Ray, is that a Hawke beside the Marcos, looks like the right body ..
Printable View
Can't find the race programme Roger!
Porsches...
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A little out of focus, but this may have been about the time the Lighting Direct colour scheme hit the track.
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Wollaton Park Nottingham, year as yet unknown.
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Clive Taylor at the as yet undated MG Hillclimb about 1990/91?
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Anyone know the name of this special? Date not known either, nor location.
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Some say he was the model for the Rover Viking logo... (Frank Lockhart - far left)
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Would this number plate be allowed in NZ? Sister car to the well known 'BUMBLE', that our own John Hudson of BMW fame has been known to have worked on in recent times. Cadwell Park probably 1980.
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Was this car eventually finished? Taken at the Henderson indoor motor show 1983. Rover V8 power.
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Not sure of the year, but possibly a TACCOC practice day.
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Whenuapai, but date still to be established.
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Croft 1977 - as far as I can tell...
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Croft again and another E Type Jaguar.
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Ardmore January 1989 and I doubt any local will need any extra naming, but for overseas viewers, the Northland Special (Jaguar powered).
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Mike John's Vauxhall
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Mike John's Jaguar, 4 weeks later 1994.
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Now I am assuming this is the same Brabham as the previous earlier post, but either way, I don't yet have a date. Pukekohe this time. It looks to have had an addition to the roll bar, so this might well be a later pic?
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Riverhead Forest with a bit of stage marshalling, possibly October 1990.
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Are you sure this is Whenuapai? Whenuapai, like Ohakea, was built in the 1930's and the runways of both were composed of large hexagonal concrete slabs - see endpapers of Graeme Vercoe's "Historic Racing Cars of New Zealand". By the 1980's and 1990s they were getting quite rough, as in attached 1997 photo. The Brabham is sitting on rather smoother concrete with no diagonal joints - another venue, maybe .
Ask Jac-Mac? !!
quote "Would this number plate be allowed in NZ? Sister car to the well known 'BUMBLE', that our own John Hudson of BMW fame has been known to have worked on in recent times. Cadwell Park probably 1980.
Stu, both were operational fields and still are. Whenuapai was the international airport til 1964 or so. I have participated in events on both and the hex blocks are evident in some places, but there are very large well surfaced areas.Yes there are in both areas where the hex slabs are pretty bad, but far from all over in my opinion.
Re Whenuapai,I was in the RNZAF and based at Whenuapai and worked in the hangers,several areas were upgraded overtime to flasher concrete.
It's a given that it wasn't Pukekohe, therefore had to be Whenuapai anyway! There were many different surfaces at Whenuapai both on and off the areas used as a race track. Some parts were incredibly rough, some billiard table smooth. Other pics I have put on here probably show that too.
Silverstone 1977 (also patches of old runways!) with the famous 'Monzanapolis Jaguar'.
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Donington Museum - as if you needed that info. Hesketh
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Shadow Matra
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Definitely Whenuapai....
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Definitely Pukekohe. Both the NZ based 3 Litre Marcos Volvos. They only made about 198 with that engine and few were raced in period (or since!) as the power to weight ratio is so much better with the earlier 2 litre Volvo engine and the plywood chassis, so the 3 litre was never homologated for racing.
This was 1991 and I had not long owned mine, but the black car, then owned by Dave Walker and the yellow car, were both raced fairly often at TACCOC meetings.
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Silverstone 1977
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Looks like March 1983 Pukekohe
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Dave Walker's Marcos - definitely Whenuapai! I'm assuming that as the car has no race numbers, this must have been practice day on the Saturday?
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John Stonard's Piranha at Curborough around 1980
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"You put your left leg in, your left leg out..." Again, shows the concrete at Whenuapai - not to mention John Holmes and the Lotus 18 before it reverted to the 15" wheels.
