Tag Archives: Ferris

“In a Sandown Gold Star race I had the right rear wheel collapse while entering the bridge turn, in a high third gear, throwing me into the catch fencing at a great rate of knots. No doubt the fencing arrested my speed, but not sufficiently to prevent the abrupt stop against the abutment scuttling the poor BT43 and bending my body in a few places.”

Those are Kevin ‘KB’ Bartlett’s words describing the last moments of the unique Brabham BT43’s racing career at Sandown Park, Australia on the 9th of September 1979 as found in the book “F5000 Thunder – The Titans of Road Racing 1970 to 1981” by Ray Bell and Tony Loxley.

Brabham Chevrolet BT43, Brabham Chevrolet BT43, New Haw, Weybridge, Surrey, UK

The photo above is of the Chevrolet powered Brabham BT43 Formula 5000 car taken outside the Brabham factory in New Haw near Weybridge, Surrey, UK on the day it was completed by Bob Paton, one of the team who helped build it almost exactly six years earlier.

The car was the brain child of temporary Brabham owner Ron Tauranac before he sold Motor Racing Developments, the trading name of the Brabham Team, on to Bernie Ecclestone in 1972. The job of designing the BT43 was left to Geoff Ferris, best known for designing a successful line of Penske’s that won one Formula One race and dominated the the Indy 500 and CART Indycar championships of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

Brabham BT43, Tommy Lee Jones, The Betsy

Photo Copyright Allied Artists Picture Corp

The BT43 was based around a Geoff Ferris designed 1973 Formula 2 BT40 chassis , with foam filled triangular deformable sides as first seen on the Gordon Murray designed 1973 BT42 Formula One car, with a sub frame at the back of the monocoque to carry the unstressed 5 litre / 302 cui Chevrolet V8.

The car was first tested by John Watson “on a wet and misty day at Silverstone”, after John had given the car a ‘significant hammering’ it was determined that the nose did not live up to it’s purposeful looks when it came to generating down force.

Brabham Chevrolet BT43, Kevin Bartlett, Sandown Park,

Photo Copyright Greg Falconer use arranged courtesy Ray Bell.

Martin Birrane was the first man to race the BT43 in 1974, but he only recorded two retirements and one failure to qualify (DNQ). Brett Lunger crashed the car at Brands Hatch in his first drive in it a Brands Hatch and Chris Craft followed that up with a 7th place finish at Brands two months later in October 1974.

Brett was back in the car twice at the beginning of 1975 failing to start at Brands and retiring at Silverstone. The cars next appearance was in an obscure 1978 film called The Betsy staring Tommy Lee Jones who’s character Angelo Perino drove the car in a sequence I have yet to see.

Brabham BT43 Radiator

By now the car was owned by Chuck Jones who sent it to Australia for Kevin Bartlett to use in the 1978 season, Kevin finished 3rd in the 1978 Australian Drivers’ Championship with the BT43 finishing a season best 2nd at Oran Park.

Colin Bond took over the driving duties for the four consecutive February meetings of the Australian 1979 season with his only result being a 4th place at Oran Park. Kevin then took a deposit on the car and raced it at the fateful meeting at Sandown Park described in the opening paragraph.

Brabham BT43 Radiator

In “F5000 Thunder – The Titans of Road Racing 1970 to 1981” Kevin went on to say “…. those cars carried enough fuel for a 165KM race, the broken tub was like a bomb ready to go off. One “firey” in particular, planted himself above me where the air box had been minutes ago, feet each side of the smoking engine and whilst the crash crew were cutting the car apart to extract me,(he) lent down and said to me “Don’t worry Kev, I’m staying, and if she goes I’ll drag you out no matter what” as he grabbed my fire suit lift tabs. Thanks once again, Derek Reed.”

While Kevin was recuperating the Australian authorities wanted either the duty due on the now wrecked car or for it to exported, the new owner who had only paid the deposit sent it on to a ‘friend’ in the UK before disappearing. The ‘friend’ in the UK refused to pay the shipping cost and until September last year it was believed the unique albeit damaged car had been dumped in the Thames after the storage costs had far exceeded it’s worth.

However in September last year almost 40 years after Bob Paton took the photo at the top of this post the 34 year mystery of the whereabouts of the BT43/1 were conclusively resolved when Sandy400e came forward and revealed that the BT43/1 had not been dumped in the Thames at all on The Nostalgia Forum.

Sandy revealed that he had been working at Overseas Containers Ltd in 1980 when he got wind of a car waiting to be scrapped on their dock. After inspecting the car, essentially a wreck with some bits missing already he bought it for £30.

Not knowing exactly what he was dealing with he disposed of the damaged engine and various bit’s and pieces to friends and enthusiasts over several years and believing chassis tub to be beyond repair and of no intrinsic value sent it to a scrap metal merchant.

