Revival race draws over thirty drivers

Thirty-five entries have signed up for the Race of Champions Revival this weekend at the Historic GP.

The Race of Champions Revival book-ends the inaugural Taupo Historic GP at the Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park, and entries closed last Friday with a line-up of 26 Formula 5000s and 9 Formula One cars.

‘‘Interest in the race meeting is huge,’’ Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park Managing Director, Tony Walker, said.

‘‘The weather forecast looks fantastic with clear skies and no wind and there is still accommodation available for the weekend despite a lot being snatched-up as long as six months ago.’’

The Brands Hatch Race of Champions (RoC) was a regular fixture back in the era when there was space on the Formula 1 calendar for extra races . First run on the undulating Grand Prix circuit carved into woodland 20 miles to the south east of London in 1965, in the final season of the 1500cc Formula 1, it was won by Mike Spence for Team Lotus.

The race was opened to thundering Formula 5000 cars in the early ‘70s, in a bid to spice up the spectacle, fill grids and sell tickets to fans starved of racing since the previous (northern hemisphere) autumn. Winners of the RoC in the three-litre F1 era included the man in whose honour the Taupo circuit is now named, Bruce McLaren (1968, McLaren M7A), and the dashing British public schoolboy James Hunt whose 1976 World Championship title formed the storyline of the Ron Howard featurelength movie, Rush.

The mix of F1 and F5000 in the 1970s saw both sides trying to harness roughly 500bhp and endingup making similar lap times, but in very different ways. Weighing in at 575kg by the mid-’70s, the three-litre Grand Prix contenders were more aerodynamically efficient and less tyre-destructive than their thuggish rivals. Starting at well over 600kgs, the torquier F5000s had a higher centre of gravity which restricted cornering potential.

Pundits expect reigning 2016 FIA Masters Formula One champion Michael Lyons (UK, Hesketh 308E), Andrew Beaumont (UK, Lotus 76) and Tommy Dreelan (Ireland, March 761) to lead the F1 charge and their closest F5000 challengers to be indomitable septuagenarian veteran, Ken Smith MBE, and UK-based series regular Mark Dwyer (both in Lola T332s).