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Date to be confirmed, but one of the clues is the Pinepac sticker... It is the little things like this that can make logging/filing slides a little easier. So far, 1100 slides logged, (many with incomplete information) which doesn't sound much when you consider that with digital, you can end up with that many usable images after 1 day's shooting at virtually zero cost - other than shortening the shutter life of the camera.
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Funny how things come back to you,remember racing there and the concrete was fairly new,you all had to bring a drip tray ,the RNZAF wanted to keep their surface nice,English cars required a bigger tray of course..........just joking.!
It's all changed now. Here's a Google aerial from a year or so ago.
The NW to SE cross-runway has mostly disappeared, although the hexagonal pattern is still visible in the bits that remain, and the other runways were upgraded. This was all done a few years ago with considerable rock-breaking noise for us locals. At the Whenuapai meetings I went to in the 1990's, the pit/paddock was situated on the end of the cross runway and a taxiway which has since vanished. These bits were part of the circuit in 1984 and pits were then probably where the John Holmes picture shows. (Grey cell malfunction obviously - but I do recall the loop at the very top left of the picture being used for club meetings in the good old days of Base Commander Barclay).
Stu
From the programmes I have there were at least three variations of the Whenuapai track.
1984
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1985
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1995
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Thanks Milan. I think that there may even have been additional configurations, but at the Wheels only meetings, there may have been maps issued to competitors, but the programme/entry list was just a single sheet of paper. I do remember that at least one of them, I was disappointed that a certain complex had been changed that didn't suit my car at all!
Certain parts of the track were quite rough and the cars bounced around quite a lot. Marshalling at the chicane, (point 1 on the 1995 map), was the busiest day of the year, as we were forever having to replace the cones. I then competed from 1992 until Jim moved on (apart from 1994 when my car was under restoration), but many will remember that the final meeting had to be abandoned, at the 11th hour, as the Aussie Premier, Howard, wanted to fly into Whenuapai rather than Mangere.
The fact that Mangere was acceptable to Queen Elizabeth, just a couple of weeks before, did not go unnoticed. TACCOC did a fantastic job with those events and we'll always be grateful for Jim Barclay's part in those meetings and the guys at Pinepac.
Even with estimated 30,000+ crowds on Wings and Wheels days, traffic management was excellent and there are many of us who wrote to ex-mayor Bob Harvey, stating that if no longer required by RNZAF, the venue would have been a perfect full time motorsports venue. I believe there are still people campaigning on that score.
It should be noted however that the big draw for crowds were the Wings, not the Wheels...
84 and 85 had a combination of Wings and Wheels when we ran landyachts as a demonstration at lunchtime. Wings, yes because 3 of us had wing masts similar to what was running on Americas Cup a couple of years back. It wasn't successful for us as there was very little breeze.
There was at least one other shorter version of the circuit, with the Western corner about 200 metres short of the runway end, using the same taxiway as in 1984. This was used, at least, for a late 1990's joint club meeting of the Classic Motorcycle Register and (maybe) the HRSCC - and possibly other times. I just noticed the cars on my way past, and drove in for a look-see. No camera unfortunately.
Re Orange cones, there were always orange motorway-style barriers around the Pinepac sawmill next to the RNZAF -
about 2-3 foot high and a few feet long - they got used on race days.
Stu
They certainly did Stu! However, I wasn't too impressed when an errant Datsun Z lost it in front of me and there was precious little run off between the outside track edge and those barriers - but bags of grass behind! I never could understand the logic of that placement. Fortunately, I stopped without damage.
From memory, wasn't the track run anti clockwise one year?
I too remember a clubbie practice day there, so maybe my photograph of the numberless Marcos could have been one of those rather than a proper race meeting? We are so lucky with today's digital photography...
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Geoff Byman had a company in that hotbed of British engineering - Grimsby. This is probably Mallory Park and not Cadwell Park, as I first posted, as I do have a slide with the car running that same number.
