Fantastic Seven Mile Beach panorama at Gerringong – Gerroa – New South Wales, circa-1930, when beach racing at the seaside playground south of Sydney was very popular.
It’s the north end of the beach with Crooked River in the foreground, an often impenetrable barrier for competitors trying to get to the track on the sand; ‘tide management’ was a big issue as shown below! That’s Professors Burkitt’s – thrice AGP winner, Bill Thompson’s patron – big, white Mercedes K-Type centre pic.
(NLA)
‘Gerringong Speedway’, as it was called in the day, was in use from Saturday, May 9,1925, until the mid-1950s, for motorcycle use, with many deeds of derring-do taking place there. Don Harkness was the first in Australia to break the 100mph barrier in a 150hp Hispano Suiza Minerva V8 Spl at an average of 107.14mph set on October 17, 1925.
Don Harkness, aboard FG Colbert’s – chairman of the Penrith Speedway Co Ltd – Hispano Suiza Minerva V8 at Gerringong in 1925 (PDavis-A Half Century of Speed)Southern Cross, a Fokker FVllb/3M, on Seven Mile Beach in 1933 (Kiama Library)
No less than the great Charles Kingsford-Smith made the first commercial flight from Australia to New Zealand from Gerringong Beach aboard Southern Cross his Fokker monoplane, on January 11, 1933.
I’ve had a pretty good crack at Gerringong a couple of times before, but the pair of Gerringong panorama shots here got me looking again for other photographs – without success – but some Troving revealed a couple of great articles worth reproducing about the first meeting on the beach in 1925.
The diapason of the heavy rolling surf along the seven-mile beach at Gerringong mingled with the harsh scream or roar of racing motor engines yesterday. The white horses of Neptune flung their manes high, till, one after another, the big blue billows smashed in white foam on the beach, encroaching on the speedway which nature has made for the sport of car-racing. A storm spoiled the spectators’ sport, and many a smart car was bogged in the clay roads on the way back from the beach race track.
Reg G Potts – above and below – in the JAS Jones owned Lea Francis during the Fifty Mile Handicap during the May 1930 meeting (W Skimmings)(NLA)
ALL day at the big carnival of the Royal Automobile Club, it was a battle between the cars and the tide. Big creamy rollers flung carpets of boiling surf right onto the great semi-circle of beach which formed the speed track. Inch by inch, the sea encroached, and when a stiff wind blew straight inshore late in the afternoon, it sent clouds of spray often right over the speeding cars.
But there were plenty of thrills for those who motored down through the torturous ravines around Kiama to see the racing. In fact, Kiama buzzed with excitement over the event. A couple of hundred cars thundered down its chief streets. In the morning, the little bays around Kiama, with their fingers of crinkly surf and golden sand, were bathed in brilliant sunshine. But great banks of black clouds that came bowling over the bronze-green bluffs that rise above Gerringong, in an hour turned a day of turquoise into one of drab, ash grey.
The right crowd and no crowding is the feel!? It all seems a bit unbelievable today, but life was run to Formule Libre back then
Then, lashed by the wind, the rollers became most angry. They tossed their milky crests onto the beach so fiercely that they seemed intent on swooping the motor invaders from their domain. More than one car floundered heavily in the wash, and one or two sank inches into the sodden sand.
When the motor invasion began at noon, the bronze-green walls of ti-tree and furze, which dip down to the sea, flung back the echoes of the thundering engines in a deafening way. The moan of the surf was smothered in the crackle of the cars. It was altogether a remarkable picture. Before the speed demons stretched one of the finest beaches in Australia, hard as concrete, and with just that gentle incline that motorists relish. It swings away in a great crescent to a bold headland clothed in scrub.
Wizard Smith with Don Harkness alongside, on the Anzac Rolls Royce V12 breaking the Australasian Land Speed Record at 148mph, Gerringong, December 1, 1929. The car is heading south towards Shoalhaven Heads; the return trip was the other way (NLA)
Like a Crackle of Thunderclap
They are lined up — the drivers’ grim faces with goggled eyes glued to the track in front of them, twelve ears like twelve huge tin cigars shining in the fitful sunlight. Under them, the engines thunder. The yellowish, damp track hurls itself beneath those winged tyres down past the speckled black and white flags.
They race with a crackle like thunderclaps. There is an advantage on the run closest to the sea to the man who works into that position and clings to the fringe of boiling surf with the greatest grimness. Midway, they must sweep round the gentle turn in the crescent of the beach. They do it with a biting, gritty slide of those back wheels on the wet, glistening sand that was swept by the incoming surge a moment earlier. There is a sudden puff of blue smoke, a flash of flame from straining machines, and they charge down the long, straight carpet of sand with the speed of a high explosive shell.
A couple of (rough-looking) Knights in Shining Armour attend to the ladies’ needs (NLA)
You can’t see the whole of any race at Gerringong. In fact, unless you race alongside in a car, you cannot see anything but the dazzling finishes. In a few seconds, they diminish to the size of a black beetle careering along the sand. Often, the smoke of the surf drifts across and blots them out altogether. Then they emerge smaller than tiny beetles against the background of the beach. Their roar has dwindled to a faint purr, and then they are lost to view five miles away on the same beach. But before you have time to realise it, those speed men have turned in a sirocco of sand, and they are racing back again.
It is an exhilarating spectacle. In the most novel surroundings. Round they roar with a flying of wheels, a pumping of oil, a screeching of gears, and a crunching of track grit. A trail or petrol smoke lasts like a blue mist against the green wall of scrub. Then, as they bound on towards those deciding flags, the track gets smokier, and the grim faces oilier.
The crowd – and it was a large one on the sand yesterday – bursts into a cheer, and the race is won – you come away with a feeling of awe of tho men who have such wrists, and are able to use them as they can.
Bugs galore: AV Turner, T30-4087, S Lee T23-2566 and G Meredith in an unidentified Brescia (B King Arc)
An attempt was to have been made to see if any of the cars could reach a speed of 100 miles an hour. That was to have been the main attraction of the carnival, but the drivers decided that the tide had made the beach too sodden to reach anything like that speed with their machines.
Likewise, the race between an aeroplane and a speed car was also cut out. A ‘plane circled over the beach, and made one or two flights along the semi-circular track, but because of heavy going none of the 40 cars that took part in the racing was pitted against it.Last night half a hundred speed men fought their way through the mud into Kiama. All were thrilled with the day’s work. The driving rain caused the final of the 12 miles handicap to be abandoned.
A summary of the results is as follows. The winner of the Three Miles Handicap was Boyd Edkins, Vauvhall, the Six Miles Scratch went to AV Turner’s Bugatti, the 24 Miles Scratch Race was won by HR Clarke’s Vauxhall, the two Twelve Miles Handicaps were won by RK Hormann’s Rollin, while ‘The final was abandoned owing to rain.’
It was the first time the elements intervened in Gerringong’s proceedings, but far from the last!
Hope Bartlett and passenger in his GP Sunbeam (B King Collection)
In the beginning…
When did it all end? Good question! Denis Foreman wrote on Bob Williamson’s Old Australian Motor Racing Photographs that, ‘I raced on 7 Mile Beach in 1953 with Bankstown Wiley Park Motorcycle Club,’ which must be towards the end of the Gerringong Speedway? Can anyone tell me when the ‘final race meeting’ on Gerringong beach took place?
This article was published in the Sydney Sportsman, on April 28, 1925 and seems to indicate that the first meeting on Gerringong Speedway was the one covered in the article above, on Saturday, May 9, 2025.
MOTOR RACING IN THE BOOM: Ideal Beach at Gerringong: ATTRACTING OVERSEAS CHAMPIONS
WITH the building of motordromes in various centres, and the holding of reliability trials, the boom in motoring has extended to car racing under the auspices of the Royal Automobile Club on Gerringong Beach near Kiama, on Saturday, May 9. On Sunday, May 17, the Sydney Bicycle and Motor Club will follow with events for both cars and motorcycles over a similar course.
On Gerringong Beach.
To Mr H. R. Hodgeon, the patrol officer of the Royal Automobile Club, belongs the honour of introducing motor car racing on one of its States famous benches. Mr Hodgson, who is a barrister and presides over the Railway Appeal Court, has made an exhaustive study of the beaches from a racing point of view. He has witnessed contests on Sellicks Beach (South Australia) and Muriwai Beach near Auckland. (Hodgson had years of experience as an ‘organiser of most of the biggest reliability contests in the state’).
Mr Hodgson believes that Gerringong is in the fortunate position of having the greatest beach in the world from a racing point of view, and in this respect, he is supported by Boyd Edkins and H. R. Clarke.
Hope Bartlett this time aboard his Bugatti T43-169, one of the fastest cars in Australia, flat chat with passenger on Seven Mile Beach (B King Arc)
The seven-mile beach at Gerringong is 88 1/2 miles distant from Sydney by road. At low water, a stretch of sand nearly 100 yards wide, with a straight drive of five miles, is available. The surface is remarkably solid and hard, there being no bumps of any kind, and is capable of holding together at any speed in absolute safety.
A month ago some fine performances were achieved on the beach by stock touring model, machines, with full complement of passengers. Speeds over 80 miles per hour were recorded.
As a means of helping to popularise this class of sport, a suitable trophy (£50 cup) has been offered for the first competitor driving a car at 100 miles per hour or faster over a flying mile.
Speed Only.
Several other events are to be decided. Entries for the 25-mile handicap and races for touring cars will close with the R.A.C.A. on May 4. The races will be decided on speed only. Entrants must be members of the club, but need not be the owners of the cars they nominate. One event will be a race between L Tyler’s DH 6 aeroplane and a motor car.
Credits…
National Library of Australia, Fairfax Archive, Kiama Library, Pedr Davis and Ors ‘A Half Century of Speed’, Warren Skimmings Collection, The Sun Sydney Sunday, May 10, 1925, Sydney Sportsman, April 28, 1925
Tailpiece…
(B King Arc)
Such an evocative shot from Bob King’s collection.
He reckons its Geoff Meredith in Bugatti Type 30 chassis #4087, the ex-AV Turner car in which the great man met his maker, and the car aboard which Meredith won the first Australian Grand Prix at Goulburn in January 1927.
Pop McLaren and another helper about to bump-start Bruce’s Cooper T45 Climax FPF 2.5 at the Wigram RNZAF track on the January 23, 1960 weekend.
That’s Ian Burgess’ third-placed Cooper T51 Climax behind, then Pat Hoare’s Ferrari 256 V12 a little further back; he was fifth. Jack Brabham won the race in a T51 2.5-FPF with David Piper’s Lotus 16 Climax FPF 2.5 second. Bruce was fourth in the Lycoming Special; more of that soon.
New Zealand’s Summer Internationals commenced with the NZ GP, then held on the Ardmore Airfield circuit outside Auckland, with the Lady Wigram Trophy the other round most visiting internationals did. Sometimes they also entered the Dunedin Road Race and Teretonga International, held on a permanent racetrack near Invercargill, both venues on the South Island.
That year the visitors were headlined by Stirling Moss, twice-on-the-trot World Champion Brabham, and Burgess, Piper, while the Australian contingent included Bib Stillwell and Stan Jones in Cooper T51s, and Len Lukey in a T45. Similarly mounted was Kiwi youngsters Denny Hulme and George Lawton, both Driver to Europe exports; Lawton’s a sad one…
(T Marshall)
Coopers to the fore on the first lap at of the New Zealand GP at Ardmore: McLaren, Moss, Brabham, #6 Australian Bib Stillwell and then Ian Burgess. One T45 and four T51s. In the middle of the road is David Pipers Lotus 16 Climax, car #17 Johnny Mansel’s Maserati 250F, while #88 is Ron Roycroft’s positively historic but very well driven ex-Ascari Ferrari 375 4.5-litre V12. Behind Mansel is perhaps Pat Hoare, Ferrari 256 V12 – a Dino 246 fitted with a 3-litre V12 – then Arnold Glass in his Maserati 250F #12. Close to the oil drum is 1954 NZ GP winner Stan Jones, Cooper T51 Climax, and finally the big front-engined car is Ted Gray in his last drive of Australian Land Speed record holder, Ted Gray in Tornado 2 Chev V8.
At this time of technological change, it was certainly a grid lacking variety! Coopers were of course right up there: Brabham and McLaren finished one-two in their 2.5-litre FPF-powered cars from the 2.2s of Stillwell and Jones. The best placed front-engined cars were the pair of 2.5-litre six-cylinder Maserati 250Fs raced by Kiwi Johnny Mansel and Aussie Arnold Glass.
Stirling, Bruce and Jack all ears during the Ardmore drivers briefing – not necessarily in 1960 mind you (R Stuart)Brabham on the way to victory at Wigram in 1960, Cooper T51 Climax (T Marshall)
That summer, Jack Brabham won both the NZ GP and Wigram, while Syd Jensen’s nimble Cooper T45 Climax 1.5 won on the Dunedin city roads, and Ian Burgess triumphed at Teretonga, Cooper T51 Climax FPF 2.2-litre.
On the other side of The Ditch Brabham won at Longford and Phillip Island against local opposition; it was a great summer for him. It wasn’t until 1961 – and really 1962 – that the Australians had the tracks to cut it with the Kiwis to attract the internationals with the first Tasman Cup held and won by Bruce McLaren’s Cooper T70 Climax in 1964.
(G Woods Collection)McLaren, with ‘nomex’ jumper and long sleeved shirt on to deal with the summer chill, Burgess and Pat Hoare’s Ferrari 256 V12 (R Stuart)
While Bruce McLaren started the Lady Wigram Trophy in his Cooper, he retired the car and then took over the famous aircraft-engined Lycoming Special, finishing the race in fourth place (below).
Jim Clark did a few laps in one of the Kiwis’ most loved specials during practice during the Tasman Series a couple of years later.
