Le Mans the theme for a number of special cars on display at Castle Combe
A flavour of Le Mans was a key feature of the annual Autumn Classic, Castle Combe’s splendid offering into the historic racing season. Half a century after the model’s Le Mans success, the Ford GT40 was on parade while the magnificent Porsche 917 of Mark Finburgh was the stand-out display car.
Finburgh’s 917 wowed visitors to a busy paddock but sadly was not able to be demonstrated. The ex-john Wyer team car started as chassis 013 but was rebuilt around chassis 034 when David Piper had his dreadful accident during the making of the Le Mans film.
“I’d always wanted one,” said Finburgh who did a deal with Porsche to buy the car back in 1973. His interest was met with some surprise at Stuttgart by Porsche personnel who could not see the point in buying an obsolete sports-racing car.
The Gulf-liveried 917 has been a family heirloom ever since and continues to be demonstrated sparingly. In period, it was a race winner for Pedro Rodriguez and Derek Bell but now spends much of its time on show at the National Motor Museum.
A dozen Ford GT40S, some original and some replicas, were on hand and several period race cars delighted the sizeable crowd with some glorious demonstration laps in the afternoon, notably two cars from the stable of historic racer Philip Walker. Chassis 1041 was originally sold to Belgian racer Jean Blaton in 1966 while the rare open-cockpit Roadster is one of only five such prototypes built in 1964 and ’65 and used in the 1965 Le Mans test. The car contested the 1965 Targa Florio road race with John Whitmore and Bob Bondurant as an entry by Ford Advanced Vehicles.
The GT40 featured in the story of two famed local racers who were remembered during the day: Ron Fry and Terry Sanger. Fry was a modest, understated individual who only started racing at the age of 40. Yet in just six or seven years he achieved considerable success and was christened the ‘king of Combe’.
Fry made his Castle Combe debut in June 1962 in a Ferrari 250GT Berlinetta but quickly moved on to purpose-built racing Ferraris and enjoyed many successes in a 250GTO and then a 275LM. At the same time, he usually had a racing saloon car on his transporter so that he could double up and he competed in an ex-downton Mini Cooper S, an ex-broadspeed Ford Anglia and then a Ford Mustang.
On a day that celebrated the Ford GT40, Fry’s Combe record in GT40S was hugely impressive. Between 27 March 1967 and 13 July 1968, he contested 13 races in a GT40 and won 12 of them and came second in the other. However, after two major accidents and under family pressure, Fry retired at the end of 1968 after around 100 race wins.
The curtain-closing Pre ’66 Touring Car race celebrated the life of Terry Sanger, a Castle Combe hero through the 1960s as he raced more and more outrageous saloon and touring cars, including the V8-engined Ford Cortina.
As a youngster he was marshalling at Quarry when Stirling Moss famously crashed in 1953. Later, Sanger raced a Ford GT40 and contested the Targa Florio in a GT40 in 1969. In the later years of his life, having retired from racing, he regularly drove the fast intervention medical car at the circuit.