Thunder in the Park: GTSCC Oulton Park 2022
Photo Copyright: Charlie B Photography
The prospect of some of Britain’s best-loved and most photogenic Grand Touring cars of the Pre-1966 era racing wheel-to-wheel around the challenging Oulton Park circuit is a mouthwatering one as the GT & Sports Car Cup circus comes to this verdant part of rural Cheshire today. Opened in 1953, the venue is fabled for Stirling Moss and John Surtees’ Gold Cup race victories, but immortalised as the place where Graham Hill drove a Jaguar E-type to victory on its competition debut, a year before he won the first of his two Formula 1 World Championships.
Since 2007, the GTSCC has celebrated E-types and contemporary rivals, plus Pre-’63 Sports Racers, in a relaxed annual invitation series which visits some of Europe’s finest tracks. With correct models with international racing history, fastidious preparation, exemplary driving standards and fine hospitality at its core - named Royal Automobile Club ‘Series of the Year’ in 2020 - enters its 16th season with a maiden visit to Oulton Park and new entente cordiale with Equipe Classic Racing.
Sixty one years since Hill and Roy Salvadori (who finished third) debuted lightly tweaked production E-types here, wowing spectators and heightening the hunger of an already eager marketplace on both sides of the Atlantic, two stunning Jaguar Es start among the favourites today. Scottish motor baron John Clark/Gordon Much roadster, in semi-lightweight spec, has been campaigned around Europe, as has Canadian Read Gomm/Andy Keith-Lucas – in low-drag coupe form – are up for the fight with the AC Cobra 289 of Chris Chiles and Chris J.
Veteran Chiles, a former International Supersports Cup champion at the wheel of a massive Interserie March-Chevrolet 707, and his talented son are well versed in the tactics required to win a 90-minute race. Also, Cobra-mounted are Bristolians Chris Clarkson and David Smithies in the latter’s Daytona Coupe finished in the stunning light blue 1964 Tour de France livery, an homage to the factory cars which rampaged around the world in 1965.
Another rapid Cobra pedaller, Mark Williams, may throw the cat among the pigeons having entered a Ginetta G4R - powered by a Ford/Lotus twin-cam engine - which we haven’t previously seen in the series. Brainchild of the four Walklett brothers whose first cars were built in Suffolk in the 1950s, it slots into GT4 alongside the big-bangers.
Reflecting their success in International rallies and racing in the early 1960s, Austin-Healey 3000s have a remarkable record in the GTSCC, in which they have regularly beaten larger-engined opposition. Five of the rorty straight six-engined cars are set to dispute GT3 class honours, in which Doug Muirhead and Jeremy Welch, flying the Denis Welch Motorsport flag, are the crew to beat.
Former motorcycle racer Mark Pangborn and Harvey Woods, Crispin Harris, James Haxton/Jack Rawles are regulars, but ex-Historic F1 racer Paul Ingram and his son George are welcome debutants. Ranged against them are the stunning ex-Gordon Spice Morgan Plus 4 SLR [Sprinzel Lawrencetune Racing] aerodynamic coupe of Simon Orebi Gann and versatile Scot Calum Lockie [a Thundersports retrospective winner here in the ex-Chiles March] and the similarly powered Triumph TR4 of 2008 HSCC Historic Road Sports champion Colin Sharp.
In GT2 four MGBs - examples of Britain’s most accessible and plentiful GT car, with more than one million built - square up to a brace of Blackpool-built TVR Grantura MkIIIs. Motivated by the same 1800cc BMC B-series engines, but mounted in considerably lighter tubular chassis, the ‘Grannies’ of vastly experienced crews Joe Ward/Chris Conoley and Malcolm Paul/Rick Bourne, should have the edge over the MGs of husband and wife Brian and Barbara Lambert, fathers and daughters Richard and Alice Locke and Jeremy & Arabella Welch and Mark Hope/James Bilsland.
Completing the class are Mike Thorne and his wife Sarah Bennett-Baggs in their delightful gunmetal-hued Austin-Healey 100/4 - the oldest car in the race - and the achingly pretty fibreglass monocoque Lotus Elite of Marc Gordon/Nick Finburgh representing genial engineer Colin Chapman’s marque which went on to win F1 World Championships with Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Emerson Fittipaldi and Mario Andretti. Powered by a 1216cc Coventry-Climax FWE engine, the ultra-light machines are giant-slayers due to their sensational agility and cornering prowess.
GTSCC OULTON PARK ENTRY LIST