Bruce McLaren in the Lycoming here and below (M Knowles)(BMcL Trust)(M Fistonic)
McLaren ran out of brakes in the Lycoming during the race; the car ran four-wheel drums sourced from an Austin road car. Bruce found the car’s handling so forgiving that he was able to make up for the lack of stoppers, in part, by throwing the it sideways into the corners.
Never one to forget a favour, when he returned to England, Bruce sent a set of Dunlop rotors and calipers to New Zealand, the Lycoming raced on so equipped!
The shot above shows the Lycoming in the Levin paddock in January 1960. Note the road-rego and Michelin radial tyres. Clearly, (pic above) Bruce raced it on Dunlop racing tyres, but the 4.7-litre four cylinder engines car was originally built by oh-so-talented Kiwi engineer Ralph Watson as a road-going racer. At the time Bruce borrowed the car, it was being raced by Malcolm Gill and later Jim Boyd, happily it is extant, alive and well.
(Nat Lib NZ)
Ian Burgess’s Cooper T51 Climax at Wigram above, and the 2.5-litre Climax in Stirling Moss’ car being fettled in the Ardmore paddock below.
(Nat Lib NZ)
David Piper (below) pushing his Lotus 16 Climax 2.5 #368 to the start line at Dunedin on January 30, where he withdrew with gearbox problems after 22 of the 36 laps.
Piper coaxed local boy Arnold Stafford into the hot-seat of his 1.5-litre FPF-engined Lotus 16 #353 ‘renter’ at Wigram (below), but Stafford thought the better of it after a big-spin in practice, having not raced for three years and didn’t start.
(K Brown)(unattributed)
Both cars weren’t particularly old in years but were technically passé by early 1960, even in the colonies where Coopers had been rather popular from the early 1950s.
Lotus 16 Climax cutaway (Lofthouse)(R Stuart)
Etcetera…
McLaren at Wigram in 1962, where he was fourth in his 2.7-litre Cooper T53 behind Stirling Moss’ Rob Walker Lotus 21 Climax 2.5 and the 2.7-powered Coopers of Brabham, T55, and John Surtees, T53…Happy Patty below.
(R Stuart)(R Stuart)
Pop McLaren and who folks?
Credits…
Rosalie Stuart, Graham Woods Collection, Merv Knowles, Bruce McLaren Trust via Jim Bennett, Kelvin Brown, Milan Fistonic, National Library of New Zealand
Master Mechanic Geoff Smedley made a pretty fine part-time photographer while fettling racing cars for the likes of John and Gavin Youl.
The 1963 South Pacific Championship has just got underway at Longford on March 4. Bruce McLaren is on pole in his Cooper T62 Climax at left with Bib Stillwell’s new Brabham BT4 Climax in the middle and Lex Davison’s Cooper T53 Climax on the right.
McLaren won the race comfortably from Bib Stillwell after Bruce’s dice with Jack Brabham’s leading BT4 Climax 2.7 ended with engine failure on lap 14 John Youl was third in his Cooper T55
Bruce McLaren on his way to winning the 1962 Australian GP, Caversham, Western Australia, Cooper T62 Climax (K Devine)Jack Brabham debuts the BT4 Climax, Caversham AGP, November 1962. BT4 #IC-1-62 was the first in a long line of very successful, profitable ‘Intercontinental’ Brabhams from Ron Tauranac
Context…
The Cooper vs Brabham Australasian summer was set during the 1962 Australian Grand Prix, November 18 weekend at Caversham, outside Perth, when McLaren’s new Cooper T62 Climax and Jack Brabham’s equally new Brabham BT4 Climax faced off for the first time. A fantastic dice between Bruce and Jack that day was resolved in McLaren’s favour after a passing he-zigged-when-I-zagged manoeuvre between Brabham and Arnold Glass’s BRM P48 Buick V8 went awry.
Both machines were inspired by their Coventry Climax FWMV 1.5-litre V8-powered Grand Prix siblings: the Cooper T60 and Brabham BT3. By the time the eight-race Tasman Circus travelled to Warwick Farm, round five, the weight of numbers favoured Jack Brabham and Ron Tauranac’s Motor Racing Developments business with BT4s in the hands of Brabham, David McKay, who had bought Jack’s ’62 AGP car’, and Bib Stillwell, who had acquired a newie.
McLaren and the business end of his Cooper T62 FPF, Caversham 1962, with David McKay, Cooper racer/writer/later Scuderia Veloce supremo, showing more than cursory interest in the car given his pending car update considerations (T Walker)BT4 Tim Wall, Jack Brabham and Repco Indy 2.7 in the Sandown paddock. By then, Repco’s Michael Gasking was preparing Jack’s Tasman FPFs, and Repco was or were soon to be the Australian importer/distributor of Coventry Climax spares (Repco)
Bruce won two of the four Kiwi rounds at Wigram and Teretonga with his Cooper T62, while John Surtees won the NZ GP at Ardmore in an ex-F1 Lola Mk4A Climax 2.7, with Jack taking a Levin win in his BT4.
The additional power and torque from 2.7-litre Coventry Climax FPF Indy four-cylinder engines were causing a great deal of driveline stress to gearboxes, clutches and driveshafts.
At Warwick Farm, Brabham won in his new BT4-IC-2-62 from Surtees’ Lola Mk4A, McLaren and McKay in his first race of the ex-Jack BT4-IC-1-62 with Stilwell fifth in his new BT4-IC-1-63; all cars powered by Indy 2.7s.
At Lakeside on February 17, Surtees won from Graham Hill’s Ferguson P99 Climax 2.5 FPF and Stillwell. It was a great shame that the Ferguson went home at this point, we Victorians and Taswegians didn’t get to see it. McLaren spun and could’t restart while Jack was a no-show. It was an even greater shame the Fergy didn’t arrive in New Zealand with a pair of 2.7-litre FPFs…
Then Bruce won at Longford and at Sandown Park on March 10, so McLaren and Cooper won the 1963 Faux Tasman Cup. Jack was a DNF with engine failure with Tony Maggs in the other Bowmaker Racing Lola Mk4A Climax 2.7 second and McKay third.
Lex Davison turns into the exit of Long Bridge, closely followed by John Youl, Coopers T53 and T55. Lin Gigney, the snapper of many of these shots, was a flaggie right here… (L Gigney)
Longford…
Down in the South Island Lex Davison was having a whale of a time in the Cooper T53 John Surtees used to win at Longford in 1962! He won both the Saturday 45-mile Formula Libre preliminaries, the first from Bib Stillwell and John Youl after Bruce McLaren retired from the leadership of the race with a broken universal joint.
The second Saturday race also fell to Melbourne’s famous cobbler, from Chris Amon, Cooper T53 Climax 2.5 and John Youl, Cooper T55 Climax 2.5. McLaren didn’t start this race; Brabham did, but then had carburettor problems during lap two that caused his retirement.
Lex Davison, Ford Galaxie – what a massive bit of real estate! – from Ern Abbott Chrysler Valiant on Long Bridge (L Gigney)
On top of that, the staunch traditionalist continued his flirtation with touring cars, finishing second in the 45-mile Touring Cars Championship aboard Len Lukey’s Ford Galaxie behind Bob Jane’s then-dominant Jaguar Mk2 3.9, with Ern Abbott’s Chrysler Valiant 3.9 in third.
The Jag was timed at 142mph on The Flying Mile, the Galaxie did 141mph in an experience Davison told Autosport reporter FGN Ewence as ‘Like Driving a Haystack.’ Ewence wrote that ‘It came out of corners as though they were launching pads, but its braking and handling let it down.’
Frank Matich, Lotus 19 Climax, having just exited Kings Bridge and passed the irrigation water pumphouse (B Wright)
Bigger FPFs were fitted to Australian sports cars as well, notably Bib Stillwell’s Cooper T Monaco and Frank Matich’s Lotus 19, with FM winning the 45-mile Sports and GT Cars Championship from Stillwell and Bob Jane’s Jaguar E-Type.
Matich pushed his own lap record up to 108mph and was chuffed enough about the pace of his Lotus two-seater that he entered it in the Formula Libre feature.
Friday qualifying comprised two sessions, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. The quicks were McLaren on 2:23.3, McKay 2:27.0, Davison on 2:27.3. Of Davo, Ewence recorded that ‘Alan Ashton, got the 2.7 Climax to its bellowing best, and his wider wishbones had improved the car’s stability, and he had the brakes to a pitch which enabled Davison to rush up on his opponents as they approached corners.
Youl did a 2:27.4. Ewence noted that John’s Cooper ‘was handling much better following extensive modifications to the suspension, including widening of the track.’ Geoff Smedley was the engineer/mechanic involved.
Jack Brabham lines up his BT4 for the very strong timber Long Bridge exit clipping point! (L Gigney)
Brabham didn’t arrive from London, then Sydney, and on to Launceston until after 11am on the Friday morning and then spent most of the day chasing engine problems. Refer to the Climax twin-plug note in Etcetera.
The top three grid slots from times recorded in Saturday’s two races noted above were McLaren, Stillwell and Davison. Then came Maggs, McKay and Brabham, then Youl, Chris Amon, Jim Palmer, and the rest. The only starters from this race still alive are, I believe, Bob Holden, who raced his 1.5-litre Lynx Peugeot Formula Junior from grid 15, and Jim Palmer.
The Race…
Raceday at Longford was always on the Monday Labour Day holiday. There was no racing on the Sunday, giving plenty of time for dramas to be sorted: Jack’s engine, McLaren’s uni and driveshaft, Gardner’s clutch, Magg’s engine mount, etc. Bruce McLaren noted in his March 15, 1963 ‘From The Cockpit’ Autosport column how busy Repco Launceston and Merv Gray’s engineering shop were over that weekend.
(HRCCT)
The rear of the grid (above) before the South Pacific Championship, showing #87 Frank Matich Lotus 19 Climax, #13 Bob Holden Lynx Peugeot 1.5, on the next row is Frank Gardner’s Brabham BT2 Ford FJ, which is sandwiched by Tony Shelley’s Lotus 18/21 Climax against the pits and Peter Boyd-Squires Cooper T45 Climax. The white #9 Cooper T51 is Bill Patterson, and alongside him is the #3 Cooper T53 of Jim Palmer. Then Chris Amon in the red Cooper T51 #14 with John Youl alongside, Cooper T55 Climax and an obscured Jack Brabham in his BT4. On the second row is David McKay’s Brabham BT4 Climax and an obscured Tony Maggs’ Lola Mk4 Climax with Davison, Stillwell and obscured McLaren up the front.
(unattributed)
South Pacific Championship 3-2-3 grid, 14 starters, Longford, Monday, March 4, 1963.
Bruce McLaren Cooper T62 2.7, Bib Stillwell, Brabham BT4 2.7 and Lex Davison, Cooper T53 2.5, then on row two, Tony Maggs, Lola Mk4 2.7 and David McKay, Brabham BT4, on the third row, we can get a glimpse of Chris Amon’s Cooper T53 2.5 near the fence, and #5 John Youl’s Cooper T55 2.5 alongside.
All of the engines were Coventry Climax FPF, whether John Youl was using his Geoff Smedley-developed twin-plug, twin-Magneto 2.5, I don’t know.
David McKay, Brabham BT4 from Tony Maggs, Lola Mk4, Long Bridge (L Gigney)
F.G.N Ewence reported that it was a great first lap for the Brabham marque with the three of them leading in line astern across Long Bridge. David McKay’s run was short-lived with leaking cylinder head sealing rings; he only compltetd the first lap.
Brabham sat behind McLaren then he took the lead on lap 10, with Bib Stillwell third, but four laps later Jack’s run came to nought with the BT4 puffing plumes blue smoke of increasing volume on The Flying Mile, then through Mountford and into the pits. The ‘manifold leak’ caused a pit fire which was quickly extinguished with Jack leaving an oily calling card at Mountford that caused others some grief.
Brabham from McLaren on Kings Bridge, circa laps 10-14. The Viaduct is some way behind them, beyond the trees, with Longford village in front (Bob Wright)
Bruce took the lead back, having done the fastest lap of the race at 114mph on lap 13 in pursuit of Jack. He then modulated his pace to keep ahead of Bib Stillwell and John Youl. Bill Patterson was fifth behind Jim Palmer’s Cooper T53, and Tony Maggs demonstrated his professionalism by bringing the Lola home sixth despite being liberally coated with engine oil that escaped from a crack in the chassis tube, which conveyed the slippery stuff to and from engine and radiator.
(P Longley)
This scrap between Kiwi, Jim Palmer, Cooper T53 Climax and local boy, John Youl, Cooper T55 Climax was over third place, an argument resolved in Youl’s favour.
Palmer was a multiple Kiwi Gold Star Champion, a Tasman Cup perennial whose best placings were fourth in 1966, ex-Clark Lotus 32B Climax and equal fourth with Phil Hill in 1965, Brabham BT7A Climax. Youl was ‘one who got away’, the incredibly gifted driver was fourth in that old T55 in the ‘ 64 Tasman before taking up family farming responsibilities at their Symmons Plains property, not too far from Longford.
(R Bell)
Bruce McLaren receives the plaudits of the Longford crowd from atop the Viaduct, he had a good summer in his Cooper T62 Climax, winning the 1963 Faux Tasman Cup, then came back in ‘64 and won the real one!
The views of experienced outsiders is always an interesting perspective. Here is Ewence’s race report Postscript in full.
‘Postscript: Despite the fact that the Longford Motor Association has no paid officials, it is limited by a lack of population. The whole State of Tasmania has only 350,000 inhabitants. To get 30,000 of them to a meeting is equivalent to an attendance of some four million at a British meeting! This makes the £20,000 budget something of a nightmare for the L.M.R.A. The two previous years’ operations had resulted in losses after necessary capital expenditure was met. This year, the hats went in the air when Treasurer Geoff Hudson’s casting of accounts revealed a small profit. Longford will be on again next year, and State Premier Reece seemed so upset about an interruption caused by a passenger train at the level crossing in Longford township that those on the inside believe that the trains will be very strictly controlled in the future.’
