me I raced in a mixed class at Mallory Park, discovering that my little bike wheelied for the first time when the flag went down and off we all hooned! The difference in speed and pressure from track days was immediate as we hammered into the first corner, bikes at each elbow, just inches away, and there was no let up like you get on track days: if you miss a gear, you go backwards. It was full-on, the most concentrated I’d ever been (and ever have been, probably), and I was relieved to see a few riders behind me at the end. The second race ended up being red flagged when a racer had a problem and instead of pulling off the track drifted to the inside, right across the line of the rider in front of me who’d no choice but to hit them (maybe some training could have been useful). The last I can recall she (it was a lady rider who got hurt) was hitting the tyre wall to my right. I guess we’d be doing about 80 or 90mph at that point.

A few weeks later at race practice afternoon I came off at a similar speed, stupidly trying to get my elbow down. Riders are used to sliding knees on the tarmac surface during fast cornering, and have special pads attached so they don’t wear through their leathers and damage their knee. These days some professional riders also have elbow sliders. I wasn’t one of them. I needed a bigger brain and a smaller ego, not elbow sliders. Being a race circuit I managed to get away with my own 90mph-ish crash with just a big bruise on my backside, although I was convinced my boot was full of blood in the medical centre. It wasn’t, again, a bigger brain would be useful. I repaired the bike and bought a new helmet and gloves, then crashed again at Donington, twice. Much slower those times, but something must have finally twigged that this was going to get both expensive and eventually painful, and I stepped backwards from the track and haven’t been back.

Anyway, I’ve lost touch with the bike racing for a fair few years and don’t know any of the latest models or what riders are in what competitions, but I’ve not lost the buzz at watching the bikes roar around. The event was an Andalucian thing, so we didn’t know any of the riders, but there were plenty of big race trucks present and it was clear the riders were very good. At track days and amateur races it was typical for sessions to be stopped multiple times with muppets like me falling off, but these guys were flying, with only a few incidents, on everything from smoking, rasping two stoke 125s up to howling and growling, big bad thousands ccers.

Although the crowds grew as the days passed, the circuit stayed pretty quiet throughout. On the Friday we’d the place pretty much to ourselves, a weird feeling walking the roof of the main building beside the start-finish straight looking down on the riders, and being sat in an enormous stand by the Criville and Ferrari corners with literally no-one else there! Being Andalusia it’s been warm and sunny too, so we’ve been plastering on the Factor 50 under a burning sky. When I say ‘burning’, I should say ‘burning for us Brits’. The locals were in head-to-toe kit. As it can get up to 45 here in the summer, a mere 22 today was hardly a bother for ’em.

The racing was a mixed bag, some very close with fantastic last-minute overtakes and some where the winner just rode off into the distance, but it was all up-close and atmospheric even with a teeny weeny crowd. More than once all the hairs on my arms and legs stood up as a ripple of excitement ran through me, especially watching the starts with riders trying to hold down huge 1000cc bikes from wheeling as they charged in unison, all scrapping for the same tiny strip of tarmac.

We had a couple of great evening chats with Mark, Becky and Jack too, sharing a few travel yarns and hearing about their plans for the future. Jack’s into video production and showed us one he’d done in Cadiz with clever time-lapse scenes of his Dad stood in front of various cartoon-like characters pulling matching faces and him ‘enjoying’ a sea food platter. Those guys are heading off up to Portugal next so have plenty more adventure ahead of ’em (I’m envious of the chicken piri piri they’ll get access to!).

And there you go. You get to stay in some weird and wonderful places in a motorhome, and the Jerez motor racing circuit now goes down as one of my favourites! Cheers, a few more photos from the past few days below, Jay