Tag Archives: Matthews

Five Cylinder Tim – MANBAT Pegasus Sprint Castle Combe

Last month saw the Bristol Pegasus Motor Club organise it’s final sprint of the year the MANBAT Pegasus Sprint at Castle Combe, as ever with an event involving over 100 competitors many members of the BPMC the Bristol Motor Club and a few others besides along with the team at Castle Combe all mucked in to make it happen.

GTM K3, Graham Matthews, MANBAT Pegasus Sprint, Castle Combe

Here are a few random snaps of the day taken from my vantage point on the start line that I hope give a flavour of the day that was probably better suited to ducks than Motor Sport, above Graham Matthews only made one successful practice run in his GTM K3 before withdrawing from the event.

Marcos Mantis, Philip Jones, MANBAT Pegasus Sprint, Castle Combe

Before the weather was forecast Philip Jones must have fancied his chances of Marcos Mantis competing for the fastest time of the day in his 4.6 litre V8 powered machine but he had to settle for 1st in the Road going Specialist Production Cars class and consul himself that the conditions kept him 14 secs off the fastest time of the day.

MG PA, Howard Harman, MANBAT Pegasus Sprint, Castle Combe

If there had been a prize for being quickest of the two pre war MG’s present it would have gone to Howard Harman seen above in his 1 litre MG PA who was one and a half seconds quicker than Martin Price in his 1 1/4 litre MG TA.

TVR Vixen, Ian Stallard, MANBAT Pegasus Sprint, Castle Combe

Given the power of some of the more recent TVR’s present it is perhaps surprising that the fast TVR time was set by Iain Stallard, above, in his four cylinder Ford powered TVR Vixen which had less than half the cubic inch capacity of all the other TVR’s present.

Triumph TR3A, Tom Purves, MANBAT Pegasus Sprint, Castle Combe

Tom Purves Triumph TR3A was the oldest and slowest representative of the marque present of those who set a time.

JCB LOADALL, Les Rawlins, MANBAT Pegasus Sprint, Castle Combe

Les Rawlins, Castle Combes Mr Fixit, might have struggled to set a competitive time in his JCB LOADALL, fortunately his skills fixing the barriers were only called on the once.

Mitsubishi EVO6 GSR, Mike McBraida,MANBAT Pegasus Sprint, Castle Combe

Mike McBraida set fastest time at the wheel of his turbocharged Mitsubishi EVO6 GSR in the Road going Series Production Cars over 2600cc class.

Reliant Scimitar GT, Nick Hall, MANBAT Pegasus Sprint, Castle Combe

The Reliant Scimitar GT driven by Nick Hall was third in the Road going Specialist Production Cars, Car engines over 1800cc and Motor Cycle engines class.

Audi Quattro, Tim Clarke, MANBAT Pegasus Sprint, Castle Combe

Winner of the MANBAT Pegasus Sprint was Tim Clarke who set the fastest time of the day in his five cylinder turbocharged Audi Quattro, a car last seen on these pages indulging in a spot of lawn mowing at Hullavigton.

My thanks to all those who contributed to such a splendid day in the rain, and thanks for joining me on this “Five Cylinder Tim” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres”, I hope you will join me again tomorrow when I’ll be looking at a cool one off contender for the Carrera Panamericana. Don’t forget to come back now !

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Balena Close, Poole, Dorset – Penske PC1 #001

After he had finished fabricating the Len Terry designed Eagle monocoques for All American Racers (AAR) in California, John Lambert returned to the Untied Kingdom and started a new business which was located on a small industrial estate outside Poole in Dorset where the rent was cheap. When Len Terry fell out with Frank Nichols they wound up Transatlantic Automotive Consultants based in Hastings where they had designed the AAR Eagle and Terry went to join Lambert, with whom he had worked at Lotus and AAR, in Poole starting a new business together called Design Auto.

In 1969 Len Terry started to design a series of stock block Formula 5000 open wheel cars called Leda’s, John Lambert looked after the construction of them in a facility off Balena Close on the Creekmore Industrial Estate on the outskirts of Poole, Dorset. When Leda Cars ran into financial difficulty they merged into the Malaya Garage Group in 1970. Three years later Malaya Garage Group did a deal with New Zealand racer Graham McRae selling the Leda Cars premises “lock, stock and barrel” with the cars manufactured now rebranded as McRae’s.

At around this time Roger “The Captain” Penske and Mark “Captain Nice” Donohue were experiencing many successes on the US racing scene which included three Trans Am championships, then only for manufacturers, driving the Captains Chevrolet Camaro in 1969 and AMC Javelins in 1970 and ’71.