Etcetera…
(oldracephotos.com)
The start of one of the 45-lap preliminaries with Lex Davison on this side, then John Youl, and Tony Maggs in the yellow helmet. Davo won them both.
(Andrew Lamont)(W ‘i anson)
Bruce McLaren’s unpainted Cooper T62 Climax at Goodwood for a test session on September 26, 1962 not long before the car was shipped to Fremantle, Western Australia for the 1962 Australian GP at Caversham.
McLaren’s T62 – #CTA/BM/2 – was built on Cooper’s T60 1961-63 jig by Tommy Atkins’ team at his Chessington workshop. Harry Pearce and Wally Willmott were the artisans who built the car. The rear was designed to take a BRM P56 1.5-litre F1 V8; Bruce planned to contest the non-championship F1 races that Coopers chose to ignore. When that engine ran late, Atkins and McLaren decided to convert the car to Climax Tasman spec, gearbox, and a Colotti T32 five-speed.
Tommy Aktins, Harry Pearce, partially beheaded Wally Willmott and completed T62 at Coopers in Hollyfield Rd, Surbiton (W i’ anson))Geoff Smedley’s Coventry Climax 2.5 FPF twin-plug on the Repco Research dyno in November 1963 (G Smedley)
Bruce McLaren (Eoin Young ghosting Bruce) wrote in ‘From The Cockpit’, ‘Brabham’s car was the centre of interest, sporting an 8-plug head. This was a very impressive looking set-up, but it must have been firing the right plug at the wrong time or the wrong plug at the right time, because he had a lot of trouble getting it to run right.’
‘That was Friday. The Saturday morning practice was kind to most of us except poor Jack again. The Brabham was smoking a lot more than a young car should, and he had to rush back to Launceston to take the engine out and fit his spare 2.7 Climax for the races in the afternoon..
Those with a keen memory may recall that Geoff Smedley developed a race-winning 2.5-litre Coventry Climax twin-plug in Tasmania for John Youl. That engine, with the necessary sparks provided by twin-magnetos, was first raced by Youl fitted to his winning Cooper T55 in the October 14 1963, Gold Star round at Mallala. The engine was then used in the ’64 Tasman, in which Youl finished fourth in that ageing Cooper behind Bruce’s new Cooper T70, Brabham’s new BT7A and Hulme’s year old BT4. Youl and Smedley’s was a mighty effort!
In it, Geoff recalled that ‘Frank Hallam at Repco Research had been playing around with a twin-plug head for one of Brabham’s engines, using two distributors driven from the rear of each cam bank and couldn’t make it work through an inaccurate spark which was put down to windup in the camshafts in the high rev range.’
So it seems the Repco FPF twin-plug was tested over the Longford ’63 weekend. I wonder whether Jack tried it elsewhere? Does anybody know what became of that pair of twin-plug heads?
Credits…
Geoff Smedley, Bob Wright via Kay Wright, Andrew ‘Slim’ Lamont Collection, Historic Racing Car Club Tasmania, Ray Bell, Terry Walker, Ken Devine, Repco. The detail in this article is via Paul Cummin’s archive, specifically F.G.N Ewence meeting report and Bruce McLaren’s ‘From The Cockpit’ column published in Autosport, March 15, 1963, Willian i’anson Ltd, Geoff Smedley, Stephen Dalton
Tailpiece…
(E French)
One of the men of the weekend, Lex Davison, had gear-selector problems on his sixth lap with his Cooper T53 and is shown bumming a ride from Bruce McLaren, who is just starting the Newry ascent. Ewence reported that Davo ‘Broke down near the pub, where last year he had so spectacularly lost his first 2.7 Cooper in a 130 m.p.h skid. “Why hello, Mr Davison, back again?’ remarked the landlord’s wife as he entered the portals.’
Davo famously wore his cloth helmet under his real one throughout his career. Lex turned 40 on February 12, 1963, and was still mighty fast indeed!
Sighting an apex, Brian Hart, Protos 16 Ford FVA, German Grand Prix, Nurburgring 1967
Brian Hart raced a Lotus F2 and F3 cars for Ron Harris in 1964-66 and was looking for opportunities in the 1.6-litre F2 that had been announced for commencement in 1967. He was after an Unfair Advantage as an innovative engineer.
At the January 1966 London Racing Car Show, Hart sought out aerodynamicist/engineer Frank Costin – both were De Havilland Aircraft graduates – about the coming season. Costin was there to sell his new, very light Hillman Imp-powered wooden chassis Costin-Nathan sports car (below). Hart knew of Frank via his younger brother, Mike, who co-founded Cosworth Engineering together with Keith Duckworth, where Brian was an employee.
Ronnie Peterson, March 711 Ford, Nurburgring 1971 (R Schlegelmilch)
Earlier, Frank Costin had started Marcos with Jem Marsh. The first Marcos had a wooden chassis too, but Costin’s reputation came from 20 years in aviation, where he developed vast knowledge of the use of wooden structures and aerodynamic theory and practice, to wit, the De Havilland Mosquito
Post war Frank had been summoned by Mike to assist Colin Chapman on the Lotus Mk 8 sports car. Costin improved the car and worked on several more of Chapman’s designs, including Vanwall VW5, the 1958 F1 Manufacturers Championship (then called the International Cup) winning car.
Frank’s Grand Prix involvement extended to the body design of the March 711 Ford Ronnie Peterson drove to second place in the 1971 F1 Drivers World Championship.
Protos 16 Ford FVA and spare monocoque on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2017 (V & A Museum)
Protos Design and Construction…
Ron Harris (24/12/1905-18/9/1975), hailed from Maidenhead, Surrey, and was a motorcycle racer/dealer who made his name on Manx Nortons and other machines from the early 1930s until the war. Post conflict, he was involved in film distribution, the cash flow from that business initially funded his return to motorsport, the Ron Harris Racing Division, which ran a pair of Lotus 20 Ford FJs in 1961 (John Turner/Mike Ledbrook).
Success with them attracted Lola’s Eric Broadley’s attention in 1962 (John Fenning/John Rhodes in Lola Mk5s) and the Team Lotus F2 machines from 1963 – Lotus 35/44 – where the driving roster included Peter Revson, Brian Hart, Peter Arundell, Francisco Godia, Piers Courage, Picko Troberg, Eric Offenstadt, Jackie Stewart, Jim Clark etc.
Harris’ Lotus gig came to an end in 1966; it was time to become a manufacturer in 1967!
Ron Harris, Jim Clark and Mike Spence with the works Ron Harris Racing Division Lotus 35 Cosworth SCA. Gold Cup Oulton Park, September 18, 1965Frank Costin in Costin Research & Development’s first factory in North Wales (Wales Library)
Set in his ways, Costin built the prototype at his home in North Wales with Brian Hart doing the legwork, over 40,000 miles of fetch and carry of component purchase and sub-contracting between London and Wales in the early months of 1967. ‘Frank was a fascinating chap and spoke with such enthusiasm: he was adamant that he could build an F2 car way ahead of its time.’ Brian Hart told Paul Fearnley in a MotorSport 2009 interview.
There was huge excitement among drivers and racing car manufacturers for the new 1.6 F2 with monocoque designs, including the Matra MS5/7, McLaren M4A, and Lola T100, as well as spaceframes, with the dominant car of the year in a variety of hands, Ron Tauranac’s new, spaceframe Brabham BT23.
What became the ubiquitous engine/gearbox combination for the duration of 1967-71 1.6-litre F2, was the Ford Cosworth circa 220bhp @ 9000rpm twin-cam, four-valve, Lucas injected four, and the Hewland FT200 five-speed transaxle, was used by most. BMW, Alfa Romeo four-valve engines, the Ferrari Dino 166 and several others duly noted.
Into that environment of competitive activity, the Costin and Harris team – based in Maidenhead, Hertfordshire – designed and built two strong, light, aerodynamically advanced Protos 16 Ford FVA timber-skinned monocoques in 128 days.
Hart, ‘We were making everything apart from the engine and gearbox; there was no template like there was on a privateer Brabham.’
Brian Hart with his Brabham BT30 Ford FVA at Mallory Park in 1970 (LAT)(L Ghys)
Ed McDonough wrote of the chassis that, ‘Costin’s original intention was to have one set of plywood panels bonded to elliptical plywood end panels and bulkheads with adhesives and further stress-bearing panels of spruce made to form strong box shapes on both sides of the cockpit area. Then, further layers of overlapping strips would form the outer skin. Much like modern carbon-fibre construction, Costin intended for the whole monocoque unit to be placed into a rubber tube to clamp the adhesive and form the proper shape, with the air being sucked out by vacuum. The outcome, Costin reasoned, would be very high levels of strength and low weight in a smooth shape.’
‘Unfortunately, the old spectre of time rushing by meant this elaborate process wouldn’t be possible. So birch plies were used for the outer skin, and the whole thing was clamped conventionally, and the finished wooden structure was smooth-sanded when the glue was dry.’ While this process added weight, after painting, it was hard to tell the difference between this and a steel or alloy unit.’
A tub with a difference, note the diagonal banding of the birchwood plies (Blain Motorsports Foundation)
With the prototype finished in Wales, the other cars were built in Harris’s Maidenhead workshop. Given its unusual construction, Harris coined it ‘Protos’, first in Greek.
With inherent fire risk, Costin designed neoprene-coated alloy fuel tanks, housed in fragile wooden bearers within the chassis. In the event of a big one, the tanks were designed to break away from the car, an element that was tested all too soon…
A magnesium bulkhead was mounted across the front of the car, and together with a light tubular subframe, located top-rockers which actuated vertically mounted, inboard Armstrong shockers, wide-based lower wishbones and an adjustable roll-bar. Front and rear uprights were magnesium.
Brian Hart’s Protos 16 HCP-1 BARC 200 Wills Trophy Silverstone March 27, 1967
At the rear, a complex steel tubular spaceframe structure supported the FVA/FT200 combo with six bolts attaching the mechanicals to the tub with the load spread through the wooden monocoque via clever internally glued metal spreaders.
The rear suspension was a combination of magnesium uprights, twin top links, a wide-based wishbone with a pair of radius rods doing fore and aft locational duties, Armstrong shocks and an adjustable roll-bar. Brakes were Girling and tyres Firestone: 9 x 13 inches at the front and 11 x 13 at the rear, with wheels also magnesium.
The car looked the goods when it was launched with some fanfare at Selfridges London store’s ‘Grand Prix Exhibition’ on March 3, 1967.
1967 European F2 Championship…
Harris’s outfit built four tubs (it’s not clear to me if the four build number includes the prototype made in Wales or not), two of which were built up into complete racers with Brian Hart testing HCP1 – Harris Costin Protos – at Goodwood, putting in some competitive times despite the bodywork snagging Hart’s right-hand gear shifting gears, a ‘bubble’ alleviated the problem. Excessive front understeer was cured with changes to the ‘bars and springs.
The cars were entered in the first round of the European F2 Championship on March 24, but failed to appear. All of the other new cars were present with the heats going to Jochen Rindt and Denny Hulme, in Winkelmann and works Brabham BT23 FVAs, with Rindt – the King of F2 – taking the final from Graham Hill, works Lotus 48 FVA and Alan Rees in the other Winkelmann Brabham.
Rees took the Euro F2 Championship points as an ungraded driver. The FIA cleverly created a two-class system. Graded drivers were those who had achieved/won in F1, Can-Am, WSC etc. Ungraded drivers were up-and-comers who had not. Graded drivers could win the races and prize money but were ineligible for Euro F2 Championship points.
Hart raced the car at Silverstone three days later, on March 27, in the BARC Wills Trophy. From grid 16 alongside the Lola T100 BMW of Jo Siffert, Hart and HCP-1 retired in heat 1 when a fuel pump belt broke, while a misfire cruelled his second heat, a recurrent problem throughout the season. Rindt won again.
Eric Offenstadt, Montjuïc Parc, Barcelona 1967 (H Fohr Collection)Pomp and ceremony as Offenstadt’s car is rolled onto the Magic Montjuïc grid (J Arch)
Harris entered two cars in the Pau Grand Prix (Rindt, Brabham BT23) on April 4 but the machines weren’t ready, with only Offenstadt contesting the GP de Barcelona at Montjuïc Parc on April 9. After several off-course excursions, he retired with brake and misfiring problems, having done only 12 of the 60 laps completed by Jim Clark’s winning Lotus 48 FVA.
The team missed the Spring Trophy at Oulton Park where many of their competitors raced against Grand Prix cars. Up front the Brabham BT20 Repco V8s of Brabham and Hulme were first and second, with the first F2 home Jackie Oliver’s Lotus 41B FVA.
Just two weeks later, the F2 Circus were off to the Nurburgring for the Eifelrennen and there Offenstadt took Graham Hill off in practice and non-started HCP-1.
HCP-2, was finally finished and tested by Hart. Engine misfires continued to come and go, but the team were optimistic as they headed for the RAC Autocar Trophy at Mallory Park on May 14, a British F2 Championship round. Hart qualified a good fifth, but both cars were withdrawn from the race after Costin found a crack in an upright following another shunt by Offenstadt.
New uprights were cast but the team missed the May 21, Limborg GP at Zolder, where John Surtees’ Lola T100 FVA won.
Hart tested HCP-2 at Brands Hatch, where the misfire appeared to have been cured. He then raced it in the London Trophy British F2 Championship round at Crystal Palace on May 29. Offenstadt was allocated HCP-1.
Both did well in practice and in their heat until the misfire returned: Eric was sixth and Brian seventh. On a track he knew well, Hart ran as high as third in the final before troubles dropped him back to tenth. Offenstadt’s troubles continued; this time, he retired with a broken engine mount, while up front was Jacky Ickx in a Ken Tyrrell Matra MS5 FVA.
