750 MC Mallory Park 14^th March 2004

Round one of the 2004 UK FJ championship, attracted a colourful, very varied and well turned out field of cars. To be really appreciated these had to be seen lined up in the assembly area, or on the starting grid a sight to gladden the heart of anyone into Historic Formula Juniors cars.

The Qualifying practice was a topsy turvey affair, the steady rain had a lot to do with this, the pace of the front engined cars was astounding in the conditions, Derek Walker was fastest with a 1.05.13 in the Terrier Mk 1V, Mark Woodhouse next in 1.06.08, Smeeth Lotus 22 third, Steve Smith Cooper T59 fourth, Simon Diffey was driving Duncan's Alexis to good effect in fifth, Edwin Jowsey Lotus 22 completed the top six ! there were one or two new faces in familiar cars and a couple of Cooper F3 500s completed the picture. Twenty cars were timed in the session, Simon Armer's new Cooper T 59 has suffered a continuation of his engine problems and he and Barry Westmoreland Lotus 22 were not seen.

The race was scheduled for 3 pm but a restart in the Locost race put it back to 3.30pm, the weather held and a dry track promised to upset the front engined flavour at the front of the starting grid. After the parade lap all twenty cars faced the red lights, there were no green lights available for the start of any of the races out went the lights off they all went into Gerrards more or less in grid order for the first lap, after this the power and speed of the rear engined cars began to tell and Steve Smith had the Cooper into the lead, he was quickly followed through by Edwin Jowsey's Lotus, these two then had an almighty dice for the lead, behind them Paul Smeeth had improved to third in his 22, next Walker Terrier and Woodhouse Elva were having a mighty tussle for position, Simon Diffey came into the pits on lap four with a detached exhaust on the Alexis and retired, on the fifth lap Jowsey had the 22 in front of Smith's Cooper but not by very much, over the next couple of laps these two circulated together at a furious pace, at Gerrards on the eighth lap Edwin suffered sudden total loss of engine power, this left Steve Smith in the Cooper nowhere to go, in the resulting contact both cars spun into the Armco on the outside Gerards with pretty serious damage to Steve's Cooper and relatively minor damage to the Lotus but fortunately both drivers were perfectly OK, Michael Waller came into the pits to retire on the twelfth lap with steam rising from the Kieft, while all this was going on the front engined cars were still hard at it with Mark Woodhouse holding the Elva right in the slipstream of the Derek Walker Terrier during the closing laps of the race, these two were only some 12 seconds behind the leader at the end, one lap adrift were Bill Grimshaw in the Gemini and Crispian Besley in his Elva, Mark Green in his Lotus 22 was sixth in an extraordinary FJ race where the front engined cars were on the pace all day.

Paul Smeeth in his Lotus 22 scored a very smooth win, while Walker and Woodhouse second and third respectively provided the fireworks, a fine opening round to the UK season, I hope some photo's were taken of all those splendid FJ cars at the start.

Stan Hibberd 15^th March 2004