That isn't Geoff lubricating his innards with a pint of the local brew. This is Geoff's later race car as opposed to his rally and sprint car. His speciality was cylinder heads and he did some quite advanced work regarding inclined inlets. His crew also did a sterling job patching up my car in 1971, at Silverstone, after I'd piled into the wall at Woodcote, having hit a patch of damp when turning in. So ended my first season of competition - a Mini Cooper with a very bent left front.
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great to see a proper impact wrench in use on the geoff byman mini
What a great idea. I will have to build a beer holder like that for my car !
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Here's another version of the Whenuapai track that was used in 1998.
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Just having a break from several exhausting sessions, stripping, cleaning, scanning, listing, researching slides.
From the archives, past and recent.
A random dive landed on 'Begg', so a selection of six.
Mallory Park - looks like a young David Oxton at the pit counter. (This pic may have been published before on here.) July 8th 1973 - David's hair style hasn't really changed...
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back to the old slides.
1983 I believe.
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Andy Culpin is currently finishing another E Type Jaguar, which hopefully will be seen on track, as it is not a concours build.
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Not sure of the year for this - but the number plate should really be 'SS', not 'MG'! If anyone can confirm the year, as usual, it will be a great help. Ellerslie of course.
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April 17th 1930 was the birthday of one Donald "Chris" Barber. As many will know from some of my previous posts, I am a huge fan of the Chris Barber Jazz band and try to see them on every visit to the UK. As it is Chris's 87th birthday today - and he is still blowing that trombone so well - I though I'd pay a tribute in pictures.
Sadly, I don't have an original pic of him racing that first customer Lotus Elite, which was recently sold after restoration, at auction, for a record breaking £106,000. (See the Lost Lotus on YouTube.)
However, I did do a painting of him racing the Elite at the 1962 NSCC Mallory Park International meeting, where he made it to the GT final, ahead of the team Elite car of John Wagstaffe. I presented the painting to him, on stage May 2004, in Nottinghamshire, a few days before he celebrated 50 years of leading that band.
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Several of the band were keen motorsport enthusiasts and this is his ex-road manager of 25 years, Richard Oliver who used to race an MG Midget. He tells the story of Dr Jonathon Palmer, borrowing the gearbox from his Ford Transit van at the track, when his Marcos V6 had a gearbox failure. Hopefully, we'll catch up with Chris and Richard in May.
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Under the John Major government, Chris was awarded the OBE (though quite why he hasn't been knighted is a bit of a surprise). He is a huge Mercedes fan these days and has a penchant for Brabus modified cars.
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This would have been a more appropriate plate than CB 23, but Les leston beat him to it!
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Tony Herbert's well known Elite.
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The winner of the all Lotus race at the Donington reopening in 1977. Brian Cocks borrowed my oil cooler for the race!
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Some (not all) of the following slides in the next post or two were in the reject pile but have been 'rescued'. Image quality might not always be as good as I would like, but cropping has made a semi worthwhile image.
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The number plate shows this to be 1968 - or maybe later, but I must have been suitably impressed to have taken a pic. These were rare in the UK at that time. Taken at Southall, probably outside John Pearce wheels from memory.
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Definitely Mallory Park in winter and it might have been a rallycross event of some sort about 1980/81.
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I had several attempts at guessing the identity of this car. Amazing what Google finds. I eventually came across an in-car video (obviously not from 1971 when this was taken). Cooper Jaguar - Lotus behind. These relatively low volume sports cars are amongst my favourites. I could have dug out the programme, but why not enjoy the technology?
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Morris Oxford at Western Springs
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Back to Cadwell Park, maybe 1980 and no race programme - which is a shame.
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Mick Hill's VW - a handful in the dry so goodness knows how it went in the wet - NSCC Croft 1977.
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Riverhead October 1990- I think! I also have pics of the MG car Club at Riverhead around that time, and the date therefore might refer to the MG event. If anyone can date these two, as usual, it would be a great help.
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The Adrian Whapham March 722-1, now owned by David Heron - who sold his Swift to James Watson.
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Geoff Byman's Mini again, doing battle with Don Hardman's crossflow Mini - both these guys were previously sprint regulars.