The next championship round wasn’t until Hockenheim on July 9, so the team set to with some strengthening modifications while noting that both drivers reported the chassis itself to be immensely stiff.
(M Stegmann Arc)
With the work completed the Ron Harris Racing trucks headed for Dover to contest the non-championship Rhein-Pokalrennen on June 11.
Offenstadt demonstrated the promise he showed in 1965 and Hart was in the leading group when he lost fuel pressure.
‘I thought I could win. The car was capable of 180mph, and I was cruising. I could pick up five to six places a lap,’ before the dreaded misfire returned. Brian eventually finished tenth with Offenstadt in a personally rousing fourth. Post-race calculations indicated a top speed of 163 mph without a tow and 172 with one! The customer car favourite Brabham BT23 Ford FVA indicated its user friendliness in that Chris Lambert won the race in a privateer BT23.
Costin observed of his Hockenheim handiwork in 1975, ‘The Protos was approximately 9mph faster at maximum speed than the slowest opposition, and 3-4mph faster than the quicker opposition. This means, given all cars were using the same engine (Cosworth FVA giving 218-220bhp), the aerodynamic advantage of the Protos was about 15bhp over the faster rivals and 40bhp over its slowest competitors at maximum speed.’
Brian Hart was the class of the field during the June 25, 1967 Reims Grand Prix (unattributed)
With the high-speed Reims Grand Prix coming up on June 25 the team continued to refine the Protos aero, including the extension of the cockpit canopy back to the roll bar.
Practice was again marred by problems, not least Offenstadt crashing again. ‘Some of these problems stemmed from the fact that one of the sponsors hadn’t paid some bills, so there wasn’t the funding for bigger brakes, a real limitation at Reims’, McDonough wrote.
‘Hart and the Protos amazed everyone with the car’s speed, catching and passing Jim Clark and Jackie Oliver (Lotus 48/41B) after a spin. The French crowds cheered as Hart would drop back under braking and then catch and retake the leaders. Unfortunately, the swirlpot cracked on lap 37, and the overheated engine quit, but the car was clearly the fastest of all the F2 machines on the day.’ Despite not finishing, Brian was classified ninth…
Pedro is bubbled-up by Ron Harris before heading out at Hockenheim on the July 9, 1967 weekend for his Protos race debut (Blain Motorsports Foundation)
The team elected to miss the non-championship GP de Rouen-les-Essarts (Rindt, Brabham BT23 FVA) on July 9 to contest the Deutschland Trophäe Preis Von Baden on high-speed Hockenheim, on the same day.
Offenstadt was replaced by Pedro Rodriguez from this meeting. Mechanical changes included new front and rear subframes, bigger brakes, and on Rodriguez’s rebuilt HCP-1, a more enclosed rear body section.
Rodriguez turned Q3 into the lead of heat 1, but he spun the Protos in the stadium section when it jumped out of gear and ultimately finished fourth in front of Hart. The Mexican again led heat 2, spun again, and then retired with a bent wishbone while Brian was third. Better was to come in the final, where Hart drove an inspired race, battling with Jackie Ickx and Frank Gardner, and ultimately finished third and bagged fastest lap. Gardner won the round on aggregate in a works BT23 FVA from Hart, with Piers Courage’s McLaren M4A FVA third.
Johnny Servoz-Gavin’s works Matra MS5 FVA from Hart’s UFO Protos (fifth) at Zandvoort July 30, 1967 (LAT)
Ron Tauranac watched Protos progress closely and figured Costin’s something-for-nothing aerodynamic lessons were worth pursuing. Brabham was battling for F1 World Championship honours with Team Lotus and their Ford Cosworth-powered Lotus 49s, so Ron developed his own canopy cover and bodywork to the very rear of his Brabham BT24 Repco’s Hewland gearbox to buy critical RPMs at Monza. Brabham had trouble sighting apexes so equipped, and didn’t race the car in that form. The point is that Costin had some of the competition thinking…
Rodriguez, Jarama, July 23, 1967 (Whittlesea Collection)
The team missed the Tulln-Langenlebarn aerodrome race in Vienna on July 16 for undisclosed reasons but rejoined the fray in Spain, where Hart and Rodriguez contested the GP de Madrid at Jarama on July 23. Hart retired his car due to overheating, and Rodriguez was seventh in the race won by Clark’s Lotus 48 FVA.
Zandvoort hosted an F2 Championship round on July 30 that year; the race in Holland was won by Ickx’s Matra MS5 FVA. Hart was sixth, with Rob Slotemaker a DNF due to gearbox problems after only eight of the 30 laps. The Dutchman stood in for Rodriguez, who was racing a JW Automotive Mirage M1 Ford in the Brands Hatch 6-Hours.
Kurt Ahrens from Brian Hart during the August 1967 German GP, Nurburgring (LAT)Ahrens landing at Flugplatz? DNF radiator (K Tweddel)
Talented German, Kurt Ahrens, raced HCP-1 in the F2 class of the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring on August 6 and retired, while Hart finished fourth in class with Jackie Oliver the first of the F2s in this non-championship Euro F2 round. Ahrens was an F3 and F2 Brabham veteran of some years, his opinions of the Protos would have been interesting.
The Harris equipe missed the non-championship Kanonloppet, the Swedish Grand Prix, at Karlskoga on August 11, where Jackie Stewart prevailed in a Tyrrell Matra MS7 FVA. The F1 championship aspirant added his name to a long list of F2 race winners (in all championships) in 1967: Rindt, Clark, Brabham, Surtees, Ickx, Widdows, Gardner and Oliver.
The long haul to the wilds of Sicily for the GP del Mediterraneo at Enna-Pergusa on August 20 followed, a day on which Rodriguez put Costin’s woodie to the ultimate test!
Luc Ghys was there. ‘The track, similar to Hockenheim with long straights, led to fierce slipstream battles. On lap 10, Jackie Stewart’s Matra had Pedro on his tail, and both were passing Beltoise’s leading Matra. The Frenchman gave way to Stewart but immediately tucked in behind, touching Pedro’s car at high speed.’
Beltoise told Ed McDonough decades later how he had been surprised by the speed of the Protos. When Rodriguez attempted to pass the Frenchman’s Matra, Beltoise admitted not being ready for the move and didn’t give Pedro enough room as a consequence.
Enna-Pergusa August 1967. Stewart Matra MS7 in the middle has just jumped out of Beltoise’s MS7 slipstream on the right, JYS then passes JPB, who immediately pulls in behind JYS and collects Pedro the Innocent at left, who was in the process of making his own run in the slippery Protos (Blain Motorsports Foundation)One careful lady owner…Protos wooden, aluminium and rubber remains at Enna (J Gleave)
The car careered out of control, hit the guardrails and broke in half, jettisoning the fuel cells as intended. The tub bore the impact as designed and protected the Mexican from serious nasties: he was still in second place as the Protos-in-bits blasted past the finishing line! Said components were then deposited into Enna’s famous snake-infested lake! Hart had a weekend of consistency, finishing eighth in both heats and the final; both Protos did 165 mph on Enna’s straights.
Pedro, interviewed not long after the race, said philosophically, ‘If it wasn’t for that Protos, I wouldn’t be here talking to you now. It has a wooden monocoque body, you see, and at about 150 miles an hour, it absorbed the impact completely. The car starts to disintegrate, and I went out of the car with the seat on in the middle of the road! The only thing that happened to me was that my right heel was what they call a poolverise fracture.’ Pedro also suffered a small fracture in his left ankle.
‘Ron called us into his hotel room (after the race),’ says Hart, ‘and not only did he say that there wouldn’t be a next year, he also said that he wouldn’t be able to pay off Frank for the remainder of this year.’ Hart’s eighth at Enna was the programme’s denouement. ‘I don’t think we would have won in our second year, but we would have been closer to the front; I think Frank could see that some compromises were needed. But we never got the chance. But what a project. I’ve got a soft spot for that car.’
Despite making four tubs, no more than two complete cars ever existed; HCP-1 was rebuilt over the winter, consuming one of the spare monocoques. Harris and Costin had initially intended to run an evolved Protos in 1968; the same decision was made by most of the major manufacturers to run evolutions of their ’67 cars, but the year had been so expensive that Harris decided to run Tecnos instead.
The Carnival is Over. Rodriguez prepares to saddle up at the Nurburgring on April 21, 1968 while Ron Harris waits, and below on track. The last Protos in-period race (Blain Motorsports Foundation)(Blain Motorsports Foundation)
When the Pederzanis delivered the Tecnos hopelessly late, Rodriguez, clearly fond of the Woodies, asked Harris to enter a Protos for the non-F2 Championship Eifelrennen at the Nurburgring on April 21.
Pedro raced HCP-1 and Vic Elford HCP-2 on his single-seater debut. Rodriguez retired out of fuel while Vic finished a splendid seventh. Man On The Rise Chris Irwin won in a works Lola T100 FVA, his next visit to the Eifel didn’t end quite so well.
Sadly, that was it, Rodriguez raced the first of Harris’ Tecno PA68 FVAs at Crystal Palace on June 3 1968, then added insult to Ron Harris’ injury by crashing it on the first lap of the final, having placed fifth in his heat…the Protos never raced again.
The 1968 season was so expensive and difficult for Harris that it ended his active involvement in racing. Much of his equipment disappeared or was damaged on the late-season Temporada tour in South America, so ultimately everything was sold off.
Vic Elford and Pedro Rodriguez in the final race weekend for the Protos 16 Ford FVA during the April 21, 1968 Eifelrennen weekend
Hindsight…
Brian Hart told Paul Fearnley, ‘It was incredibly fast in a straight line (a useful asset in those slipstreaming days), but it had shortcomings. The engine was carried in a metal subframe, and where this was affixed to the wooden tub was a weak point. And because the car had a rounded shape, the side fuel tanks were carried quite high, giving a bad CoG. It was heavy, too – about 25kg more than the rest – and when this was coupled with an initial lack of anti-roll bars (Costin had yet to be convinced of their necessity), it was a bit of a handful in the corners. One of our biggest failings was our inability to engineer the car once the season had started: money was tight, and we had no baseline from which to work.’
Eric Offenstadt said of the car to Michael Dawson, ‘I had a picture of my pole position at Hockenheim in front of Jochen Rindt with the Protos…but I lost it. The roadholding was “peculiar”, not because of the wooden chassis, but because of “rare suspension geometry”.
Firestone funded the project, which explains in part why Ron Harris was adventurous. The challenge to design, build, develop, prepare and race a new car was a far more complex and costly process than racing works-Lotuses that were competitive outta the box.
That the designer was reluctant to leave Wales must have made the development of the car a challenge!
Despite the design’s shortcomings, it was clearly competitive on faster tracks, with suspension geometry the area that required focus over the 1967-68 winter, had the Harris team raced on with the Protos.
The Ford Cosworth FVA engine problems the Harris team experienced in 1967 are somewhat ironic given Brian Hart Engines Ltd’s capabilities in preparing and developing these engines by 1969!…
What extraordinary racing cars those Protos were/are.
Historic Era…
Englishman Richard Whittlesea bought the two cars, HCP-1 complete and HCP-2 as a rolling chassis, restoring and racing HCP-1 and displaying it at Donington, before selling the cars to American Norbert McNamara, then later he sold them to Californian Brian Blain/Blain Motorsports Foundation, who retains them.
Etcetera…
(Getty Images-GP Library)
The Protos Ford FVA of Eric Offenstadt on the Montuic Park grid, April 9, 1967. Nice shot of the swept-back rockers and cast-mag upright
Credits…
Getty Images, Hans Fohr Collection, Steve Wilkinson Archive, Ed McDonough article on supercars.net, Pete Austin, Les Thacker, Josef Arch, ‘Aerodynamics of the modern car’, Frank Costin in Automotive Engineer magazine in 1975, ‘Ply in The Ointment’ Paul Fearnley, MotorSport November 2003, Formula 2 Racing and Frank Costin Autos Facebook pages, Mike Stegmann, Rafael Calatayud Collection, Blain Motorsport Foundation, Jim Gleave
Tailpiece…
(R Calatayud)
Hmmm…which cars are the Protos’ I wonder?
Reims June 25, 1967. DNF’s for both Hart and Offenstadt. Jochen Rindt’s Winkelmann BT23 FVA won from Graham Hill, John Surtees, Jackie Stewart and Denny Hulme, World Champions all! In its heyday(s) F2 was absolutely marvellous.
Surely the most exotic rally machine to ever come to Australia was Ric ‘Skid’ Marks’ Lancia Stratos which contested the 1976 Castrol International and other local events before seemingly disappearing…
I really know SFA about this car, but shall make good in the next few weeks and assemble some details. In the meantime, the photos will have to suffice. Not still here, I guess?
(J Lloyd)(J Lloyd)
David McKay’s Aston Martin DB3S with trick Rice trailer behind, Fisherman’s Bend 1958.
Jack Godbehear, Ringwood orchardist, racer and great engine builder in his JGS-JAP 298cc (Jack Godbehear Spl) at Rob Roy on November 3, 1959.
Jack came up most recently in conversation with Alan Hamilton (gee, I drafted this a while back!). Jack rebuilt the engine of Norman Hamilton’s Porsche 550 Spyder after Harry Firth got into a bit of strife! Jack’s motorcycle experience with bevel-gears meant he was familiar with the complexities of the German engine.
I know of Jack as a Formula Ford and Lotus-Ford twin-cam engine builder. Someone who taught Larry Perkins plenty of engine tricks. If anybody has a document about Jack, or can spend a few minutes on the phone and give me the gen, I’d love to hear from you. He was behind many a race win, not least his son-in-law, Tony Stewart’s.
(D Friedman)
Jack Brabham, Peter Revson and Ron Tauranac at Indianapolis in 1969.
Revvie finished fifth in a good run in the Brabham BT25 760 Repco 4.2 V8 whilst Jack retired.
