primotipo…

James Golding during practice at the Phillip Island Gold Star round, Ligier JS F3-S5000 Ford, March 2021.

How sweet it is to see these marvellous bellowing beasties – islands in a sea of maxi-taxis. With one round to go at Eastern Creek, Joey Mawson leads Tim Macrow and Thomas Randle.

It’s great to see dual-Gold Star champ Macrow doing so well in Chris Lambden’s car, JS F3 S5000-001, the prototype developed by Borland Engineering, Macrow and Lambden before handover to Garry Rogers Motosport for assembly of subsequent cars.

Officialdom, the Australian Racing Group, the largest shareholder of which is Rogers Motorsport Events Pty Ltd, released a new name for the chassis’ which contest the championship in the last few days, they are Rogers AF01/V8s now apparently. What a load of fuckin’ crap. 

The chassis plates in the cars, affixed by their manufacturer, Onroak-Ligier, read Ligier JS F3-S5000, they are Ford engined. Correctly described, using the time honoured single-seater/sportscar naming convention of make/model/engine manufacturer they are Ligier JS F3-S5000 Fords.

All the mainstream media dickheads cut and polished (perhaps) their press-release and spat it out, without challenge, as usual. One pack of clowns, sydneynewstoday.com, couldn’t even manage to cut and paste the thing accurately, Chris Lambden has become Chris Ramden, perhaps he has become a citizen of Wuhan, tourist hot-spot that it is.

GRM are ‘garagiste’ as ole-man Enzo would have said. They assemble the cars using components made by others overseas and locally. Still they own the category, they can do what they like.

Ignore the GRM chassis plates in the wonderful car’s cockpits I say. See here for my piece on the machine’s development, ‘97.5%’ of which was substantively completed before GRM were selected/won the pitch to assemble the things two years ago; https://primotipo.com/2019/10/26/progress/

Three or thereabouts of the $A350,000 machines have been sold, the rest are owned by a Rogers entity.

I wonder what those owners (Messrs Lambden, Callegher and Wilmington) think of the name change? Perhaps they don’t give a rats, the main-game is commercial success after all. Maybe it’s only toss-pots like me who find the ego-trip offensive, and not reflective of the efforts of Lambden, Borland and his colleagues at Borland Engineering, and Macrow long before GRM sniffed a dollar in the breeze.

Don’t get me wrong, bless GRM for getting involved, no-one is a bigger fan of the Ligier JS F3-S5000 Fords than me…

David Finch’s Jaguar D Type, XKD520, circa 1960 anybody know the locale of the ex-Stillwell/Gardner car.

See here for a comprehensive piece on this car; https://primotipo.com/2020/04/17/stillwells-d-type/

Sensational car Jack! John Surtees gives Jack Brabham his perspective on the BT19 Repco Brabham drove to the F1 World Championship in 1966.

Big John is in the Sandown pitlane in 1982, the Honda V12 he was supposed to be driving misbehaved so Repco gave him a steer of BT19. Feature on this marvellous car here; https://primotipo.com/2014/11/13/winning-the-1966-world-f1-championships-rodways-repco-recollections-episode-3/

This time Jack aboard BT19 in-period at Longford in March 1966. Reg Thompson is at the ready with helmet.

It was the third race for the Repco RBE620 V8- the South African GP with 3-litre engine fitted was the first, and the Sandown Tasman round the weekend before, where a 2.5-litre engine was used preceded Longford.

At Kyalami the fuel injection metering unit drive failed, and at Sandown an oil pump. The car finished Longford but adrift of the BRM P261s of Jackie Stewart and Graham Hill.

Importantly, this valuable testing meant the engine was ready to boogie by the time the first championship F1 race of the year took place at Monaco in May.

Alf Barrett’s Alfa Monza in the Mount Panorama pits during the 1947 weekend.

In the Bathurst 100 feature race, he was the scratch-marker and was outted with valve-insert troubles.

The shot is all about people. Alf Barrett is sitting behind his car in the bright, white open shirt. Checkout the white-suited car salesman with natty shoes at right, and interested spectators. See here; https://primotipo.com/2015/02/20/alf-barrett-the-maestro-alfa-romeo-8c2300-monza/

The grid before the start of the November 1983 AGP at Calder.