In 1972 Mark won the Indy 500 in Roger Penske’s McLaren M16 and at the end of the year drove Penske’s McLaren M19 in the Canadian and US Grand Prix finishing a more than credible 3rd in his debut Grand Prix. The following year Mark and Roger won the Can Am championship with the “Turbo Panzer” Porsche 917/30. Having achieved pretty much everything in the US, including a NASCAR Winston Cup win at Riverside driving a Penske AMC Matador to become the last ‘road ringer’ to win a non oval race in that series back in 1973 Mark announced he would hang up his helmet at the end of the season.

Roger Penske made plans for a Formula One team in 1974 and sent Heinz Hofer to look at Graham McRae’s ‘low profile’ premises on the Creekmore Industrial Estate in Poole, Dorset UK as a possible base and concluded a deal for the premises. The Ford Cosworth DFV powered Penske PC1 was built to a design by Geoff Ferris and Mark Donohue was persuaded to come out of retirement to drive the car on it’s debut in the 1974 Canadian Grand Prix where he qualified 24th and finished 12th 2 laps down.

Penske Ford PC1, US Grand Prix, Watkins Glen

At the US Grand Prix, where Mark Donohue and Roger Penske fan, Brian Brown took today’s photograph of Mark in the PC1 at Watkins Glen the car started 14th on the grid, but retired after 27 laps with rear suspension problems. Brian recalls his first visit to a Grand Prix thus :-

“I was of course very excited to be seeing Mark race again, but being that it was my first live Formula One event, I was equally excited to be seeing Mario’s effort with Vel’s Parnelli Jones and the rest of the grid in person. We owned a Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona and a 246 GT Dino at the time, so were very supportive of the Ferrari effort too.

My brother, friends and I spent a great deal of down time in the Kendall Garage watching the teams go about their business of working on the cars. One thing that was apparent was the absolutely professional presentation of the Penske team. Everything was spotless, just like their successful Indy Car counterpart that I’d observed in person since 1969 at Indianapolis. I was then, as now, a huge fan of Mark Donohue and Team Penske, but that aside, I always felt that they had too many positive resources not to be successful in Formula One.

I knew racing well enough to understand how tall the task Mark and the Penske team had ahead of them, but I also had the highest faith in their collective talents that I felt, given time, they would come right. I look back now and remember how I’d call in to our local ABC news tv affiliate to get the results of the races in 1975, always asking about the top six finishers along with Mark and Mario’s results.

Then came Austria and it was over for Mark and eventually Penske stopped the project – I was always appreciative that they carried on to get the victory with John Watson in Austria a year after Mark’s accident, something of a vindication for the mighty challenges that Team Penske faced in their Formula One foray. Watkins Glen 1974 was the last I ever saw Mark in person and despite the nearly 40 years that have passed, it seems like yesterday.”

Penske ended up building 3 chassis to the PC1 design chassis #001 seen here achieved a best 5th place finish, from 16th on the grid in the 1975 Swedish Grand Prix. Three races later Penske ditched the PC1 in favour of a March 751 which was raced until a new challenger until the new Penske PC3 was ready. As Brian alluded to above Mark Donohue was killed during practice for the 1975 Austrian Grand Prix after a tyre deflated pitching him off the track in to an accident which killed a marshal. Although Mark initially survived the incident he died the next day from a cerebral hemorrhage.

The debut of the Penske PC3 was delayed until the 1975 US Grand Prix where John Watson drove it in practice. Due to a misfire with the motor in the new car the team elected to wheel out today’s featured chassis one more time, John qualified 12th, finishing the race in 9th.

The following season Penske entered John in the PC3 and later PC4 models. With the latter the team won the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix, despite this success The Captain closed the Formula One program down at the end of 1976, deciding his future lay in the US racing seen where he would become the dominant force in Indy Car racing, with many of his winning cars being built in Poole, Dorset. Penske maintained facilities in Poole Dorset up until 2006. When the factory was closed one employee, Ivor, remained who had been part of the story going back to the Leda days, through the McRae years and into the Penske era.

In 2012 Brad Keslowski won his first NASCAR Championship driving a Penske entered Dodge a hitherto elusive goal on ‘The Captains’ to do list.

