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In 1974/75 when the alterations to Paddock and the Bottom Straight were done, I was a trainee with Wimpey, who carried out the work (coincidentally, so was Tiff Needell who had been getting quite a bit of publicity in the company magazine, 'Wimpey News'.)
'Wimpey News' did a feature on the alterations, all very self-congratulatory, illustrated with pictures from the first major meeting after completion which was the 1975 Race of Champions, won by Tom Pryce in a Shadow DN5.
I started going to a lot a bike race meetings just after that, and also had a couple of runs with the Brands Racing School of Jeff Crookbain, and immediately noticed that bikes struggled with a diagonal bump right across the apex at Paddock - turned out that Wimpey had omitted to break out the concrete foundation of the old kerbs when they took them up from the inside of the old Paddock alignment, and when the new tarmac settled there was this horrible ridge (gone now, of course, under later resurfacing).
Paul M
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