After finding the only remaining items, two Australian made Newcell radiators, in his loft one afternoon last September Sandy did a bit of research on the internet and soon realised the wrecked car he had bought for £30 in 1980 was in fact the long lost Brabham BT43.

Kevin Bartlett confirmed that the radiators Sandy had found in his loft were those he had fixed to the back of the monocoque, when he fitted the chisel nose to the front of the BT43 in an effort to generate more front end down force, prior to the cars last race as seen in the third photo above.

Note the Brabham BT43 was never conceived or converted to Formula One specification, there is a myth that it was which appears to have roots in an erroneous article that appeared in Racing Car News in February 1978 on page 44.

My thanks to Bob Paton, Ray Bell, Allied Artists Picture Corp, Sandy400e for the use of their images and text from “F5000 Thunder – The Titans of Road Racing 1970 to 1981” by Ray Bell and Tony Loxley and to every one else who contributed to the “The strange tale of the F5000 Brabham BT43” thread at The Nostalgia Forum.

Next Sunday I’ll be looking at the Lola that can be seen following Kevin in the Brabham in the third photo above.

Thanks for joining me on this ‘Firey Derek Reed’ edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres” I hope you will join me again tomorrow for Maserati Monday. Don’t forget to come back now !

8/12/14 Post script I would like to thank everyone for the overwhelming response to this blog on some social media and I would particularly like to thank Geoff ‘Toughy’ Toughill …

Victoria Fire & Rescue Squad

seen above in this photo of the Victoria Fire & Rescue Squad on the far right in the second row for sending me this photo from his dad Keith’s Collection, seen with the moustache at the front. Keith and Geoff worked with the hero of today’s blog …

Derek Reed, Victoria Fire & Rescue Squad

… firey Derek Reed who stood above a very hot motor and the stricken Kevin Bartlett in order to drag Kevin out, in the event that a fire should break out while Kevin was being cut out of the wreckage of the BT43.

Thanks Geoff 😉

Balena Close, Poole, Dorset – Penske PC1 #001

3 Replies

After he had finished fabricating the Len Terry designed Eagle monocoques for All American Racers (AAR) in California, John Lambert returned to the Untied Kingdom and started a new business which was located on a small industrial estate outside Poole in Dorset where the rent was cheap. When Len Terry fell out with Frank Nichols they wound up Transatlantic Automotive Consultants based in Hastings where they had designed the AAR Eagle and Terry went to join Lambert, with whom he had worked at Lotus and AAR, in Poole starting a new business together called Design Auto.

In 1969 Len Terry started to design a series of stock block Formula 5000 open wheel cars called Leda’s, John Lambert looked after the construction of them in a facility off Balena Close on the Creekmore Industrial Estate on the outskirts of Poole, Dorset. When Leda Cars ran into financial difficulty they merged into the Malaya Garage Group in 1970. Three years later Malaya Garage Group did a deal with New Zealand racer Graham McRae selling the Leda Cars premises “lock, stock and barrel” with the cars manufactured now rebranded as McRae’s.

At around this time Roger “The Captain” Penske and Mark “Captain Nice” Donohue were experiencing many successes on the US racing scene which included three Trans Am championships, then only for manufacturers, driving the Captains Chevrolet Camaro in 1969 and AMC Javelins in 1970 and ’71.

In 1972 Mark won the Indy 500 in Roger Penske’s McLaren M16 and at the end of the year drove Penske’s McLaren M19 in the Canadian and US Grand Prix finishing a more than credible 3rd in his debut Grand Prix. The following year Mark and Roger won the Can Am championship with the “Turbo Panzer” Porsche 917/30. Having achieved pretty much everything in the US, including a NASCAR Winston Cup win at Riverside driving a Penske AMC Matador to become the last ‘road ringer’ to win a non oval race in that series back in 1973 Mark announced he would hang up his helmet at the end of the season.

Roger Penske made plans for a Formula One team in 1974 and sent Heinz Hofer to look at Graham McRae’s ‘low profile’ premises on the Creekmore Industrial Estate in Poole, Dorset UK as a possible base and concluded a deal for the premises. The Ford Cosworth DFV powered Penske PC1 was built to a design by Geoff Ferris and Mark Donohue was persuaded to come out of retirement to drive the car on it’s debut in the 1974 Canadian Grand Prix where he qualified 24th and finished 12th 2 laps down.

At the US Grand Prix, where Mark Donohue and Roger Penske fan, Brian Brown took today’s photograph of Mark in the PC1 at Watkins Glen the car started 14th on the grid, but retired after 27 laps with rear suspension problems. Brian recalls his first visit to a Grand Prix thus :-

“I was of course very excited to be seeing Mark race again, but being that it was my first live Formula One event, I was equally excited to be seeing Mario’s effort with Vel’s Parnelli Jones and the rest of the grid in person. We owned a Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona and a 246 GT Dino at the time, so were very supportive of the Ferrari effort too.