My thanks to Brian ‘ B² ‘ Brown for kindly agreeing to share his photograph; to kayemod, Nigel Beresford, Tim Murray, Tony Matthews, Dogearred and Doug Nye at The Nostalgia Forum for their help in piecing together the story behind Roger Penske’s presence in Poole, Dorset and a tenuous connection in the form of Lambert & Terry and their Leda Cars premises between the AAR Eagle and Penske Formula One efforts.

Thanks for joining me on this “Balena Close, Poole, Dorset” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres”, I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

PS Shortly before this blog was posted some confusion has come to light about which buildings in Poole Penske and McRae occupied and when, local resident kayemod and Nigel Beresford who worked for Penske have confirmed that Penske took over the Balena premises from McRae, while artist Tony Matthews is sure he visited a second facility a couple of miles away on Factory Road to do cutaway drawings for McRae and Penske is not so sure the Balena Close address is correct. If any further developments come forth I shall post them below, and if you know the answer to the riddle please do not hesitate to chime in.

PPS Nigel Beresford has kindly confirmed with another former Penske employee Nick Goozée that the Balena Close facility is the only one Penske purchased from Graham McRae. My thanks to Nigel and Nick for settling the matter so promptly.

PPPS

Balena Close, Poole, Dorset

Kayemod Rob from the Nostalgia Forum has kindly sent me this photo showing “how that corner of Balena Close looks today, the small unit to the right is the original Penske UK base, formerly McRae Cars. The three parked cars more or less cover the width of the premises. The ‘Elegance’ unit to the left of Penske was once FKS Fibreglass, later Griffin Design. My ex-Specialised Mouldings chum stylist Jim Clark worked at FKS, and as well as Penske’s stuff, they also did almost everything for the Gulf GT40s and Mirages among others, their unit extended leftwards to fill the corner of the block. Penske later rented an identical unit to the right of the pic, which doubled their floor area, after some of the dividing wall was removed, they used to run their F1 operation out of that.”

Thanks Rob.

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Multi Formula Open Wheeler – Lotus 69

For the 1970 season Lotus used the catch all Lotus 69 type number for cars designed, by Dave Baldwin, to compete in four different open wheel Formula.

Namely Formula Ford which used prescribed narrow tyres and 95 hp single carburetor Ford Kent 4 cylinder engines, Formula 3 which used heavily modified 1 litre / 61 cui production block 4 cylinder motors in 1970 and modified 1600 cc / 97.6 cui production block motors in 1971, Formula B with 1600cc / 97.6 cui motors tuned somewhere between Formula Ford and Formula 3, and finally Formula 2 which ran with the most powerful 200 plus hp 1600 cc / 97.6 cui motors with production blocks of which at least 5000 copies had been made.

Lotus 69, Spirit of the 60′s, Dyrham Park

Today’s featured car, seen at Dyrham Park and belonging to Tony Wallens, is a 1971 Formula 3 spec Lotus 69 with a modified 1600 cc / 97.6 cui production block motor, the space frame chassis is derived from the Lotus 59 open wheelers and it shares many components with it’s Lotus 69 siblings, although the Formula 2 Lotus 69 was built around a monocoque to meet the requirements for a bag fuel tank.

In 1971 Dave Walker flew and swept the board in his Gold Leaf Team Lotus 69 winning 25 races Formula 3 races from 32 starts.

Despite these successes, Emerson Fittipaldi also won three races in his Formula 2 Lotus 69, while in Formula Ford Stan Matthews placed forth in the 1971 British Oxygen Formula Ford championship with his 69, Lotus took the decision to withdraw from the customer racing car market and focus on works Formula 3, and Formula 1 efforts in 1972, Formula 2 and Formula 1 campaigns in 1973 and solely Formula One campaigns from 1974 on.

Thanks for joining me on this “Multi Formula Open Wheeler” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres”, I hope you will join me again tomorrow for a day at the races. Don’t forget to come back now !

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Out Of The Ark – Lotus Elan (Ark Racing)

In 1976 one year after production of the Lotus Elan had ceased the 4th generation Group 5 regulations came into effect for “Special Production Cars” for cars that met the criteria for groups 1 to 4 but were allowed almost unlimited bodywork modifications excluding the bonnet, roofline and railpanel combined with unlimited lightening of the chassis.

Porsche dominated the series overall from 1976 to the series demise in 1981 with numerous variations of the 935 model, though it’s ultimate development ‘Moby Dick’ 935/78 ironically only one one race. Lancia was most successful in the smaller under 2 litre / 122 cui division with it’s Lancia Beta Montecarlo winning two championships with BMW and Ford taking the smaller category once each.