Alf Costanzo’s Tiga FA81 is an island in a sea of Formula Pacific Ralt RT4 Ford BDAs. #19 is race-winner Roberto Moreno, John Smith and obscured Alan Jones are on row two and Paul Radisich and Jacques Laffitte in the read car on row three. And the rest.

It was a heart-breaker of a race for Alfie and the crowd, he was leading, and looked to have the race under control when the diff in his Hewland Mk 9 gearbox failed after completing 25 laps. Moreno won from Smith, Laffitte and Geoff Brabham, all aboard Ralt RT4s.

David McKay’s Jaguar Mk1 3.4-litre completes another lap at Gnoo Blas in 1960.

He won the lap race from Bill Pitt’s Mk1 3.4 and Ron Hodgson’s Mk1 3.8 it was the second Australian Touring Car Championship, the first was won by Tom Brady’s Singer Bantam at Lobethal way back in January 1939. See here; https://primotipo.com/2014/08/05/gnoo-who-gnoo-blas-circuit-jaguar-xkc-type-xkc037/

Wally Willmott sets to work on a pair of 58DCO Webers during the 1965 Tasman Cup.

They belong to a Coventry Climax 2.5-litre FPF engine fitted to Bruce McLaren’s Cooper T79. See here; https://primotipo.com/2019/09/27/longford-1965/

Holdens pretty much as far as the eye can see – what was it? ‘football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars’. The Paris end, as we Mexicans call it, of Collins Street, Melbourne in 1959.

That particular vista is much the same now, inclusive of parking dramas albeit the cars of course are more likely a mix of Asian buzz-boxes and top-end Europeans.

Le Mans start for the touring car feature race at Longford in 1965.

There was a twist on it in that the mechanics were doing the sprint and handing the keys to the driver. The smart boys, all of them no doubt, had spare keys…

Sir Gawaine Baillie up front in his 7-litre Ford Galaxie with Allan Moffat’s ex-works Lotus Cortina alongside. Who won folks?

Les Pound in a DFP pounding (sorry) up Wheelers Hill, at Mulgrave in Melbourne’s outer east circa 1928. He contested the 1928 AGP in this car at Phillip Island, finishing thirteenth and last.

Its funny how stuff happens sometimes.

Bob King and I were returning from a car club run on Sunday 22, March. Bob commented to me as we went up this road – or rather now dual lane 80kmh carriageway, that in the days of yore there was a hill-climb straight up this very hill. I’d heard of a climb at Mitcham, close-by but not Wheelers Hill. Then, bugger-me-ded if another of our mates, Tony Johns, circulated this photo on Monday 23, March!

Niel Allen’s E-Type in Warwick Farm’s Esses during Saturday practice over the June 6, 1964 weekend.

“First time out for Niel in the E at Warwick Farm. In practice he was second fastest with a lap of 1:57.7. On Sunday raceday in the wet he was sixth (last)! As the rain started to stop and the rack dried out he went from the first lap of 2:37.0 to a best time, and fastest race lap with 2:06.3 in the five lapper. He ran the E four more times at Warwick Farm in 1964/5 finishing third, three times, and second once with a best lap of 1:51.6” wrote Paul Cummins.

Frank Matich lines up Big Bertha before pulverising the opposition one more time in 1969.

His 4.8-litre SR4 V8 was designed for, and missed the 1968 Can-Am Cup, instead he used this sledgehammer to crush the nut which was the local sportscar scene at the time. See here for a feature on the car; https://primotipo.com/2016/07/15/matich-sr4-repco-by-nigel-tait-and-mark-bisset/

“Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble”, the three supernatural witches in Macbeth chanted.

More Merlin the Magician, Merv Waggott at right, pours molten aluminium alloy into patterns for a batch of Waggott TC-4V 2-litre DOHC fuel injected engines circa 1970.

Pretty much all of these engines were made on-site in his little Greenacre, Sydney workshop. The small foundry was out the back. Do any of you have recollections of the build or racing of these championship winning engines? A bit about Merv here; https://primotipo.com/2018/05/03/repco-holden-f5000-v8/

I was snooping around the bowels of Duttons after a lunch a few weeks ago and came upon George Nakas’ car.

