If I spent most of July and early August travelling to and from Belgium for 24-hour races, and September at Silverstone to commentate for various race meetings (International GT Open, MSVR VW FunCup, Mazda MX-5 SuperCup and the Ferrari “Corse Clienti” Festival), then October and early November were very different again.
I spent consecutive weekends commentating at the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch, followed by the Walter Hayes Trophy meeting at Silverstone. Both meetings are feasts of FF1600 entertainment – the “Festival” on the Brands Indy circuit and the Walter Hayes on Silverstone’s National circuit layout. And both are two-day extravaganzas in which the scoring of championship points can be forgotten and all-out racing is the order of the day.
For readers that are not familiar with FF1600, my only question is, why not? The concept was created in 1967 by John Webb, at Brands Hatch, as a low-cost entry formula into motorsport, initially for cars powered by 1500cc Ford Cortina engines, but swiftly uprated to the 1600cc Kent engine. The idea was that the cars would run on road tyres, and there is no doubt at all that in the first 25 years of its life it played a role in the career of virtually all racing drivers on their climb up the single-seater ladder.
For many years in the 1980’s I was lucky enough to witness the festival from the commentary box, and see such as Tommy Byrne, Johnny Herbert, Eddie Irvine and others take the winner’s trophy. Later, drivers such as Jenson Button, Anthony Davidson and Mark Webber also lifted the title. Truly it was a springboard to better things.
The Walter Hayes is a somewhat later creation; thanks entirely to the efforts and vision of James Beckett, and nowadays – arguably – attracts a stronger entry than the festival. In my view, Silverstone is a better circuit for FF1600 racing. Certainly, it is a simpler layout, which makes it easier for newcomers to learn.
When I was first involved in motor racing and attending national race meetings all over the country, one of my greatest pleasures was spotting talented young drivers progressing through the ranks. Drivers like David Coulthard, Allan McNish, Martin Brundle, to name but a few. Things are different now, but two things in particular strike me: one, that so many talented drivers are now ‘stuck’ in Formula Ford, with neither the budget to progress up the ladder, nor the profile to be picked up by the marketeers that control the sport these days. But also, looking further up the scale, outright talent behind the wheel doesn’t seem to count as much these days. A healthy wallet or a wealthy backer will far better ensure your progress as a career racing driver.
Anyway, if you have a heart for club racing in the UK, you will know that Jonathan Browne won the Formula Ford Festival and Jordan Dempsey the Walter Hayes Trophy. Both are from the Republic of Ireland, and it was great to see the enthusiastic fervour with which their countrymen greeted both winners. With Ireland also carrying off the Festival World Cup at Brands Hatch, I am surprised that Ireland is not regarded (as for example, Brazil or Finland are) as a hotbed of motor-racing talent. The reason? The economy. There’s a message there for us all, but what we do about it, I have no idea.
Immediately following the Walter Hayes Trophy meeting, I was off to Anglesey for the Race of Remembrance. Again, there may be readers that are not familiar with this event, but for this you can surely be forgiven, since this is a motor sport event like no other. First run in 2014, it has gone from strength to strength, and this year attracted 44 entries, some of which were relay teams using more than one car, but for the most part, competitors were after the “Heroes Trophy” for single-car teams.
But that is not true either, because the Race of Remembrance is not a race that people enter in order to win. Sure, racing drivers are competitive, and try to show who’s best, but it is participation in the event that is key. It is run by Mission Motorsport, the forces’ charity that aims to help rehabilitate former servicemen and women who have all manner of physical and mental disabilities. Their motto is “Race, retrain, recover”, and they do not limit themselves to getting disabled drivers into racing cars. An important part of what they do is to give people jobs around the car, in the race team, driving the truck. Step by step, the approach is to put people back on their feet.
The centrepiece of the Race of Remembrance is the Remembrance Service, held in the pit lane. Racing stops, people come to pause, reflect, remember, pray, sing some hymns and then we go racing again. Sounds simple, but you need to be there to properly experience the poignancy of the moment.
At the same time as all that was going on, the World Endurance Championship was having the third race of their 2019-20 season at Shanghai, China. A long way to go for a four-hour race, and the ACO’s “Success Handicap” was really beginning to bite. At least it was if you were Toyota. Sure enough, as many had predicted, the singleton Rebellion finally got the upper hand in terms of performance, and led the two works hybrid cars home.
When I wrote a month or so ago about the benefits of handicaps in motor sport, this was not quite what I had in mind as a formula for success. To handicap a car such that it is not able to go as fast as it is supposed to go is surely short-changing everyone? Not only the spectators, who can’t appreciate what a good car the Toyota TS050 is, but the drivers, who can only extract as much performance as the handicap allows.
What is exciting – for drivers and spectators alike – is to watch a car charging up through the field. Why can’t the handicap be imposed in such a way that Toyota has to finish the race two laps ahead, in order to win the race?
At Silverstone, in the Walter Hayes Trophy, Michael Moyers, winner for the last two years, clashed with Joey Foster (a three-time winner) in the heat, leaving both with back-of-grid starts for the “progression race”. Moyers fought back through “Progression”, “Last Chance” and “Semi-final”, to take second place at the end of the Grand Final. It was thrilling stuff. I am sure he would have won the event easily without that incident, and although it wasn’t an externally imposed handicap, it made for a great spectacle. When I spoke to him about it afterwards, he was obviously disappointed, but nevertheless he knew the extent of his achievement and took satisfaction from that.
