Cycling to Brands for the BOAC 1000kms

I HUGELY ENJOYED the features on the mighty Porsche 917 in Octane 193. It’s certainly my favourite sports-racing car of all time, and the car that led me to focus my motorsport-attention on that genre of racing that lives on to this day.

Reading the article on the Icon 917 replica reminded me that I, like the man who started the Icon project, was present at the BOAC 1000kms at Brands Hatch in 1970. I too cycled to the event, in my case from Romford, Essex. Unfortunately the chain on my bike broke on the return journey and my mate had to push me all the way home!

I have some 35mm slides of the event, of dodgy quality. Looking at the pictures, it is so apparent that times were different as we were able to walk around the paddock area with impunity and without paying extra, and it was easy to get up close to the cars and drivers. There was a real cross-section of cars participating and I had forgotten just how many then-current and yet-to-be F1 drivers participated in the race: at least 20 by my count.

I had a brief interaction with one of them, Andrea de Adamich. I was 14 years old and had taken a picnic with me, which I chose to consume while in the paddock. It included a can of cola, for which in those days you needed a tin opener because there were no ring-pulls. Naturally I did not have one with me, but close by was a mechanic working on an Autodelta Alfa Romeo T33/3. I gesticulated that I would like to borrow his screwdriver and he kindly obliged. I duly rammed it into the can and it exploded in a frothy jet of liquid, all over me. The mechanic, and Andrea, who by this time had emerged, thought it was hilarious!

The stories in your 917 archive feature were so evocative, dating back in some cases 50 years.

I have been lucky enough to see these wonderful cars racing on circuits around Europe and static at the Porsche Museum, and I now know that I also saw the Icon bodyshell at the Goodwood Festival of Speed as recently as last year. The legend lives on! Richard Chadderton, Surrey