A couple of months later, Peter won the Indianapolis Racing Park 200, an event comprsing two 100 mile heats on a road course. He won one heat and was second in the other taking a great win for the much-maligned four-valve Repco motor.
To be clear, these results and Matich’s win aboard the 4.8-litre V8 760-powered Matich SR4 in the 1969 Australian Sportscar Championship proved there was nothing wrong with the design, development could not have fixed.
Racer Reg in the Elsternwick, Melbourne, back streets.
Not going for a suburban blast but Reg Hunt posing for a ‘paper shoot in his just arrived 2.5-litre, Maserati 250F engined Maserati A6GCM, what a car! Click here for a feature on it:https://primotipo.com/2017/12/12/hunts-gp-maser-a6gcm-2038/
And below, with Bira before the start of the 1956 AGP at Albert Park. Graham Hunt outta focus at the right rear, I suspect.
(NatLib)(oldracingcars.com)
Garrie Cooper, Elfin MR9 Chev from Bob Minogue in the ex-Brown/Costanzo Lola T430 Chev at Calder on February 28, 1982, in the dying ‘Arco Graphite Days’ days of F5000, and not too long before Garrie’s sad, untimely passing. A bit about the Elfin MR9 here:https://primotipo.com/2016/06/10/elfin-light-aircraft/
John Wright won the 25-lap race in his Lola T400 from Bruce Allison in Reg Orr’s Elfin MR8B-C and Cooper, all cars Chev-engined. Minogue was fifth.
(D Foster)
Arnold Glass in the cookie-cutter or bacon-slicer braked ex-works BRM P48 at Lakeside in 1961 or 1962.
The car was still at this stage powered by the original 2.5-litre BRM four-cylinder GP engine rather than the aluminium Traco-Buick V8 which followed. See here for the gen; ‘Bourne to Ballarat’- BRM P48 Part 2… | primotipo…
(S5000)
I was very much looking forward to S5000 making a splash this year and regaining the Gold Star awards credibility, hopefully they will be on circuit soon!
I must have drafted that line during Covid. It’s one of Garry Rogers Ligier JSF3-S5000 Fords, I don’t recall the locale.
Chris Lambden is a close mate, I must invite him to do an article on how the CAMS/Supercar Junta and related Vested Interests fucked S5000 to a standstill and destroyed what could and should have been easily Australia’s most spectacular racing category. Watch this space.
(An1images.com)
Bob Morris was a goer wasn’t he!
Here he is doing the Light Car Club of Australia a favour by cutting the grass on the inside of Dandy Road. He is running, or trying to, up the inside of the A9X Torana driven by Pete Geoghegan, Geoghegan won his last ATCC race that April 1978 day. Pete won from Morris and Allan Grice, also Torana A9X mounted.
I loved the way the Ron Hodgson boys stuck it up the ‘factory team’ for so long.
(W Reid)
Budgie Smugglers, Stirl? Close, but not quite.
Stirling Moss catches up with Roger Bailey during preparation of the Ferrari Dino 246T, which Chris Amon drove to within a bees-dick of beating Jim Clark’s Lotus 49 Ford in the following day’s 1968 Australian GP at Sandown Park. See here for more Dino: Amon’s Tasman Dino… | primotipo…
Ah…the old Sandown paddock was as tight as, but a wonderful place for spectators at least! F Vees in close attendance to Chris (W Reid)(unattributed)
Marvin the Marvel’s Mustang leads the field at the start of the 1968 Sebring 12 Hour. Not quite. Jo Siffert’s Porsche 907 is to the left and off-screen, the winning car Jo shared with the very recently departed Hans Hermann.
#50 is the Ludovico Scarfiotti Porsche 907, #29 Paul Hawkins, Ford GT40 – note his JW Automotive teammate #28 Jacky Ickx is still belting-up and has not yet dropped the clutch – #9 is Scooter Patrick’s Lola T70 Mk3 GT Chev, with Jo Bonnier’s yellow similar car standing out further back. #42 is the Lucien Bianchi blue with taped up lights Alpine A211 Renault , the white #56 Porsche 910 was started by Foitec. A Chev Corvette is well forward but I’m not sure which one, so too is one of Roger Penske’s Chev Camaros, probably the car started by Mark Donohue. And the rest…
(unattributed)
Lorraine Hill’s Swallow Doretti at Warwick Farm in the early 1960s, a mighty fine racer at a time women behind the wheel were a rare thing. Later married to racer Brique Reed, of course, a speedy couple indeed. Who are the MGA racers folks?
Reigning J.A.F. Japanese Grand Prix winner Leo Geoghegan during practice of the May 1970 event at uber-fast, daunting Fuji International Speedway.
Leo is chasing more straight-line speed in his Lotus 59B Waggott 2-litre by running wingless. Jackie Stewart won the race in a Brabham BT30 Ford FVC, from his namesake, Max Stewart’s Mildren Waggott, with Leo sixth. See here for Leo’s ’69 victory; Leo Geoghegan: Australian Driving Champion RIP… | primotipo…
(Cummins Archive)
Lex Davison’s high born Alfa Romeo Tipo B being chased through Forrest’s Elbow by Doug Whiteford’s more utilitarian but very fast Ford V8 Spl ‘Black Bess’ at Mount Panorama during the Over 1500cc Handicap race, October 1950.
This dice up front lasted for most of the race until Lex locked a brake with two laps to go; Whiteford won on scratch, but ’51 AGP winner, Warwick Pratley took the handicap win, the money and cup with Dicer Doug behind him. See here for more on Bess; Doug Whiteford: ‘Black Bess’: Woodside, South Australia 1949… | primotipo…
Mark Webber cruising the streets of London in his Porsche 919 Hybrid in 2016, the PR perks of the job! See here; Le Mans Arty Farty… | primotipo…
(K Devine)
From the state of the sportscar art in 2016 to the equivalent in the late 1950s, the Lotus 15 Climax raced by owner Derek Jolly and John Roxburgh to victory in the Caversham 6 Hour in 1962 from the Dave Sullivan and George Wakelin Holdens.
One of my favourite categories in one of my favourite years.
Leo Geoghegan’s works-Birrana 273 Lotus-Hart-Ford 416-B leads the field in the September 1973 Symmons Plains, Tasmania, round of the Australian F2 Championship, which he won.
In line astern is the similarly powered Bob Skelton’s Bowin P6, Enno Buesselmann’s Birrana 273, Chris Farrell’s Dolphin 732 and Bruce Allison’s Bowin P6. See here for more ’73 ANF2; Testing Times… | primotipo…
Don O’Sullivan in his Matich SR3 Repco 4.4 V8 at Surfers Paradise in May 1969.
This is one of the two SR3s FM raced in the 1967 Can-Am Cup, and then ‘belted’ Chris Amon’s Ferrari Can-Am 350 with in the 1968 Tasman Cup support races, here in hi-winged form.
And below blasting down the Surfers Paradise main straight, what meeting given his regular use of #7, who knows, but 1976-77.
(T Garbett)(G Jamieson)
George Jamieson, Lotus 11 Climax FWA, chassis 358 on the grid above (and with fag below) during the 1960 Lowood, Australian Grand Prix weekend. See here for Mildren and the 1960 AGP:https://primotipo.com/2018/06/08/mildrens-unfair-advantage/
Car #135, an AC Ace, is not listed in the race program. I’m intrigued to know who it is. Jamieson DNF the race won by Alec Mildren’s Cooper T51 Maserati.
Dave Walker, Lotus 72D Ford during the 1972 Austrian Grand Prix weekend at the Osterreichring. DNF after engine failure in the race won by his teammate Emerson Fittipaldi. See more on Dave here:https://primotipo.com/2024/06/01/dave-walker-obituary/
(B Anstee)
Multiple Australian Hillclimb Champion Bruce Walton gives the Norman Hamilton crew a lift through the Fisherman’s Bend paddock in 1958, Porsche 550 Spyder. See here for a feature on this car; Hamilton’s Porsche 550 Spyder… | primotipo…
Credits…
John Lloyd, Leon Sims Collection, David Friedman, David Zeunert Collection, oldracingcars.com, Trevor Garbett, Darren Foster, S5000, An1images.com, Warren Reid, Cummins Archive, Ken Devine Collection, Graham Ruckert, Ian Smith, George Jamieson via Janice Jamieson, Barry Anstee
Tailpiece…
oldracingcars.com
Battle of the Queenslander Lotus 23 racers at Longford in 1968. Glyn Scott’s Lotus 23B Ford from Lionel Ayers MRC Lotus 23B Ford diving into The Viaduct. See here for Glyn; Glyn Scott… | primotipo… and here for Lionel; Sportscar Stalwarts… | primotipo…
Bill Pitt, Jaguar D-Type, leads Doug Whiteford, Maserati 300S and race winner David McKay heading up Mountain Straight during the early stages of the 31-lap, 100-mile Australian Tourist Trophy at Mount Panorama, Bathurst, on October 6, 1958.
That weekend was an incredible double-header combining the Australian Grand Prix won by Lex Davison’s Ferrari 500/625, and the Australian Tourist Trophy.
It was the second running of an event first won by Stirling Moss in a Maserati 300S during the 1956 AGP carnival at Albert Park.
McKay, Whiteford, Phillips and Kiwi, Frank Cantwell’s Tojeiro Jaguar (unattributed)
By then, we had a good grid of outright current sports cars, including: Aston Martin DB3S – ex-works car for David McKay, and Warren Blomfeld’s Tom Sulman-owned customer machine, Maserati 300S – Doug Whiteford’s ex-works car, Derek Jolly’s ex-works Lotus 15 Climax FPF 1.5, Ron Phillips’ ex-Peter Whitehead Cooper T38 Jaguar, customer Jaguar D-Types for Bill Pitt and Jack Murray, plus a C-Type for young thruster Frank Matich. The quickest of the local cars was Gavan Sandford Morgan in Derek Jolly’s Decca Mk 2 Climax FWA.
Pitt and McKay head up Mountain Straight, while Whiteford, Phillips and Jolly negotiate Hell Corner (P Longley)
McKay won with Jolly’s 1.5-litre Lotus second – first in class – then Ron Phillips’ Cooper T38, Frank Matich in the Leaton Motors C-Type, Gavan Sandford Morgan, Decca MK2 Climax then Warren Blomfield’s Aston Martin DB3S in sixth.
(Edgerton Family Arc)
Etcetera…
(R Reid)
Early laps I suspect with Bill Pitt in the Geordie Anderson D-Type from the obscured Jolly Lotus 15 and distinctive blue flash of Ron Phillip’s Cooper Jag.
(K Devine Arc)Cooper T38 Jag, Bathurst paddock (P Kelly)
Not to forget Derek Jolly of course. He took ATT honours in the second of his Lotus 15s at Longford in March 1960, on that occasion Doug Whiteford’s Maserati 300S was second and Frank Matich third in a D-Type.
McKay in DB3S/9 and Warren Blomfeld in DB3S/103 below.
The Leaton C-Type was Frank Matich’s first Big Car and he handled it rather well in a career that stretched all the way to the end of the 1974 Tasman Cup.
He won the Australian Tourist Trophy four times: 1964, Lotus 19B Climax, 1966, Elfin 400 Oldsmobile, and 1967-68 in his Matich SR3: Oldsmobile powered in ’67, Repco-Brabham 4.4 powered in 1968. Not to forget the Australian Sports Car Championship aboard the 4.8-litre Matich SR4 Repco in 1969.
(K Devine Arc)
Educated guess territory…Jim Wright’s Buchanan TR2 from Harry Capes’ Jaguar XK120. 14th and 19th respectively. And below, Phillip’s Cooper Jag again, in front of I’m not sure who.
(K Devine Arc)
Credits…
Des Lawrence, Peter Longley, Edgerton Family Archive, Bob Ross Collection, Ron Reid, David Medley, Paul Kelly Collection, Ken Devine Archive
Alan Hamilton launches his Porsche 906 Spyder off the line at Collingrove during his successful assault on the track record over the Easter 1967 long weekend, 35.60 seconds.
It’s a delightfully bucolic Angaston, Barossa Valley scene complete with a couple of Humpy Holdens – an FJ and 48-215 – and a part hidden Gunter-Wagen, VW Beetle. Great stuff, John Lemm.
While the laddos should be drinking in the 908 visage, their eyes are on the prize sitting in the Valiant AP5/6! That’s a Toyota Crown S40 and a Holden HD too. The Japs really upset the local order with their Crown, which was far posher and better built than the contemporary Holden Premier and Ford Fairmont. I wonder who the bloke in the red driving suit is?
(J Lemm)
And below on April 10, 1971, Easter again, Hammo is in the process of winning the second of his four Australian Hillclimb Championships, at Collingrove with his second 906 Spyder, this one had chassis number 906-007 too.
The great Hope Bartlett’s MG Q-Type at Wirlinga during the March 1938 Interstate Grand Prix/Albury Grand Prix weekend. The race was won by Jack Phillips and Ted Parsons in their self-built Ford V8 Special.
Commitment, Gordon Mitchell was absolutely nuts about his racing! ‘My Simca Station Wagon that I bought for $15, towing my Bugeye Austin Healey Sprite across the Nullarbor to an early night race meeting at Oran Park and a race meeting at Warwick Farm in 1971. Memories.’ It’s only 3820 km each way…London to Moscow is 2900 km.
Mitchell was a racer of vast experience with a CV extending from several Sprites, to Porsche 911S, Morris Marina V8, Alfa Romeo GTV, Fiat 131 Abarth, Fiat X19 Abarth and many more.
Fiat 131 Abarth Wanneroo (G Mitchell Coll)
I’ve had some fun lately thumbing through my 1969-72 collection of Racing Car News researching a piece on FoMoCo Oz two Ford GTHO Super Falcons. It takes a helluva long time because of the tangents, not least the ads, wasn’t it a great mag in the day?
Bernie Haehnle was a turn of the 1970s Formula Vee Ace who did well in Series Production and a season or so of Formula Ford in a Bowin P6F. What became of him?
