Humble Pye: the voice of club racing

AT THE CLIMAX OF A SENSATIONAL 50TH ANNIVERSARY season for Formula Ford’s earliest cars, the top three competitors from a Pre-’72 set of unprecedented depth will slug it out for the title over two races on Sunday at this weekend’s Historic Sports Car Club championship finals event at Silverstone. At least 90 drivers will have taken part over 14 races at eight meetings in the final reckoning, making HFF the best-supported discipline on the domestic calendar.

The fight is between Michael O’brien, Richard Tarling and Callum Grant, who between them have won 10 of the 12 points races to date. Having scored in every round – and not finished lower than fourth – O’brien has most points on the board, 225, but that very consistency hurts him most as each combatant is obliged to discard two scores. The Speedsport Merlyn pilot must drop two 14s, whereas rivals Tarling and Grant failed to finish Croft’s second race, thus discount a zero and eight points (for an eighth place) apiece.

Tarling, 38, has enjoyed a phenomenal first tilt at HFF gold. The 1999 Formula Palmer Audi champion has won six times – the last twice at Snetterton, by tiny margins – in his Jamun and notionally leads by five points if his two worst scores are subtracted now. Ironically, his eight came at Cadwell Park when, chasing overheating issues, he switched to Peter Alexander’s Macon. In endeavouring to stay out front, and reinvigorate the fortunes of a marque that last won the title in Darren Burke’s 2010 ‘yellow-wash’, it almost backfired when the chassis cracked, yet Tarling refocused and bounced back. He’s won four on the trot now in the David Morgantended T2, thus confidence runs high.

For reigning champion Grant, also top dog in 2012, the odds are longer. The Boltonian is the only competitor beside Tarling to have won multiple rounds, although his total of three (from the first four), in the faithful Merlyn prepared at dad Nigel’s garage in Manchester’s Swinton district, is matched over the year by O’brien if you tally the non-championship feature races at the Silverstone Classic in July.

While there are dozens of permutations, two wins this weekend would take Tarling’s net score (after deductions) to 252, O’brien’s to 247 and Grant’s 243. But, with 25 points for a win and 20 for second, should O’brien win on Saturday with Tarling second, the pair would go into Sunday’s decider on 222 each minus stoppages. This is a possibility they are all aware of. The difference in that scenario would be that O’brien could only add points with a top-three finish to erase his remaining 14, with Tarling needing a top-seven place to trump him. A tasty battle awaits.

Behind them is 2013 champ Sam Mitchell, winner of the first Brands Hatch round of FF’S birthday celebrations (part-season player Cameron Jackson, who struck anniversary gold the following day, is back this weekend in a Neil Fowler Motorsport Lola). Mitchell can keep whatever he scores having missed Snetterton, although fellow Merlyn racers Benn Tilley and, mathematically, Max Bartell could overhaul him for fourth.

With an intriguing Canadian import March 709 set to make the ‘evo’ model’s UK debut and take the year’s marque roster to 22, Historic Formula Ford is booming, and aspirational as one of the last bastions of affordable and essentially amateur single-seater racing.