MG F ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATED WITH SPECIAL MG LIVE CONTEST

There is never a shortage of attractions at Silverstone’s MG Live, but this time one stood apart, with a special race open to all competition MGFS and TFS to mark the 20th anniversary of the BRDC’S MGF Cup and MG Car Club’s Abingdon Trophy.

The MGF Cup was a famous big-budget series supporting British Formula 3 and GT; it even supported the British Grand Prix in 1998 and ’99.

The Abingdon Trophy ran in parallel for club competitors with road-going vehicles, before the two series were merged into the MG Trophy in the 2000s.

The anniversary race was the work of MG stalwart David Coulthard, who owns one of the remaining Cup cars, which he drove in the anniversary race.

“That’s how the ball got going, my Cup car,” says Coulthard. “I noticed that it was coming up on the 20th anniversary from 1998 to 2018, so I thought it would be a good idea to mark the occasion.”

However, Coulthard found organising the race a trying task. “Championship coordinators that do this week-in weekout: I take my cap off to them,” he admits. “I’ve found it hard work to motivate and identify who the drivers are and keep them informed of what’s going on.

“There hasn’t been an abundance of MGFS racing so it was always a bit of a tall order of trying to locate the cars: [many of] the Cup cars have migrated to Australia and the road-going cars were a little thin on the ground.”

Anniversary race winner Jonathan Harker paid tribute to Coulthard. “He deserves a trophy for doing that,” Harker says, “I’m very grateful to him, I think we all are.”

The MGF Cup provided a springboard to the careers of a number of notable drivers during its existence. “People like Warren Hughes, who won the MGF Cup in 1999, he moved on to touring cars and racing the sportscar for MG at Le Mans,” Coulthard explains.

“Also people like Dave Loudon who will race anything with a Rover badge on the front of it and Paul O’neill, who is commentating on touring cars, he was a driver in 1999 and 2000. It’s been a springboard for a few people.”

Harker led the anniversary race from lights-to-flag after poleman Phil Standish pitted at the end of the formation lap with fuel injection problems. But Harker’s race was far from trouble-free.

“[Second-placed Brain Butler] gave me a workout I wasn’t really expecting,” he says. “I did have a problem three laps from the end, a coolant hose had gone and the inside of the car steamed up. I couldn’t see so I had to back off.

“I thought ‘I don’t want to lose the race on the basis of something that insignificant’.

“I was desperately trying to wipe it [the windscreen] and the car was smelling really badly inside of something burning. I don’t think I would have done one more lap with it like that.”

Butler beat Adam Key to third – a long-overdue battle for MGF enthusiasts as the pair missed each other in the Cup by a year.

“[We] got a very good reaction from the crowd,” Coulthard smiles. “Everybody gave us a good wave at the end.”

He admits though it was “slightly disappointing” to have an 11-car grid.

“I managed to identify about 45 cars in the UK that could race,” he continues, “I was hoping we’d get around 30.

“The MG Owners’ Club had a [clashing] meeting at Donington, it was just one of those unavoidable clashes. We were very keen to get the race here at MG Live.”

The race was nevertheless considered a success and Coulthard is hopeful that an MGF series can again be established.

“One of those ideas behind it is if we round up enough cars and see if we can actually get a championship together, along the lines of MG Trophy that run the MG ZR,” he explains. “But we’ll see what happens.”

Standish thinks it’s important MGFS have their own category. “We often race against the front-wheel-drive ZRS and they are a lot more forgiving,” he says. “MGFS racing together means that we’ve all got the same problems.”

Harker agrees and would be keen to support any future races.

“They’re not the easiest car,” he admits. “They’re quite quick in a straight line but they’re a bit interesting in the corners. They’re very quirky.

“I would love to think we could have more of these cars out in future and have single marque races. It’s a great thing to do.”