(L Hemer)
‘The Narellan Cup meeting at Oran Park on 6th November 1971, was the first night meeting held after daylight saving began in NSW,’ wrote Lynton Hemer.
‘This meant that the organizers could include Formula Vees in the programme with 4 and 6 lap races at 5:30 and 6:30, before the darkness set in. Here are Bernie Haehnle, Damon Beck, Paul Bernasconi, Laurie Campfield, Denis Riley and Enno Buesselmann.’
Bruce McLaren on the way to winning the November 18, 1962, Australian Grand Prix in his Cooper T62 Climax at Caversham, Western Australia.
It was a lucky victory in that Jack Brabham was taken out when he zigged, and Arnold Glass zagged, eliminating Jack’s Brabham BT4 Climax and clipping the wings of Arnold’s BRM P48 Buick 3.9 V8. John Youl and Bib Stilwell were second and third in Coopers T55 and T53, respectively.
(K Devine)
David McKay susses Bruce’s new Cooper; he bought Jack’s Brabham BT4 shortly thereafter. More about this car here:https://primotipo.com/2016/05/20/bruce-lex-and-rockys-cooper-t62-climax/ On the road near Perth, below, Eoin Young, Wally Willmott, Bruce McLaren and Cooper T62 Climax FPF 2.7.
(K Devine)(K Devine)(M Kass)
The Max Winkless/Jan Woelders Porsche 356A 1600 during the August 21-September 8, 1957 Mobilgas Round Australia Trial.
The winners were Laurie Whitehead and Kevin Young in a VW Beetle 1200 ahead of five other Beetles!
The other ‘Porsche Cars Australia’ 356s were driven by Tom Jackson/David McKay (1500) 27th – above with Jackson working on his car – and the boss, Norman Hamilton (356A), the other cars of Hamilton and Winkless/Woelders were DNFs.
I guess 1971 Australian F2 Championship, Henk Woelders was Jan’s son? Henk is ahead of an Elfin 600 1.6 Lotus-Ford F2 pack at Calder: he, John Walker and Clive Millis, the black and yellow interloper is Peter Larner’s Rennmax.
(S Johnson)
And below Henk sharing an HK Holden Monaro GTS327 with Dyno Dave Bennett during the 1968 Sandown 3 Hour enduro, DNF, the race was won by the Tony Roberts/Bob Watson GTS327. More about Henk here:https://primotipo.com/2018/12/30/henk-woelders/
Unusual colour shot of Don O’Sullivan in his Matich SR3 Repco 720 4.4 V8 during 1969.
The Perth-based racer did quite a few East Coast meetings in 1969, finishing second in the 1969 Australian Sports Car Championship behind Frank Matich’s dominant Matich SR4 Repco 760 4.8 V8. His mechanic/engineer/driver and lifelong friend, Jaime Gard, was based in the Matich workshops that year to prepare the car and lend a highly skilled hand with FM’s cars, too, on occasion
Lynton Hemer catches the sun and beautiful lines of Bill Brown’s new Porsche Carrera RS at Warwick Farm on May 6, 1973. The inside front is just clearing the deck.
Meanwhile, Scuderia Veloce’s Bob Atkin was in the pits and took this shot of one of the races on the same day on the grid: Brian Foley in his Alfa Lightweight- the ex-Mildren-French GTA after further ‘Project 9’ surgery by John Joyce’s Bowin Cars team over the summer of 1972-73, Brown, Carrera RS, Bob Steven’s Mustang and another Grace Bros 911S, one of the Geoghegans I guess.
(B Atkin)
Scratch-men Frank Kleinig, Kleinig Hudson Spl, and John Crouch, Delahaye 135, start the handicap New South Wales Grand Prix, Mount Panorama, Bathurst October 1946.
Rare feel the vibe colour shots of the first Armstrong 500 at Phillip Island over the November 20 1960 weekend; the Bathurst 1000 started right here, of course, folks.
Car 43C below, amongst the ‘BRM mechanics’, is a works Morris Major driven by Rod Murphy and John Callaway. Activ-8 was a local oil company, Golden Fleece’s brand at the time. HC Sleigh Ltd sold Golden Fleece to Caltex in 1981.
(J Devine)(J Cronin)
You can just see a glimpse of Bass Straight below the distant Shell banner in this Main Straightaway – I’m channelling Mike Raymond – photograph. The Mercedes 220SE was crewed by the Youl brothers, Gavin and John, DNF.
(C Munday)
A couple of Garrie Cooper shots at Wanneroo Park, Western Australia.
The first shows him #5 on the grid of the WA Road Racing Championship on May 3, 1970, aboard his Elfin 600D Repco 830 2.5 V8 alongside fellow South Aussie John Walker’s Elfin 600B Lotus Ford 1.6 with Craig McAllister, Macon Ford 1.6 on the left. Cooper won from Walker with Bob Ilich’s Brabham BT21B Cosworth SCB third. See a piece about this race and Cooper’s car here:https://primotipo.com/2018/03/06/garrie-cooper-elfin-600d-repco-v8/
The one below is of Ansett Team Elfin: Garrie Cooper and John McCormack’s Elfin MR5 Repco-Holden F5000s at the Wanneroo Indian Pacific Plate meeting on August 12, 1973.
Cooper took out the three heat event overall with two wins to McCormack’s one Mac fastest of the day however a new lap record of 56.8 sec during the final 20 lapper.
(R Hagarty)
Credits…
John Lemm, Bill Forsyth Collection, Martin Kass, Bob Atkin, Ken Devine, John Cronin, Peter Cartwright, Mark Goldsworthy Collection via Bob Williamson, Sandy Fernanace, Chris Munday, Rob Hagarty, Stewart Johnson, Stephen Stockdale, Gordon Mitchell Collection
Dan Gurney awaits the start of the 1962 Indianapolis 500 in his Thompson Buick V8, with Fritz Voigt and Mickey Thompson in attendance, Memorial Day, Indiana, May 30, 1962.
Jack Brabham and John Cooper started the mid-engined Indy revolution – I’m not suggesting they were the first to race a mid-engined car there – in 1961 with their tiddly 2.7-litre Cooper T54 Climax FPF.
Mickey Thompson wasn’t the only Indycar builder to take the mid-engined bait, but one of his three Thompson Buick V8s driven by Indy debutant Dan Gurney, was the only mid-engined car that took the start in 1962.
His John Crosthwaite-designed, aluminium-bodied machine comprised a lightweight spaceframe chassis, a modified new aluminium Buick BOP – Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac – 215cid V8 and a Halibrand transaxle.
This revolutionary, aluminium production V8 weighed only 317 pounds, about 200 pounds less than Detroit’s cast iron equivalent thereof. Let’s stick with the engine for a bit.
Buick’s innovative V8 featured a deep-skirt aluminium block containing an assortment of iron and steel parts: cast-in bore liners, forged connecting rods, and a crankshaft supported by five main-bearing caps. The result was an engine that weighed 324 lbs, circa 200 lbs less than Chevy’s small-block V-8 (GM Media)
While the ads of the three General Motors’ subsidiaries that fitted the motors to their cars extolled the virtues of better fuel economy and a lighter car, racers looked at the obvious lightweight performance potential too.
The Buick and Pontiac 215 engines were identical but Oldsmobile’s ‘Rockette V8’ had revised heads. The Buick version used a five-bolt pattern around each cylinder, while the Oldsmobile jobbie used a six-bolt pattern to alleviate potential warping of the heads on high-compression variants of the engine
To the Olds party-faithful, the changes made the new engine look like its much respected predecessor, the Olds-Rocket V8, and to those seeking big power gains, the Olds F85 engine was the go, the extra head bolt would assist in avoiding blown head gaskets in performance applications.
You can feel and hear the vibe in this pre-start shot (IMS)
Crosthwaite – Thompson – Buick Indy Car 1962…
British engineer John Crosthwaite designed the Thompson 1962 machine for Mickey Thompson.
Crosthwaite’s and Thompson’s collaboration came about after John’s success with the Dolphin Formula Junior built by a company owned by Bud Hull, in the San Diego/Del Mar area of Southern California. Thompson noticed the pace of the cars and sought him out: https://0398ca9.netsolhost.com/dolphin01.htm
Soon, Thompson and his sponsors, Harvey Aluminium and Jim Kimberly of Kimberly Clark, approached Crosthwaite to design a mid-engined car inspired by those by then de rigeur in European road-racing for the 1962 500.
John Crosthwaite, Jack Brabham and Buddy Hull at right after testing the Dolphin Mk1 Fiat FJ at Riverside in November 1960 during the US Grand Prix weekend. Brabham had already won his second F1 World Championship in Portugal a couple of weeks before (Wiki)John Crosthwaite with one of his completed ’62 Thompson Buicks in Thompson’s Long Beach machine shop. Note the fuel tank locale, Halibrand wheel and beefy spaceframe. Body buck for something else? (Wiki)
Thompson Buick Design & Construction…
Crosthwaite drew on his earlier work in drawing a tubular steel spaceframe chassis, with fully independent suspension front and rear: upper and lower wishbones and coil spring/dampers and adjustable roll bars at the front, and a single upper links, twin radius rods and and gain coil spring/dampers and adjustable bar at the rear. The 16-inch Halibrand wheels and Firestones were way smaller than the usual 18/20 inch units used by the big, heavy roadsters.
The engine was a radical choice as well. Offies had ruled the day for decades. Not only was the Buick V8 the first stock-block engine raced at Indy since 1946, but it was also, as we have seen, brand-new. General Motors had developed a technique to cast aluminium engines in large volumes. The 3.5-litre 317 lb aluminium Buick-Oldsmobile-Pontiac BOP 215 V8 was the first volume production V8 in the world and was just on the market, fitted to the Buick Special, Oldsmobile F85 and Pontiac Tempest. More on the engine mods shortly. The transaxle was a Halibrand two-speed: fast and much faster! It was mated to the engine via a bespoke, shallow, cast bell-housing.
There was no pressure! The project had to be completed in just 120 days. Crosthwaite worked long hours living in a motel close to Thompson’s Los Angeles workshop where the car was built by a crew led by Fritz Voigt.
Key elements laid bare in the Indy garage: spaceframe chassis, modified Buick 215 stock-block aluminium V8, Halibrand two-speed transaxle, disc brakes (D Friedman)Hilborn fuel injection, roller rockers by Iskenderian or Crower (D Friedman)
Buick 215 V8…
The Buick V8 underwent significant performance surgery to be match fit against the 4.2-litre fuel-injected Offys, which gave about 350 bhp in 500-mile race spec at the time.
While multiple parties were involved in the engine’s development, the key modifications were made by Scarab engineers, who worked on improving the engine’s breathing capacity, and Mickey Thompson’s team who experimented with fuel injection and made a specially fabricated intake manifold to suit.
Or is that the case? There seem to be two schools of thought…
In its August 1962 issue that year, Hot Rod reported that the Buick was a Mickey Thompson (M/T) project with no factory help. M/T pistons with a 14:1 compression ratio and M/T aluminum rods were coupled to an M/T cast ductile-iron crankshaft with a 3.10-in stroke. (M/T was then marketing “Cast Billet” stroker crankshafts for popular V8s.) Iskenderian supplied the roller camshaft and kit, while Bob Bubenik engineered the gear drive for the cam and oil, water, and fuel pumps. HIlborn fuel injection with both laydown and vertical-stack manifolds were tried, but vertical stacks proved best. Quoted output was 330 bhp on straight methanol fuel.
Buick 215 engine, mods as per text (MMCG)(MMCG)
A few years later, in a May, 1970 feature Hot Rod interviewed some Buick executives who had a different perspective. In this version, noted Buick engineer Nelson Kunz led the three-month program, working closely with Thompson. Oversize cylinder liners allowed a bore of 3.6125 inches, but here the 3.10-in ductile iron stroker crank was a welded Buick piece and the connecting rods were 4340 steel. Large-port head castings and a Crower H-1 roller cam kit completed the combination, which produced 370 bhp at 7200 rpm. They reported about 15 engines were built with a few sent to sports car teams, including Lance Reventlow’s Scarab operation.
It’s hardly surprising if GM was a bit cute about its involvement in-period, given the Motor Racing Ban Deal between the Big Three at the time: GM, FoMoCo and Chrysler. On the balance of probabilities, Traco were involved too. They built a 3.9-litre modified, Weber-fed, Buick 215 V8 for Lance Reventlow, which was fitted to his Scarab RE Formula Libre car raced by Chuck Daigh in the February 1962 Sandown Park International.
That race was won by Jack Brabham’s Cooper T55 Climax. While the new Scarab chassis needed development – it was never raced again – the potency of the engine impressed onlookers, including Brabham, whose first Repco-Brabham F1 V8, built in 1965, used the Oldsmobile 215 F85 block in modified form; the RB620 3-litre V8 won World Drivers and Constructors Championships in 1966.
These early developments of the BOP 215 V8 Mickey Thompson and others were very important to the engine’s subsequent use by Repco-Brabham Engines and in the back of Bruce McLaren’s new McLaren-Elva sportscars, and others. More about the Scarab RE Buick in this article: https://primotipo.com/2016/01/27/chucks-t-bird/
Ain’t she very sweet, a handsome, purposeful machine in every respect. DG during the obligatory posed qualifying shot (IMS)
1962 Indy 500…
Dan’s primary race program in 1962 was with Porsche in F1 and endurance sportscars. He therefore arrived in Indiana match fit and as sharp as a tack.
Gurney told Andrew Ferguson about his debut year at Indy in 1962 in Ferguson’s research for his great book, ‘Team Lotus – The Indianapolis Years’.
‘I had first gone to Indianapolis in 1962, at the invitation of an entrant named John Zink. I took the obligatory driver’s test in his traditional front-engined Offy roadster, but what he was hoping to qualify for the race was a rear-engined frame. I’m sure it was actually an old Lotus chassis – powered by a Boeing gas turbine.’