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These are great shots, thanks very much for posting them up.
Ray, Perhaps I had a distant connection to the Mick Hill Super V W.
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Mick Hill's fabulous 1976 'VW Beetle' Super Saloon, which is sometimes said to have been based on a Trojan T101, was actually built from the front suspension and the whole rear end of a T102 but not using the chassis itself.
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Hyndman hanging around the assembly of the first Trojan T 102. Oct. 1973
A new UK website for Super Saloons and Modsports, which I have been able to contribute to, with one or two photographs (initially spotted on here!), has this page devoted to Mick Hill.
http://www.modbase.info/#/mick-hill/4592548015
Could be 1993? Nigel Arkell leading I presume, Owen Evans.
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Not the best of photographs (from the reject pile), but published because I like the car! Iso Grifo, Shelsey Walsh, 1967. A visit back to Shelsey and Prescott with a long lens and a digital camera could be worthwhile.
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That TVR again. Scanned to pass on to the new owner. Mallory Park 1970.
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Same meeting. John Absalom's Ginetta. Ginetta G4's were quite popular in Modsports at that time.
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One of the most successful car/driver combinations for many, many years. The Hon. Pat Lindsay and 'Remus', Donington, April 1979. The lack of foliage on the Donington trees is another aid to dating photographs, though I do have a programme for this event.
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Left over from the 'Specials' set. The TS Special at Hampton Downs, January 2010 - digital not film. Ernie's 'Old Yeller' in the background.
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The new owner of the Zephyr Corvette replica will be enjoying these 2 new pix
I hate to be a pedant but I think the red car in post #1512 is a Bizzarinni rather than an Iso Grifo
Bruce- Where do you think this pic has been taken?
also the right front guard he is leaning on seems to be a brighter red than the rest of the car.
You might well be right!!! (I hadn't checked the programme - sheer laziness - as I have scanned more than I have researched and checked at the moment.) No need for apologies as I am more than happy to have things corrected.
I seem to have spent a lot of time recently doing date corrections particularly. It is a massive jigsaw puzzle at times and just one piece of extra information can compete a hazy picture, so I have to backtrack. I usually rely far too much on memory - dangerous at my age. With one or two non-car slides checked, dates have often been confirmed, but I think Kodak's film coding was probably in batches, which may mean two or three films purchased together, may have been taken consecutively, but also, maybe two or three years apart. Such fun...
Roger - (or anyone else for that matter) we usually head for the Porana Rd garden centre for coffee - except Thursdays, around 11am. Just ask any of the staff if I'm around and they'll point you in the right direction!
Ray, slightly OT, but I am going to Donington on Sunday for the Classic meeting. Where is your favourite spectator/photo spot?
Also driving at Prescott in May, and Shelsley "Classic Nostalgia" in July :)
John - the #1511 post was at scrutineering for Ardmore, January 1989. A trick of the light with the red wing!
Rhys - I'm afraid that Donington has effectively been ruined with the fencing from a paying spectator/photographer's perspective - and I'm a bit rusty on what spectator access is these days, but I'd suggest that corner 1 (Redgate) from the outside gives a view of the start/finish line and the sweep through Craner Curves.
From there, you can walk clockwise round the circuit to Coppice. When I last went, the weather was dreadful, but there was a track crossing around the start line area and I managed to poke a camera through a gap in the fencing at the last corner, as there was no-one else around vying for a spot!
You could also get a reasonable view of the Craner Curves from the inside. I think there has been a fair bit of tree felling in recent years, so there might be more good viewing from the inside around Starkey's Bridge.
What date is your Prescott as we may well try for that, though it is a fair distance away for us?
We may also revisit the Coventry Transport Museum, midweek between May 18th and June 1st and would welcome a peek behind the scenes in the storage area if that can be arranged!
Someone asked at an MGCC dinner/club meeting last night what I did with so many pics - knowing that family wasn't at all interested, so I told them about 'The Roaring Season', so we might get a few more viewers/contributors.