My brother, friends and I spent a great deal of down time in the Kendall Garage watching the teams go about their business of working on the cars. One thing that was apparent was the absolutely professional presentation of the Penske team. Everything was spotless, just like their successful Indy Car counterpart that I’d observed in person since 1969 at Indianapolis. I was then, as now, a huge fan of Mark Donohue and Team Penske, but that aside, I always felt that they had too many positive resources not to be successful in Formula One.

I knew racing well enough to understand how tall the task Mark and the Penske team had ahead of them, but I also had the highest faith in their collective talents that I felt, given time, they would come right. I look back now and remember how I’d call in to our local ABC news tv affiliate to get the results of the races in 1975, always asking about the top six finishers along with Mark and Mario’s results.

Then came Austria and it was over for Mark and eventually Penske stopped the project – I was always appreciative that they carried on to get the victory with John Watson in Austria a year after Mark’s accident, something of a vindication for the mighty challenges that Team Penske faced in their Formula One foray. Watkins Glen 1974 was the last I ever saw Mark in person and despite the nearly 40 years that have passed, it seems like yesterday.”

Penske ended up building 3 chassis to the PC1 design chassis #001 seen here achieved a best 5th place finish, from 16th on the grid in the 1975 Swedish Grand Prix. Three races later Penske ditched the PC1 in favour of a March 751 which was raced until a new challenger until the new Penske PC3 was ready. As Brian alluded to above Mark Donohue was killed during practice for the 1975 Austrian Grand Prix after a tyre deflated pitching him off the track in to an accident which killed a marshal. Although Mark initially survived the incident he died the next day from a cerebral hemorrhage.

The debut of the Penske PC3 was delayed until the 1975 US Grand Prix where John Watson drove it in practice. Due to a misfire with the motor in the new car the team elected to wheel out today’s featured chassis one more time, John qualified 12th, finishing the race in 9th.

The following season Penske entered John in the PC3 and later PC4 models. With the latter the team won the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix, despite this success The Captain closed the Formula One program down at the end of 1976, deciding his future lay in the US racing seen where he would become the dominant force in Indy Car racing, with many of his winning cars being built in Poole, Dorset. Penske maintained facilities in Poole Dorset up until 2006. When the factory was closed one employee, Ivor, remained who had been part of the story going back to the Leda days, through the McRae years and into the Penske era.

In 2012 Brad Keslowski won his first NASCAR Championship driving a Penske entered Dodge a hitherto elusive goal on ‘The Captains’ to do list.

My thanks to Brian ‘ B² ‘ Brown for kindly agreeing to share his photograph; to kayemod, Nigel Beresford, Tim Murray, Tony Matthews, Dogearred and Doug Nye at The Nostalgia Forum for their help in piecing together the story behind Roger Penske’s presence in Poole, Dorset and a tenuous connection in the form of Lambert & Terry and their Leda Cars premises between the AAR Eagle and Penske Formula One efforts.

Thanks for joining me on this “Balena Close, Poole, Dorset” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres”, I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

PS Shortly before this blog was posted some confusion has come to light about which buildings in Poole Penske and McRae occupied and when, local resident kayemod and Nigel Beresford who worked for Penske have confirmed that Penske took over the Balena premises from McRae, while artist Tony Matthews is sure he visited a second facility a couple of miles away on Factory Road to do cutaway drawings for McRae and Penske is not so sure the Balena Close address is correct. If any further developments come forth I shall post them below, and if you know the answer to the riddle please do not hesitate to chime in.

PPS Nigel Beresford has kindly confirmed with another former Penske employee Nick Goozée that the Balena Close facility is the only one Penske purchased from Graham McRae. My thanks to Nigel and Nick for settling the matter so promptly.

PPPS

Kayemod Rob from the Nostalgia Forum has kindly sent me this photo showing “how that corner of Balena Close looks today, the small unit to the right is the original Penske UK base, formerly McRae Cars. The three parked cars more or less cover the width of the premises. The ‘Elegance’ unit to the left of Penske was once FKS Fibreglass, later Griffin Design. My ex-Specialised Mouldings chum stylist Jim Clark worked at FKS, and as well as Penske’s stuff, they also did almost everything for the Gulf GT40s and Mirages among others, their unit extended leftwards to fill the corner of the block. Penske later rented an identical unit to the right of the pic, which doubled their floor area, after some of the dividing wall was removed, they used to run their F1 operation out of that.”

Thanks Rob.

