Formula Junior at Brands Hatch 10 SEP 06

This was a day when the weather lived up to the forecast; hardly a cloud in the sky and decidedly warm, just to remind us that Summer is not yet spent.

The entry of 27 cars was representative, the most interesting for me being the Bond of Chris Featherstone, a car I had only previously read about.     Front drive by a Ford 105E turned round and driving a Bond chassis-mounted differential via an in-line Ford gearbox.    All beautifully made and presented and a good example of the hopeful ingenuity with which Formula Junior abounded in its early years before the success of Cooper, Lotus, Brabham, etc., spelled out the ideal layout.       Lotus 18s were well represented with four nicely prepared examples.     They looked almost rugged, hardly an adjective one would normally use when describing a Lotus.

Mark Woodhouse secured pole, having now fixed an elusive throttle linkage problem which had spoiled several meetings for him.     Within the next 0.2 seconds came the Hibberds, Andrew for once getting ahead of Dad.     Close behind, but not expecting a ‘podium’ in a dry race, were the Coopers of Hamish Morrison and Simon Armer.     John Truslove led the front engined entry by a fraction from David Stevenson.     Tim Bishop in the DKW engined Sauter did a ‘personal best’ time, the car making an interesting and very loud sound.    I do not think that many people would be fooled into thinking that the very prominent divergent/ convergent expansion box of this two-stroke is any sort of silencer.

I would like to have seen more of the race, but from the pit wall all one sees, from one’s little hatch in the wire, is a brief glimpse of a string of cars on full chat while one tries to remember to click the watch on one’s own driver.     I am therefore indebted to drivers whose stories I managed to garner later, and I apologise to those I missed.    It took some six laps for Michael Hibberd to get the lead, slipping inside Mark Woodhouse going into Druids.    Andrew Hibberd and the two Coopers of Hamish Morrison and Simon Armer chasing along but slowly being dropped, though Woodhouse kept close but was not able to attempt re-taking the lead.     Andrew Willis went very well in his Lotus 18 to take class C1, while John Truslove won class A2 by more than half a minute.       Kevin Musson took class B and was the third car in a race-long ‘train’ led by Bill Grimshaw with Robin Lackford in between.    There was a similar chase with the Lotus 18s of Mark Green and Simon Hamilton with Hamilton once able to get alongside approaching Paddock, but never able to get ahead.     Maybe there had not been a vast amount of place changing, but everybody said how much they had enjoyed their drive on this challenging little circuit.     Roger Dexter’s Elva DKW whiskered a spark plug, while the Ford engine in Chris Featherstone’s Bond never sounded on song.

At the prize giving Duncan confirmed that John Truslove had (after Oulton Park) scored enough points to win the overall British Championship as well as Class A2.

I have scanned into this document the sheets issued by the organisers:

page 2 -  Qualifying times
page 3 -  The grid
page 4 -   Race result

John Greenwood 11SEP06