LEC back out from the cold: Aurora Trophy battle
Historic racer Peter Williams is now racing one of the two LEC grand prix cars built for David Purley in 1977.
Chassis number two is owned by Ron Maydon from Masters Historic Racing and is based in North America. Williams’ car is a recreation of chassis one, the car destroyed in Purley’s major accident at Silverstone in qualifying for the 1977 British GP. “It was rebuilt with some parts of the original car,” said Williams, who has raced it several times since acquiring it two years ago.
It was back for a shakedown during the Aurora Trophy races at Brands Hatch over the weekend, where Williams enjoyed a battle with Neil Glover’s Formula 5000 Chevron B37 (above), after being damaged in an accident at Zandvoort last month.
Later this year the car will be shipped to America for the F1 support race at the Circuit of the Americas. There it will join Maydon’s car so that both LECs are on the grid together.
Brands in reverse: 500cc F3s
Formula 3 cars of the 500cc motorcycle-engined era tackled Brands Hatch’s short circuit in an anti-clockwise direction for the first time in 70 years on Saturday during a special demonstration session under a Motorsport UK permit within the Historic Sports Car Club’s Superprix.
The Half-Litre Car Club, promoter of the category in Britain, paid £12,000 to surface the original kidney-shaped circuit for the 1950 season. Races for the cars were run that way for four seasons, the change to clockwise coming when the Druids loop was added in 1954.
Survivors from Friday’s 500 Owners’ Association double-header races – won by George Shackleton (Cooper-Norton Mk10) from reigning champion Alex Wilson (Martin-JAP) – were joined by numerous others for the special anniversary celebration in the lunchbreak.
This included 1974 Brabham F1 driver Richard Robarts (Cooper-JAP Mk11) and Historic F5000 Lola T400 racer Edwin Jowsey with the Jack Moor-built Wasp.
Power cut stops play: Donington Park MSVR
MotorSport Vision Racing had to hastily reorganise last Sunday’s races at Donington Park after a local power cut threatened to severely delay the timetable.
Lighting boards around the circuit, as well as officials’ live CCTV pictures and timing screens, were all down while the problem was fixed.
Despite the meeting starting approximately two hours late, races for Historic and Duratec Sports 2000s, Clubmans Sports Prototypes and EnduroKa were run to their full duration.
Werrell's double duty: Commentary and EnduroKa
Mark Werrell divided his time providing live YouTube and Facebook commentary for the Mini 7 Racing Club action at Zandvoort in the Netherlands as well as participating in Sunday’s five-hour EnduroKa race at Donington Park.
“I tethered my phone to my laptop to give me some signal because of the power cut, which allowed me to get the V-mix link required for the commentary to go from Donington back to the outside broadcast unit at Zandvoort,” Werrell explained.
With commentary duties done, Werrell was able to join the EnduroKa race, finishing 11th in a car shared with Tom Valentine and Andy Burton.
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