‘He had some Boeing engineers who were keen to promote these things as high-reliability, cheap-to-run engines powering Kenworth trucks. One of the engineers was running one on the street in a ’32 Ford roadster, which must have been quite exciting.’
Dan smiling as best he can, Moore 62 Boeing during Indy qualifying (IMS)Boeing Model 502-10F turboshaft engine, a lightweight unit normally used in helicopters, being fettled at Indy. Moore 62 chassis aka John Zink Trackburner Spl (IMS)
‘But when Jack Zink appeared at Indy with his turbine car he was stiff and sore and his face and arms covered in scabs and grazes, because while testing the car back at some place in Oklahoma he’d flipped it during a test run. And when I got out on to the Speedway in the car it was plain that its 350 horsepower wasn’t enough. A gas turbine develops maximum torque at stall, like a steam engine, so the faster you ran it the less it delivered.’
‘In those days we were still having to brake into the turns at Indy, so when you went back on the gas that turbine could set very competitive corner speeds, and came off the turns with good acceleration. But part way down the straight it would be all over for the day. It just ran out of power and stopped accelerating.’
‘I was really having to hustle it in the effort to set competitive lap times, and it became clear that it just didn’t have enough power. So I told Zink that if he could find anyone to drive it faster he shouldn’t worry about hurting my feelings – he should go right ahead and try them…and then Mickey Thompson asked if I’d like to drive one of his new rear-engined Buick V8-powered cars.’
Thompson and Fritz Voigt during Indy qualifying. The ‘body-off’ shots suggest a high level of design and execution quality despite the tight timelines involved (MMCG)‘Fancy meeting you here Colin!’ Gurney greets his Indy 500 guest, Colin Chapman, from the Hospitality Suite! Rather a successful weekend for them both (D Friedman)
Dan had a lot riding on the race. He had funded Colin Chapman to come over and see the 1962 Indy 500 with a view to hooking Lotus and Ford up for a proper shot at the 1963 500. Dan knew an Indy version of the then ‘spankers Lotus 25 monocoque – which debuted at the Dutch GP in May that year – was a race winner.
Dan’s switch to Thompson’s aluminium Buick V8 stock block-powered mid-engined Crosthwaite design proved a good one. The Indy Rookie qualified the new car a tremendous eighth with a speed of 147.886 mph, impressive in every respect. Having said that, Dan was of course, racing mid-engined cars all the time, there was nothing unconventional about the layout to him.
Up at the pointy end, the top three were Roadsters: Parnelli Jones’ Watson Offy from Rodger Ward’s similar car and Bobby Marshman’s Epperly Offy in third.
A couple of youngsters who done real good! Roger Penske wishes Dan well before he jumps in and puts on the ‘belts mandatory at Indy. Note the crash pad on the steering wheel and injection trumpet debris protector (IMS)Mickey Thompson and Dan Gurney just before the start (R Brock/Getty)
After the start, Gurney gradually worked his way into ninth place after the initial stages. The only incident in those early stages was on lap 17 when a four-car pile-up involving Jack Turner, Bob Christie, Allen Crowe and Chuck Rodee. Noteworthy is that AJ Foyt lost a wheel off his Trevis Offy on lap 69.
Running nicely, on lap 92 of 200, Dan experienced a problem with the rear end and was forced to retire. A leaking Halibrand transaxle was later attributed to an improperly mounted seal around the starter shaft in the back of the gearbox which fell out and killed the gearbox.
The race was won by Ward from Len Sutton’s Watson Offy then Eddie Sachs’ Epperly Offy, with Dan classifed 20th and in the money to the tune of $US5161.
Pitstop for Dan, who was out on lap 92 in the Thompson Harvey Aluminium Spl (unattributed)(D Friedman)
Despite not finishing, the Thompson Buick’s performance was considered noteworthy as it demonstrated again the potential of the rear-engined layout and a light aluminium stock block V8 at Indy.
The move looked prophetic on Dan’s part when one of two drivers who drove the John Zink Trackburner Spl aka Moore 62 Boeing. After Dan left, Duane Carter, and then Bill Cheesbourg, tried to get the Moore 62 up to speed but couldn’t. Cheesbourg followed Dan to Thompson’s outfit and drove the #35 Harvey Aluminium Special – Thompson Buick – #35 but missed the cut as did Chuck Daigh who had preceded him…
A third #33 Thompson Buick owned by Jim Kimberly was driven by Porky Rachwitz and Jack Fairman, who both failed to qualify.
The Thompson Harvey Aluminium Special at Indy in 1962 (B Tronolone-Revs)
Etcetera…
Gurney aboard Zink’s Watson Offy for his Rookie Test, Indy 1962, and the shot below (D Friedman)
In order to pass his rookie test Gurney used a good, old, reliable Roadster. Zink’s Offy powered car was no less a chassis than the updated Watson used by Pat Flaherty to win the 1956 race for Zink.
Of interest, perhaps, from indycar.com. ‘Rookie tests from 1936-80 took place during practice for the Indianapolis 500 in May, when the track was open nearly the entire month. Many rookie drivers took advantage of turning their required laps early in May, when there was less traffic because veteran drivers often waited until later in the month to begin their programs.’
(unattributed)(LAT)
Rookie tests for seasoned professionals such as Gurney may seem a little strange, during July 1962 he had won his first championship Grand Prix for Porsche at Rouen-Les-Essarts aboard the the 1.5-litre flat-eight powered car (above).
But Indianapolis is a treacherous place, especially back then.
Porsche 804 laid bare at Zandvoort in May 1962, the meeting at which Gurney – along with the rest of motor racing – went WOW over Chapman’s new monocoque Lotus 25 Climax (J Alexander)
As a consequence, ‘In 1981, the Rookie Orientation Program was formalized. The biggest difference between ROP and previous rookie tests was the entire session was reserved for rookies only, with the session taking place sometime in April or early May. Drivers no longer needed to find clear track amid veteran practice to learn the ropes.’
‘It doesn’t matter if the driver is making their first NTT Indycar series start in the “500” or has extensive global racing success. They all must take the test.’
‘Some noteworthy drivers who were established stars before their first Indy 500 start required to take a rookie test include existing or eventual F1 World Champions Alberto Ascari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jack Brabham, Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Denis Hulme, Jackie Stewart, Jochen Rindt, Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell and Fernando Alonso.’
Click on the link, then go to note 3, ‘Moore 62 Dan Gurney’, read that, then click on the link to the ‘Len Williams report’ for an amazing account of the car’s construction, testing by Zinc on the track at his ranch, and then the fun and games at Indy trying to coax the car into the race. Truly wonderful stuff.
Moore 62 Boeing turbine and Halibrand transaxle. Designer Denni Moore has gone to great lengths to stiffen the large opening that contains the bulky turbine engine ((D Friedman)Thomson and Voigt, this angle shows how the Thompson Buick’s engine is mounted offset left (MMCG)Firestone boys do their thing. Symmetry albeit offset left! (IMS)Dan Gurney on the Indy 500 and GP racing in 1965Mickey Thompson and John Crosthwaite sandwich a Harvey Aluminium representative well before the #35 car failed to make the ’62 500 cut in the hands of Chuck Daigh and Bill Cheesbourg! (JC Collection)
John Crosthwaite…
Crosthwaite died on September 5, 2010, aged 84.
After the Mickey Thompson cars for the 1962-63 Indy 500, Crosthwaite joined Holman Moody in July 1963. When their Indy project fell through, Crosthwaite commenced at BRM that December.
Later in his career, he was involved in designing chassis for road cars, including the Intermeccanica Italia, the Bond Bug, and the Reliant Scimitar GTE.
Crosthwaite worked with some notable figures/businesses in the sport, including Cooper, Team Lotus, Graham Hill, Dan Gurney, and Jackie Stewart. His innovative designs, particularly for the Indy 500, left a lasting impact on motorsport engineering.
Buick had an ad ready to go had they won in ’91…Gary Bettenhausen DNF radiator after 89 laps, the best placed Buick turbo-V6-powered car was Stan Fox’s Lola T91/00, which was eighth in the race won by Rick Mears’ 2.65-litre Penske PC20 Ilmor Chev 265-A V8.
Credits…
David Friedman Archive, Macs Motor City Garage, psychoontyres.co.uk, Ray Brock/Getty Images, Bob Tronolone-The Revs Institute, Indy Motor Speedway, IMS-Indianapolis Motor Speedway Archive, oldracingcars.com, GM Corp, John Crosthwaite Collection via Wikipedia, LAT, Jesse Alexander, indycars.com
And below making up for lost time through traffic in the latter stages of the 1969 Monaco GP, McLaren M7C Ford, where Bruce was fifth in the race won by Graham Hill’s Lotus 49B Ford.
The CSI/FIA banned the hi-wings overnight Friday-Saturday so I guess this is the Thursday.
(G Johannson)
The victorious Surtees/Scarfiotti Ferrari 250P at Sebring in 1963, the Scuderia’s sixth outright Florida win in eight years
Ferrari took the first three places in the prototype and GT classes, the Index of Performance and the lap record, not a bad weekend’s work…
(M Fistonic)
John Surtees guides his works-Lotus 18 Climax FPF 2.5 around Ardmore Aerodrome during the January 7, 1961 New Zealand Grand Prix.
Colin Chapman sent a pair of Lotus 18s south that summer to keep his drivers sharp over the European winter: team drivers Surtees, Jim Clark and Innes Ireland made the trip with Lotus’ Queerbox doing its bit to despoil the results.
Surtees was NZ GP DNF gearbox (winner Brabham Cooper T53), Levin DNF radiator (Bonnier Cooper T51), and Wigram DNF undisclosed from pole (Brabham Cooper T53).
(M Fistonic)
For Jim Clark above, it’s a little better: NZ GP sixth, Levin second and Wigram DNF stall.
For the record, Roy Salvadori was a DNF gearbox at Wigram and second at Teretonga (Bonnier Cooper T51) in a Yeoman Credit Lotus 18 ‘on his way’ to Australia to do the Oz Internationals in one of Jack’s Cooper T51s.
Ireland was second to Moss in the ferociously hot Warwick Farm 100 (Moss Lotus 18) but DNF in the Victorian Trophy at Ballarat Airfield (Dan Gurney BRM P48).
A couple of stud-meisters at Warwick Farm in 1961, Innes DOB 12/6/1930, Stirling 17/9/1929 (M McGuin)(CAN)
I’d forgotten Jo Bonnier’s two ‘Tasman’ wins in 1961 aboard an old Cooper T51 Climax.
Here he is on the Teretonga International grid on pole at right with Denny Hulme’s Cooper T51 Climax, Pat Hoare, Ferrari 256 and Tony Shelly’s Cooper T45 Climax – with ? Lycoming Special looming large at the far right.
Bonnier won from Roy Salvadori, Lotus 18, then Hulme, Hoare and Shelly.
(CAN)
And, the wonders of Facebook, one for the Cooper historians from Classic Auto News‘ Allan Dick.
‘Bonnier had a successful 1961 tour with Yeoman Credit. He won convincingly at Levin (beating Jim Clark) and Teretonga despite having an old car. After winning the main Teretonga race, he went off in the Flying Farewell (an all-in race at the end of the race weekend, a ‘Butcher’s Picnic’ in Australia), damaging the car so badly that it wasn’t considered worthwhile taking it back to Europe, so it was stripped of its parts and left in Invercargill. Nobody knows what happened to it. Here it is being recovered from the lupins (above) at the end of the main straight.’
(Lister Cars)
Archie Scott-Brown and Brian Lister ponder the construction of the prototype Lister-Jaguar chassis BHL2, registered MVE303…and 506 306 in late 1956 or early 1957 at the Lister family’s Cambridge workshop.
Scott-Brown had a fabulous season, winning 11 of the 14 races he entered including breaking the unlimited sportscar lap record, during the race or practice, on every circuit the team visited.
Press release, what date folks? (Lister Cars)(Classic & Sportscar)
He and a mechanic then took the Lister to New Zealand for their 1958 summer internationals, where the car – registered 506-306 – won two more races. Archie took a 12-lap Le Mans start preliminary at Teretonga and the 150-mile Lady Wigram Trophy (above), finishing ahead of two Grand Prix cars: Ross Jensen’s Maserati 250F and shooting star Stuart Lewis-Evans’ Bernie Ecclestone-owned Connaught B3 Alta.
In an era where such fast cars were usually sold to a lucky (or not) colonial at the end of the trip, the Lister returned home ‘to clear the Customs bond in New Zealand,’ wrote Doug Nye. Sadly, BHL2 was then torn down with many of its fit and well components used in the build of other car(s).
Ken Wharton punts his awesome BRM P15 V16 around Ardmore during the January 9, 1954 New Zealand Grand Prix
He had the 100 lap 300km race shot to bits when brake problems intervened, finishing second behind Stan Jones in Maybach 1, with Tony Gaze HWM Alta third.
Enzo Ferrari ponders the 300bhp, SOHC, two-valve Repco-Brabham V8-engined Brabham BT19 in the Monza pits during the September 1966 Italian GP weekend.
Ludovico Scarfiotti brought home the pancetta for the Scuderia, mind you, winning the race from Mike Parkes in another Ferrai 312 with Denny Hulme third in his Brabham BT20 Repco.
(LAT)
Still, the pace of the little-ies shouldn’t have surprised Enzo in that transitional year: the 2-litre Coventry Climax and BRM-powered Lotus 33s of Jim Clark and Graham Hill, and his own Dino 246 of course. The title was there for Ferrari’s taking; all they had to do was keep John Surtees in the saddle for the year…
Meanwhile, Jack was having a grouse time. Time enough to slip home mid-season for the opening week of Surfers Paradise International Raceway – his race was on August 14 – collect some cash, demonstrate Repco’s wares to the punters, then go back to Europe and wrap up the World Championship…which he did at Monza.
