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1967 BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch in Color !

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From Motorsport Magazine - Brands Hatch, England, July 30th. It is remarkable, hut true, that we have not had a serious motor race, other than Grand Prix events, in Great Britain since 1959; this was brought home forcibly when practice began at Brands Hatch for the B.O.A.C. 500. The assembly of cars was such that British spectators must have wondered if they were not at Nürburgring, Spa or Le Mans. It seemed impossible that it was in Great Britain, and furthermore it was the final, and critical, round in the Prototype and Sports Car Manufacturers’ Championship. The last time that we had a race of sufficient importance to be considered worthy of inclusion in the Sports Car Championship was the T.T. in 1959, after which the R.A.C. let it die and our country became a great sea of club racing of no International importance. That vigorous and enterprising club, the B.R.S.C.C,, with the backing of Sir Giles Guthrie and the British Overseas Airways Corporation, put us back on the International calendar and were rewarded by a really fine race. The only pity was that it had to be held at Brands Hatch, a circuit that was not really large enough for a race of this calibre and one to which the public seem reluctant to go in vast numbers. In spite of this the race was a huge success and if Nick Syrett and B.O.A.C. have their way it will become an annual classic event. The inadequacy of the Brands Hatch circuit to cope with a race of this magnitude brought home the fact that Great Britain has a surfeit of good club circuits, on which our organisers have concentrated, at the expense of a first-class National circuit to equal Monza, Spa, Le Mans or Nürburgring. However, all the foregoing did not stop the B.O.A.C. 500 race from being a success and when practice began the pits were jam-packed full of exciting machinery. There was a Chaparral 2F (Spence/Hill), three-open P4 Ferraris (Stewart/Amon), (Scarfiotti/Sutcliffe), (Hawkins/ Williams), the Maranello Concessionaire’s Coupe P3/4 Ferrari (Attwood/Piper), three Private LM Ferraris (Pierpoint/Dibley), (Prophet/ de Klerk), (Edmonds/Fitzpatrick), five works Porsches comprising two 910 models with flat 8-cylinder 2.2-litre engines (Rindt/G. Hill), (Siffert/McLaren), a Le Mans long-tailed 907 with similar engine and r.h. steering (Herrmann/Neerpasch), and two 910 models with 2-litre flat 6-cylinder engines (Elford/Bianchi), (Schutz/Koch), all these being on fuel-injection. There were three private Group 4 sports Porsche 906 models (Spoerry/Steinemann,) in de ‘Udy’s car, (Bradley/M. Costin), in Dean’s car, (Dean/Pon,) the works Lola-Chevrolet V8 now painted red with a white arrow (Surtees/Hobbs), the white Sid Taylor Lola-Chevrolet V8 (Hulme/Brabham), the green de ‘Udy Lola-Chevrolet V8 (de ‘Udy/Westbury), a 5.7-litre Ford “Mirage” (Thompson/Rodriguez), five private Ford GT40 cars (Lucas/Pike), (Sutton/Bond), (Liddell/Gethin), (Crabbe/Charlton), (Drury/Holland), three Chevron GT coupes, two with 2-litre B.M.W. engines (Cardwell/Bennett), (Martland/Muir), and one with 2-litre B.R.M. V8 engine (Redman/C. Williams), three Lotus 47s all with twin-cans Lotus-Ford engines, the Lotus Components one with Tecalemit-Jackson fuel injection (Miles/Oliver), the Team Elite one (Preston/Taylor) and the Chris Barber one (Hine/Greene). There were two Lotus Elans (Jackson/Crabtree), (Burnand/Taggart), a lone 2-litre Abarth OT (Mould/Ashmore), an M.G.-B (Enever/Poole) and an Austin Healey 3000 (Worswick/Clarke). There should have been three Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 cars, but they withdrew at the last moment.

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