9 Sopwith’s racing endeavour remembered

Tommy Sopwith (1932-2019), for whom the 1950s saloon car race is named, started competing at Goodwood in 1953, driving a Jaguar XK120, then progressed to Cooper sportscars. On 18 June 1955, he won three of the 18th Members’ Meeting’s eight races, two in a Cooper T39 ‘Bobtail’, the other in his Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire.

Having won all but one round of the inaugural British Saloon Car Championship of 1958 in a 3.4-litre Jaguar, Sopwith narrowly lost out to class winner Jack Sears in a shootout to decide the title’s destiny at Brands Hatch in Riley One-point-fives.

Old Stoic Sopwith – son of aviator and America’s Cup yacht racer Sir Tom – was a successful Brighton car dealer whose Equipe Endeavour was among Britain’s top private teams. Driving its Jaguar E-type, Graham Hill famously won on the model’s competition debut at Oulton Park in 1961. The team bowed out victoriously at the end of 1962.

The field for Sunday’s race appropriately features three Jaguar MKVIIS and spans Renault

4CV to Lincoln Cosmopolitan via MG YB and

Jowett Javelin. Can anybody catch Jason Kennedy’s Lancia Aurelia B20GT?