I spent consecutive weekends commentating at the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch, followed by the Walter Hayes Trophy meeting at Silverstone. Both meetings are feasts of FF1600 entertainment – the “Festival” on the Brands Indy circuit and the Walter Hayes on Silverstone’s National circuit layout. And both are two-day extravaganzas in which the scoring of championship points can be forgotten and all-out racing is the order of the day.
For readers that are not familiar with FF1600, my only question is, why not? The concept was created in 1967 by John Webb, at Brands Hatch, as a low-cost entry formula into motorsport, initially for cars powered by 1500cc Ford Cortina engines, but swiftly uprated to the 1600cc Kent engine. The idea was that the cars would run on road tyres, and there is no doubt at all that in the first 25 years of its life it played a role in the career of virtually all racing drivers on their climb up the single-seater ladder.
For many years in the 1980’s I was lucky enough to witness the festival from the commentary box, and see such as Tommy Byrne, Johnny Herbert, Eddie Irvine and others take the winner’s trophy. Later, drivers such as Jenson Button, Anthony Davidson and Mark Webber also lifted the title. Truly it was a springboard to better things.
The Walter Hayes is a somewhat later creation; thanks entirely to the efforts and vision of James Beckett, and nowadays – arguably – attracts a stronger entry than the festival. In my view, Silverstone is a better circuit for FF1600 racing. Certainly, it is a simpler layout, which makes it easier for newcomers to learn.
When I was first involved in motor racing and attending national race meetings all over the country, one of my greatest pleasures was spotting talented young drivers progressing through the ranks. Drivers like David Coulthard, Allan McNish, Martin Brundle, to name but a few. Things are different now, but two things in particular strike me: one, that so many talented drivers are now ‘stuck’ in Formula Ford, with neither the budget to progress up the ladder, nor the profile to be picked up by the marketeers that control the sport these days. But also, looking further up the scale, outright talent behind the wheel doesn’t seem to count as much these days. A healthy wallet or a wealthy backer will far better ensure your progress as a career racing driver.
Anyway, if you have a heart for club racing in the UK, you will know that Jonathan Browne won the Formula Ford Festival and Jordan Dempsey the Walter Hayes Trophy. Both are from the Republic of Ireland, and it was great to see the enthusiastic fervour with which their countrymen greeted both winners. With Ireland also carrying off the Festival World Cup at Brands Hatch, I am surprised that Ireland is not regarded (as for example, Brazil or Finland are) as a hotbed of motor-racing talent. The reason? The economy. There’s a message there for us all, but what we do about it, I have no idea.
Immediately following the Walter Hayes Trophy meeting, I was off to Anglesey for the Race of Remembrance. Again, there may be readers that are not familiar with this event, but for this you can surely be forgiven, since this is a motor sport event like no other. First run in 2014, it has gone from strength to strength, and this year attracted 44 entries, some of which were relay teams using more than one car, but for the most part, competitors were after the “Heroes Trophy” for single-car teams.
But that is not true either, because the Race of Remembrance is not a race that people enter in order to win. Sure, racing drivers are competitive, and try to show who’s best, but it is participation in the event that is key. It is run by Mission Motorsport, the forces’ charity that aims to help rehabilitate former servicemen and women who have all manner of physical and mental disabilities. Their motto is “Race, retrain, recover”, and they do not limit themselves to getting disabled drivers into racing cars. An important part of what they do is to give people jobs around the car, in the race team, driving the truck. Step by step, the approach is to put people back on their feet.
The centrepiece of the Race of Remembrance is the Remembrance Service, held in the pit lane. Racing stops, people come to pause, reflect, remember, pray, sing some hymns and then we go racing again. Sounds simple, but you need to be there to properly experience the poignancy of the moment.
At the same time as all that was going on, the World Endurance Championship was having the third race of their 2019-20 season at Shanghai, China. A long way to go for a four-hour race, and the ACO’s “Success Handicap” was really beginning to bite. At least it was if you were Toyota. Sure enough, as many had predicted, the singleton Rebellion finally got the upper hand in terms of performance, and led the two works hybrid cars home.
When I wrote a month or so ago about the benefits of handicaps in motor sport, this was not quite what I had in mind as a formula for success. To handicap a car such that it is not able to go as fast as it is supposed to go is surely short-changing everyone? Not only the spectators, who can’t appreciate what a good car the Toyota TS050 is, but the drivers, who can only extract as much performance as the handicap allows.
What is exciting – for drivers and spectators alike – is to watch a car charging up through the field. Why can’t the handicap be imposed in such a way that Toyota has to finish the race two laps ahead, in order to win the race?
At Silverstone, in the Walter Hayes Trophy, Michael Moyers, winner for the last two years, clashed with Joey Foster (a three-time winner) in the heat, leaving both with back-of-grid starts for the “progression race”. Moyers fought back through “Progression”, “Last Chance” and “Semi-final”, to take second place at the end of the Grand Final. It was thrilling stuff. I am sure he would have won the event easily without that incident, and although it wasn’t an externally imposed handicap, it made for a great spectacle. When I spoke to him about it afterwards, he was obviously disappointed, but nevertheless he knew the extent of his achievement and took satisfaction from that.
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