This Ligier JS P320 Nissan LMP3 is absolutely brand spankers, having completed only six delivery laps at Magny Cours before shipping to Port Melbourne.

The chassis and body are HP Composites carbon built. It’s 4605mm long, 1900mm wide and has a wheelbase of 2860mm, weight is 950Kg.

Suspension is double-wishbones front and rear with pushrods actuating coil spring/Ohlins TTX40 shocks, adjustable roll-bars are of course part of the mix.

Gearbox is a six-speed Xtrac 1152, it uses a Megaline semi-automatic pneumatic steering wheel paddle-shift.

The engine is a Nissan VK56 5.6-litre, limited to 460bhp V8, gearbox and engine control units are Magneti-Marelli. Brakes are Brembo six-piston calipers clamping 14-inch steel rotors.

I bumped into George Nakas at Duttons yesterday (Friday April 23), he and his team are testing the car for the first time at Tailem Bend over the next few days.

Brand new cars of a different sort.

Holden EJ sedans on the Dandenong, Melbourne production line having final quality checks in 1962.

Back when we had an industry before a troika of fuckwits destroyed it; politicians, management (sic) and organised (sic) labour.

Beautiful drawing of the Lobethal circuit, by Oscar ‘Ozpata’ who frequents a Nostalgia Forum thread.

See here for the lowdown on Lobe; https://primotipo.com/2018/11/08/the-spook-the-baron-and-the-1938-south-australian-gp-lobethal/

Here’s hoping for a win from Daniel Ricciardo this year.

Testing his new McLaren MCL35M Mercedes, a modified version of the 2020 car, at the season’s outset. Since drafting this, Lando Norris has been going very well…

Love these two arty-farty shots from Lynton Hemer at Warwick Farm in 1971.

Alan Hamilton in his Porsche 906 Spyder during the Ninth RAC Trophy May 2, weekend, the race won by John Harvey in Bob Jane’s McLaren M6B Repco V8.

Click here for a feature on Hamilton’s racing Porsches; https://primotipo.com/2015/08/20/alan-hamilton-his-porsche-9048-and-two-906s/

The fantastic aspect spectators have at Baskerville, Tasmania is shown from this panoramic shot taken at the circuit’s first meeting on the February 9, 1958 meeting.

The shot below is Jim Lamont sitting aboard his 1949 Ford Anglia soft-top, with Greg and Harold Ellis in attendance.

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John Joyce’s Bowin Designs are best known for the fifty-six FF, F2 and F5000 open-wheelers built in Brookvale, Sydney between 1968 and 1975.

Such was the reputation of the outfit that Pete Geoghegan, Brian Foley and others sought Bowin’s design and fabrication capabilities to make their touring-cars go quicker.

Pete Geoghegan had extracted all on offer from his elderly Ford Mustang 302 by the end of 1971.

He then turned to his FoMoCo built GTHO 351 Super Falcon but knew it needed work to have any hope of giving chase during the final improved-tourer 1972 Australian Touring Car Championship.

The car was lightened, stiffened by seam welding and addition of an integral roll-cage, and the suspension geometry improved front and rear. Bowin Design Project #7 design-drawings, on the Bowin Cars website, show you drawings of all of the work performed.

The car was good enough to win the ‘greatest ever Oz touring-car race’ at Mount Panorama over the Easter 1972 long-weekend when Pete triumphed over Allan Moffat’s Mustang Trans Am in a race-long duel. See here; https://primotipo.com/2015/10/15/greatest-ever-australian-touring-car-championship-race-bathurst-easter-1972/

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Celebration of construction of the 500,000th Holden, delivered to the Royal Flying Doctor Service in 1958.

Credits…

s5000.com, Troy Davey-Milne, John Smith, National Archives of Australia, The Tasmanian Motorist, Tony Johns Collection, Lance Ruting, ozpata, McLaren, Ray Simpson-Cummins Archive, Nat French, Slim Lamont, Kelsey Collection

Tailpiece…

Missed by that much!

Thanks goodness the 911S was spared, and the paper-boy I guess. It’s all happening in Greville Street, Prahran, Melbourne, circa 1980.

Finito…