Three different Lotus models were entered into selected Group 5 (Silhouette) races three Elan’s like the one featured today, a Europa and a couple of Lotus Esprit’s. Over the next couple of weeks I will be looking at how three of those teams faired.

Lotus Elan, Ark Racing, Silverstone

In 1968 Derek Mathews built the first of several well known and successful racing cars a Sprite for John Banks, which by 1970 became the Ark Sprite powered by Ford Twin Cam engine. After building and running a Group 6 2 seat open sports car with F Lester Ray originally called the (Derek Matthews) DM6 (sixth car) which became the Vogue Derek built a Lotus Elan for John Evans to race in the 1974 in British Modsports races a combination which recorded many class wins in 1974 and 1975 being crowned BRSCC (British Racing Sports Car Club) Modsports Champions in 1975.

For 1979 Ark Racing built an Elan for Max Payne and John Evans to run in selected World Manufacturers Championship, German DRM, and Belgian events, becoming the third Elan to be used in Group 5. According to ‘The Oracle” and Richard Jenvey the Ark Racing Group 5 Elan, seen above making it’s debut at Silverstone, was built on a Lotus chassis.

At Silverstone the Elan qualified 23rd overall, 3rd last in class and retired with gearbox issues. The car was raced four times in 1979, Max Payne beating a de Tomaso Pantera to win a Benelux race at Zandvoort in The Netherlands.

Lotus Elan, Ark Racing, Silverstone

The last time I saw the Ark Racing Elan was in 1982, again at Silverstone above, when Max Payne was sharing the car with Chris Ashmore they qualified 32nd and were disqualified for a push start. The Ark Racing Elan is thought to have been the last one to have raced taken part in an international ‘in period’ race qualifying 25th and finishing 18th at the 1982 Brands Hatch 1000 kms race with Payne and Ashmore at the wheel.

My thanks to The Oracle, his spokesman Pete Taylor and Edward Fitzgerald for their comments at The Nostalgia Forum and to Richard Jenvey for his private comments.
Thanks for joining me on this “Out Of The Ark” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres”, I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

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Gould Charge – Penske PC10

For 1982 Roger Penske had his manufacturing team in Poole, Dorset, England, where all his open wheelers were made, build 6 Penske PC10’s designed by Geoff Ferris. The cars were ready in October 1981, drivers Rick Mears and Kevin Cogan completed 3000 miles of testing during the off season.

AJ Foyt said of the legendary Penske preparation “The rest of us are trying to do as much in six days as Penske took six months to do.”

Penske Cosworth PC10, Rick Mears, Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Photo by Ed Arnaudin.

Rick Mears, took pole at with a record 207 mph average speed in the #1 Gould Charge seen here on the warm up lap for the race, and Kevin Coogan started 2nd with a 204 mph 4 lap average. The first two spots on the grid were sown up just 9 minuets after qualification had started on Pole Day. AJ Foyt filled out the front row.

The 1982 is best remembered for an accident at the start that took out Kevin Coogan, AJ Foyt, Mario Andretti, Dale Whittington and Roger Mears.

Blame for the incident was placed on the inexperienced Penske new boy Kevin Cogan, though the cause of the accident has ever been satisfactorily explained, it came to light many years later that Rick Mears had a similar incident in another PC10 during private testing that was kept out of the media at the time.

AJ Foyt managed to get out for the second attempt to start the 1982 Indy 500 but neither the repairs to Foyt’s #14 March nor the months of preparation at Penske were enough to keep Gordon Johncock, driving a Wildcat, from taking a photo finish victory in which Johncock held off Mears by just 0.16 secs.

During a 15 year Champ Car Career Rick Mears won 3 CART Championships, a record equalling, with Foyt and Al Unser, 4 Indy 500 victories and an unequalled six Indy 500 poles. Rick also took the most CART Championship race wins during the 1980’s.

While Mears and Penske lost the battle at Indy in 1982, they took a second consecutive championship in 1982.

The following season Al Unser Snr won the championship driving a Penske PC10B after the intended replacement PC11 proved unequal to the performance of the older car after the 1983 Indy 500.

Those interested in what lies beneath the super streamlined body of the PC10 might be interested to see a series of photos, taken by the extraordinary cutaway artist Tony Matthews, posted on The Nostalgia Forum, see post three and down of this PC10 thread.

My thanks to Steve Arnaudin for the scan of his Dad’s photo.

Thanks for joining me for this Gould Charge edition of ‘Getting a little psycho on tyres’ I hope that you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

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