A revival of the Awards Dinner constituted at the Stoneleigh Race Retro show a few years ago, but dormant after 3 occasions. In 2003, FJHRA won the Best Championship of the Year award.
This time ‘Octane’ Magazine and Motor Racing Legends combined to stage a high level event in the glorious setting of the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.  So high level, that, walking into the pre dinner gathering, it was difficult to recognise anyone who might have any connection to Historic Racing as we know it.  However, a few faces came to light – Geoff Turrall of Porsche, who drove Simon Diffey’s Lotus 20, briefly, at the Silverstone Classic: was the only FJ driver, indeed only Historic driver I saw! Until Murray Smith, one of the Judges tapped me on the shoulder – not worried that his Cooper T59 was unsold as he loved it – in fact one minute before I had been talking to Simon Arron, Motoring News GP reporter about Murray’s exploits at the last Bahamas Speed Week, driving the Scarab F1 at speed round the ¼ mile running track, while I was commentating on Radio Nassau!

Grahame White, Chris Sharples, Alan Jones and Chris Alford represented the HSCC, and had gathered a table of luminaries including Kevin Wheatcroft, Christopher (& Rachel) Tate, now returned to the sport as supremo at Donington Park, Nick Mason (Pink Floyd), Lloyd McNeil (Goodwood) and Nick Wigley (Silverstone Classic) – And a most successful table it proved to be with Kevin Wheatcroft winning Individual Personality, Lloyd substituting for the Earl of March to collect the Best Event award, and the HSCC receiving the Best Club award: gratifying that the pre award snippets included some splendid clips of Andrew Tart (Bond) and Crispian Besley (Elva 100) dicing together and of the Bond internals – helps to be coloured red!

Dr Fred Simone collected the best collection award – and we were able to exchange greetings; he had kindly searched his Bartels archive to see if anything could be found relating to the mystery Italian FJ that once graced the Donington Collection masquerading as a Stanguellini.

Carol Spagg collected the ‘best Series’ award for her new pre 63 GT Series – other nominations included Group C and Jaguar E Types – but not FJHRA!

Lifetime achievement award went to Sir Stirling Moss OBE, still remarkable, and supported as always by Susie.  Martin Brundle acted as compere for the show, after an introduction by Robert Coucher of Octane – Tony Brooks presented the award to Sir Stirling and then announced that his autobiography – originally started with Mike Lawrence – but now by himself, was finished.  We gather that the Connaught 1955 Syracuse GP Winner’s book may yet miss the Christmas shelves so we look forward to it in the New Year.

Duncan sat with some interesting contenders for awards -  Chris Barette of Zircotec who make everlasting thermal coatings “paint” for Jaguar exhausts, and sponsored an HSCC Championship a couple of years ago.  Next year they are looking for an MG related series to celebrate 50 years of the MGB and Emmanuel Cerf and his wife, Montserrat, from Tampa Bay Automobile Museum, Florida who have resurrected and restored the most amazing Cugnot Steam Carriage; The first of its kind, which they showed at Retromobile this year.

Although billed as Judges, there was no sign of Derek Bell, Patrick Peter, nor FJ friend and Lola Mk2 racer Horst Brüning, President of FIVA, who looked rather like a Ruritarian General on the programme photograph!

Whilst Robert Coucher set off to drive overnight to Geneva in the Bugatti T57 that was parked outside the hotel entrance, and many continued in the ante room until the late hours, Damien Smith (Editor of Motorsport), Simon Arron, Kevin Turner of Autosport and I hung from the cords in the ‘blue’ line train on our way to Victoria Station to catch the last overground home.

DCPR