AT THE TOP OF THE MIDGET & SPRITE HERD
For reigning Midget & Sprite Challenge champion Pippa Cow, adding last year’s overall crown to her two previous class titles was the culmination of a lifetime spent in and around the series.
Cow claimed Class E honours (for race-modified cars) by topping the section in her Austin-healey Sebring Sprite on all but two occasions. It was enough to pip Class D (road-modified) champion Mark Witherspoon to the overall title.
Like a number of her competitors, Cow followed her father, Gil Duffy, into the series after growing up immersed in the paddock. Richard Bridge and Barney Collinson – frontrunners in Classes A
(fully modified) and D respectively – did similarly, as well as Hugh Simpson and last year’s Class A champion Edd Weston.
Taming a single horsepower had initially been enough for Pippa, until her dad, who now campaigns a Formula 3 Brabham BT21B in Historic Sports Car Club events as well as tending to Pippa’s Sprite, made her aware of the Formula Woman initiative in 2004.
“I was competing on horses but my dad had the cars,” said Cow. “I’d been living in Australia and I came back, and my dad said to me, ‘There’s an advert in Autosport about Formula Woman, it’s for novice women racing drivers’. So I applied.”
Following an assessment day and final ‘boot camp’ at Cadwell Park, Cow took her place on the grid for the quick-fire summer season of races alongside 15 other women in Mazda RX-8S. She finished seventh overall but the four-wheeled racing bug had bitten even before the assessment.
“I did a trackday before I did the Formula Woman test day and I really enjoyed it,” she said. “So I saved some of my wedding fund and spent it on a rolling chassis of a Locost! When I got through to Formula Woman, we had to pause with that, so I did Formula Woman and then the following year I raced the Locost.”
Cow then progressed to the Midget & Sprite Challenge, racing a Mk1 Frogeye Sprite. She also shared the car with her father in Classic Sports Car Club Swinging Sixties events before it was written off – an incident that demonstrated the camaraderie within the paddock.
“It was two weeks between races, and [two-time champion] Richard Perry very kindly said I could have the silver shell,” said Cow. “My dad built it up using all the bits from the red Frogeye and got me going again in a fortnight.”
Under the series’ race-modified regulations, the car’s original 1275cc engine has been bored out to 1380cc, moved back in the chassis by four inches and mated to a Ford five-speed gearbox, while road-holding is controlled by a five-link suspension.
It may not be on a par with the series’ fully modified Modsports-spec cars, but Cow is often able to get among them, particularly before their slicks reach full operating temperature. She claimed five overall podium finishes last year, and added two more at Cadwell last weekend as her title defence gathered momentum.