(NAA)
The logistics of it all are interesting.
Win the German GP in BT19 on August 7, pop it in a Qantas 707 to Australia (or whatever), get it from Melbourne or Sydney to Surfers. Do the whole thing in reverse, get BT19 race prepped, then truck it off to Italy.
Meanwhile, Jack jumped a jet to Scandinavia and won two ‘Euro F2’ rounds from Denny: the Kanonloppet, Karlskoga on August 21, and the Finlands GP at Keimola Ring on August 24. JB in a BT21 Honda, DH in a BT18 Honda. August wasn’t a bad month, really. Some sort of engine problem let the Repco side down in Queensland, it could easily have been a win a weekend for Jack…
(Ebay)
Mike Spence at the wheel of the Chaparral 2F Chev he shared with Phil Hill at Le Mans in 1967, DNF transmission failure after 225 laps in the race won by the Ford Mk4 raced by Dan Gurney and AJ Foyt.
Kuniomi Nagamatsu on the way to victory in the May 3, 1971 Japan Auto Federation Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji International Speedway aboard his Mitsubishi Colt F2D/F2000 R39B 2-litre.
He won the 35 lap, 225km race from his teammate Osamu Masuko in another F2D from then Japanese International Tetsu Ikuzawa’s Lotus 69 Ford FVC 1790cc in third place.
Nagamatsu’s win was the culmination of six years of Mitsubishi single-seater racing in Japan and Macau using Brabham chassis/copies thereof; the F2Ds are Brabham BT30 chassis in drag. Lower drag that is, the aero on these cars was the work of Mitsubishi’s aviation subsidiary.
The engines were home grown too. Initially production motors with the usual mix of increased bore, heads, carbs and cams but by 1971 Topsy was a 2-litre, twin-cam, four valve, fuel injected F2 engine that should have won the 1972 European F2 Championship if someone – how bout Bernie Ecclestone, having just acquired Brabham – had done a deal. Instead, Mitsubishi handbrake turned away from single-seaters and into the forests where they were already gaining international success…
Who said high-airboxes were started by Tyrrell/Matra during 1971?
Ferrari gave it a whirl on Richie Ginther’s Ferrari 156 at Reims during practice for the 1961 French Grand Prix, he didn’t race with it, so presumably the jury was out as to its performance. That’s Carlo Chiti with the top of his head chopped off.
And below in the LWB (it’s a joke folks) Ferrari 156 #0001 at Monaco on May 14 where he scored a rousing second place behind Mighty Moss in Rob Walker’s Lotus 18 Climax and in front of more-fancied teammates Phil Hill and Wolfgang von Trips. See here for the evolution of 246P to 156:https://primotipo.com/2015/10/04/monaco-panorama-1958/
(GPL)
And below Richie all, fast and loose in his competition debut at Sandberg Hillclimb on April 8, 1951. The car is Bill Cramer’s MG TC 2 Junior Ford V8, the poor little chassis would have been groaning at the seams…
(Revs Institute)(primotipo archivio)
Brian Redman contesting the 1976 Teretonga International aboard a Fred Opert Chevron B29 BMW 2-litre Euro F2 car in the Peter Stuyvesant International F5000 Series.
F5000’s greatest star was to race a RAM Racing F5000 but Fred Opert came to the rescue after they withdrew. Brian thrilled the Kiwis with his talent, he was equal fourth in the series with Graeme Lawrence’s Lola T332, Ken Smith won the four race series in his Lola T330/332 Chev.
Redman was fourth at Pukekohe, second at Manfield, DNF engine at Wigram and DNF wheel at Teretonga.
Manfield pits 1976 (D Bull)(Getty)
N.A.R.T.’s Ferrari 250LM #5893 – the 1965 Le Mans winner in the hands of Johen Rindt and Masten Gregory – dangles above the wharf at Le Havre after its trip from New York on the liner, France, September 18, 1968, destination, La Sarthe.
Masten Gregory ahead of a bunch of cars, including #11 Brian Muir’s Ford GT40, Andre De Cortanze #30 Alpine A220 Renault Gordini, the #60 Willy Meier Porsche 911T and Umberto Maglioli’s Chev Corvette. All were DNFs with the exception of the De Cortanze/Jean Vinatier Alpine, which was tenth. The ’68 race was won by Pedro Rodriguez/Lucien Bianchi in a JW Automotive Ford GT40.
(EBay)
The Gran Premio dell’Adriatico 1981 European F2 Championship round at Misano with Miguel Angel Guerra’s works Minardi Fly 281 Ferrari Dino, 13th, ahead of Oscar Pedersoli’s Ralt RT2 BMW, DNF.
McLaren Cars, Milan Fistonic, Lister Cars, Stuart Dent Collection, Gerry Johannson, GP Library, National Archives Australia, David Bull, Ebay, Revs Institute, Getty Images, LAT, CAN Classic Auto News via Allan Dick, Mitsubishi, Michael McGuin
Leo Geoghegan blasts his ex-Clark Lotus 39 Repco 830 V8 around Warwick Farm, perhaps during the July 12-13 1969 meeting, and the year before, below at Mallala during the 1968 Gold Star weekend.
(unattributed)
Leo won at Mallala from Kevin Bartlett’s Brabham BT23D Alfa Romeo, along side him on the front row and Glyn Scott, Bowin P3 Ford FVA in third.
#3 is Phil West’s Scuderia Veloce Brabham BT23A Repco, alongside him is John Walker’s Elfin Mono, the helmet under KB’s wing is Scott’s, I’m not sure about the fella behind Scott with the black helmet.
Three-wheel angel ride into Creek Corner for Leo at Warwick Farm, date unknown, but the 39 is still in its Climax FPF days. It wasn’t the only time the knock-offs ‘misbehaved’, he had a similar adventure at Longford during the 1968 meeting.
‘Just off to the Farm for the day to watch Darls, see you about 7’.
‘That’s Bob Holden in the ex-Bill Brown GTHO that rolled on lap 1 of the 1969 Bathurst 500,’ responded Alan Gow to this mystery car to me.
‘Bob kept that rego number his whole life (which continues!) and put it on various of his cars.’
(T Cotton)
Warwick Rooklyn, Class B Ralt RT32 VW F3 at Oulton Park during the August 13, 1989 round of the British F3 Championship.
David Giles wrote that ‘when he spun off in the race, Murray Walker referenced his sponsor with a “well the track is as dry as a bone and maybe that’s the problem!” quip!’
The young star yachtsman was a pretty handy racer as well, winning the 1986 Australian Formula Ford Driver to Europe Series in an Elwyn 003/004 from such luminaries as Alan Bisset (no relation), Richard Carter, Mark Poole and David Brabham.
He came across Brabham again in the 1989 British F3 Championship. DB won the August Oulton Park round en route to winning the championship from Allan McNish and Derek Higgins on his inexorable rise through the sport. Rooklyn was second in Class B behind Fernando Plata’s similar RT32.
Rooklyn raced Formula Holdens in the Australian Gold Star Championships in 1991-92, in a Ralt RT21 Holden as above in ’92 and aboard a Shrike NB89H Holden in which he was seventh in the championship.
Warwick had a number of Bathurst starts, his best was finishing 12th outright and third in class in a 2-litre BMW 318i alongside John Blanchard in 1994.
It’s on yachts that Warwick made his mark globally, I can’t give you one article that neatly summarises his career, so Google away as you see fit.
(P Cummins Archive)
B Bira – Birabongse Bhanudej Bhanubandh – during the South Pacific Championship meeting at Gnoo Blas on January 31, 1955, Maserati 4CLT-48 OSCA 4.5-litre V12.
At the outset of Prince 1955 Australasian Tour, his Maserati 250F was tatty but fresh enough to win the New Zealand Grand Prix at Ardmore on January 8 from a classy field that included Peter Whitehead and Tony Gaze’s 3-litre Ferrari 500/625s, Jack Brabham’s 2-litre Cooper T23 Bristol, and Reg Hunt’s 2.5-litre Maserati A6GCM.
But at Gnoo Blas, Orange, three weeks later, the exotic Italian DOHC, straight-six went kaboomba in practice. So Bira wheeled out his second-string OSCA, but it too had fuel feed problems in the first FIA-sanctioned race meeting in Australia, won by Whitehead from Brabham and Gaze.
The Peter Whitehead/Tony Gaze/Alf Barrett Jaguar C-Type led but DNF below after 282 of the winners’ 573 laps.
(M Goldsworthy Collection)
No such thing as too much Frank Matich as you all know…
A decade ago there were few photographs of his 1967 Can-Am exploits with two 4.4-litre Repco-Brabham V8 powered SR3s but now there are a few more even if most are paddock shots, Facebook being the distribution medium.
Max Stewart on the way to winning the April 2, 1972 Singapore Grand Prix on the Thomson Road circuit, Mildren Lotus-Ford 1.6 from Vern Schuppan’s March 722 and Bob Muir’s Rennmax BN3, both cars also Lotus-Ford powered.
Up top, its Norm Beechey’s and Len Lukey’s Ford Customlines and Jack Myers’? Holden 48-215 at the start of the 8-lap KLG Touring Car Trophy won by Lukey’s Cusso from the similar cars raced by Reg Smith, Doug Whiteford and B Rice. See more on Len here: https://primotipo.com/2019/12/26/len-lukey-australian-gold-star-champion/
And the shot below shows young Allan Jones with his hand on the Ford watch the start of the 1958 Melbourne Grand Prix won by #7 Stirling Moss’ Cooper T45 FPF from Jack Brabham’s similar car #8.
#12 is Stan Jones’ Maserati 250F (DNF), #10 Tom Clarke’s Ferrari 555 Super Squalo (10th) with Ted Gray’s Tornado 2 Chev V8 (DNF) inside him. See here: https://primotipo.com/2024/01/12/coopers-aloft/
And David Coulthard below in 1997, 40 years on, there is just no comparison, same venue but so different…
(Getty)(T Parkinson Archive)
Allan Tomlinson waves to the punters as he takes a sensational victory in the 1939 Australian Grand Prix at fearsome Lobethal aboard his oh-so-carefully prepared and skilfully driven MG TA Spl s/c on January 2. See here for a feature on the race: https://primotipo.com/2020/12/04/tomlinsons-1939-lobethal-australian-grand-prix/
One for the touring car fans, start of a tourer race circa 1967 with Pete Geoghegan’s Mustang up the front together with Robin Bessant’s Lotus Cortina and Frank Gardner’s Alec Mildren Racing Alfa Romeo GTA. The tail of Bruno Carosi’s Jaguar Mk2 is there too.
There have been plenty of Australian Grand Prix winners who have worked on their cars but not to many by 1984…
Roberto Moreno giving Harvey Spencer a hand on Niki Lauda’s Goold Motorsport – Greg Siddle – Ralt RT4/85 Ford during practice at Calder over the November 18 weekend. The compression tester is there with diagnostics underway.
Niki was Q18 and DNF collision after 41 of the 100 laps (100 miles), but Roberto had an affinity with the place and took the win from pole in the other Siddle machine; he won there in other RT4s in 1981 and 1983 too.
Lex Davison served a notice of later Australian Grand Prix intent with his impressive handling of his powerful, heavy Mercedes-Benz SSK 38/250 during the 1947 event at Bathurst on October 6.
He was third in the handicap race off 10.5 minutes, behind him is scratch-man, the great Alf Barrett’s Alfa Romeo 8C2300 Monza, who didn’t finish. Lex won the race in 1954-HWM Jaguar, 1957-58 3-litre Ferrarii 500/625 and in 1961 aboard a Cooper T51 Climax. Alf didn’t ever take a derserved win, his had AGP luck mirrored Lex’s great AGP luck!
Bill Murray’s MG TC won from Dick Bland’s Mercury Special and Davo.
Start of a Warwick Farm marque sports car race circa 1971, date and placegetters folks? And what a grid it is!
From the left is Graham Bland’s Honda S800, Ian Corness’ MGB, Bob Skelton, Austin Healey Sprite, Ross Bond;s usually dominant Austin Healey 3000 and Graeme Lawrie, Triumph Spitfire.
(D Cummimg)
Graeme Lawrence shakes hands with Liverpool Speedway promoter, Frank Oliveri after an F5000 demonstration on the high speed, paved, quarter mile oval circa-1974.
The Kiwi is in his Lola T332 Chev and alongside is Jon Davison’s jet-black Matich A50 Repco-Holden. It must have been spectacular folks, anyone see it?
(West Archive)
Phil West basks in the admiration of the Mount Panorama crowd after winning the Bathurst round of the Gold Star, Easter 1968.
This rare portrait of Phil was posted by his daughter, Kate Murphey on Bob Williamson’s Old Motor Racing Photographs FB page.
His mount was the Scuderia Veloce Brabham BT23A Repco 740 2.5 V8 vacated not long before by Greg Cusack after his Longford Tasman accident. More on Scuderia Veloce here:https://primotipo.com/2022/03/07/bob-atkin-collection-1/
(P Cross)
Credits…
Ed Holly Archive, Bill Forsyth via Tony Loxley/Full Throttle, Bob Williamson Archive, Pete Biro, Larry Fulhorst, Tony Parkinson Archive, Tim Cotton Collection, MotorSport Images, Mark Goldsworthy Collection via Bob Williamson, oldracephotos.com, David Cumming, Paul Cross, Phil West Archive via Kate Murphey
Tailpiece…
(R Edgerton Collection)
Love this shot of Bill Thompson and Bill Balgarnie’s MG K3 on the hop during the April 1, 1935 Australian Grand Prix, the last held on Phillip Island.
The 200 mile handicap race was organised by the Light Car Club of Australia and as usual to that point was a race for cars of under 2-litres.
Les Murphy’s MG P-Type won by only 27 seconds from Thompson off scratch, Murphy started the race 29 minutes and 27 seconds ahead of him. Thompson did the fastest time and set the fastest lap in a famous drive.
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