Gould Charge – Penske PC10

5 Replies

For 1982 Roger Penske had his manufacturing team in Poole, Dorset, England, where all his open wheelers were made, build 6 Penske PC10’s designed by Geoff Ferris. The cars were ready in October 1981, drivers Rick Mears and Kevin Cogan completed 3000 miles of testing during the off season.

AJ Foyt said of the legendary Penske preparation “The rest of us are trying to do as much in six days as Penske took six months to do.”

Penske Cosworth PC10, Rick Mears, Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Photo by Ed Arnaudin.

Rick Mears, took pole at with a record 207 mph average speed in the #1 Gould Charge seen here on the warm up lap for the race, and Kevin Coogan started 2nd with a 204 mph 4 lap average. The first two spots on the grid were sown up just 9 minuets after qualification had started on Pole Day. AJ Foyt filled out the front row.

The 1982 is best remembered for an accident at the start that took out Kevin Coogan, AJ Foyt, Mario Andretti, Dale Whittington and Roger Mears.

Blame for the incident was placed on the inexperienced Penske new boy Kevin Cogan, though the cause of the accident has ever been satisfactorily explained, it came to light many years later that Rick Mears had a similar incident in another PC10 during private testing that was kept out of the media at the time.

AJ Foyt managed to get out for the second attempt to start the 1982 Indy 500 but neither the repairs to Foyt’s #14 March nor the months of preparation at Penske were enough to keep Gordon Johncock, driving a Wildcat, from taking a photo finish victory in which Johncock held off Mears by just 0.16 secs.

During a 15 year Champ Car Career Rick Mears won 3 CART Championships, a record equalling, with Foyt and Al Unser, 4 Indy 500 victories and an unequalled six Indy 500 poles. Rick also took the most CART Championship race wins during the 1980’s.

While Mears and Penske lost the battle at Indy in 1982, they took a second consecutive championship in 1982.

The following season Al Unser Snr won the championship driving a Penske PC10B after the intended replacement PC11 proved unequal to the performance of the older car after the 1983 Indy 500.

Those interested in what lies beneath the super streamlined body of the PC10 might be interested to see a series of photos, taken by the extraordinary cutaway artist Tony Matthews, posted on The Nostalgia Forum, see post three and down of this PC10 thread.

My thanks to Steve Arnaudin for the scan of his Dad’s photo.

Thanks for joining me for this Gould Charge edition of ‘Getting a little psycho on tyres’ I hope that you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

Masking Tape Special – Ferrari LWB 250 GT California Spyder #0919

9 Replies

For Ferrari Friday today we have Steve Arnaudin to thank for sending his Dad Ed Arnaudins pictures for me to share, the vehicle we are looking at today is a Ferrari LWB 250 GT California Spyder at Lime Rock, Terry O’Neil’s book ‘Northeast American Sports Car Races 1950 – 1959‘ * suggests these photographs might have been taken on the 9th May 1959 from a meeting held over form the 24th April 1959.

Allegedly when it started raining during the second race on the original date Connecticut Law Enforcement officers moved in to cancel the rest of the days activities !

This 250 GT California Spyder LWB was powered by a 240 hp 2,953 cc /180 cui Colombo designed V12 similar to that in the 250 GT Ellena featured last week. The car is capable of in excess of 140 mph.

The California was the brain child of US importers Jon von Neuman and Luigi Chinetti who wanted a competition car for their biggest market from which the car derives it’s name, the interior is deliberately sparton with a ‘small’ heater the only concession to occupants comfort. Notice there is no seat harness.

The bodywork by Scarglietti on this car was made from steel there were two body types available one with closed in headlights seen here the other with regular headlights lights on the front of the wings, this is particularly important because Bob Grossman the driver seen here drove both sorts of body style and both were painted silver. Seven competition versions of the California Spyder were built with aluminium alloy bodies again in both body styles.

Note despite the absence of a seat harness the car is fitted with a roll bar behind the drivers head. It is not clear why Bob added several rolls of masking tape to the front of his car, it may have been a cheap way to protect his paintwork from chips, scratches nicks and bugs.

Originally finished in dark red this chassis #0919, one of just 45 examples, was built in 1958 and sold to Julio Batista Falla in Cuba before Bob Grossman turned up with it in silver and raced it within the USA, clocking up several wins and class victories in SCCA sanctioned events.

Bob more famously raced another silver 250 GT California in 1959, chassis #1451 one of the seven original competition spec vehicles featuring all aluminium bodies, but curiously without the headlight fairings.

#1451 was part of a three car attack on the 1959 Le Mans 24 hour race by the North American Racing Team, Bob and Fernand Tavano came in 5th overall and 3rd in class (not 1st in class as erroneously stated by an auction house recently). Bob also won the Nassau Memorial Trophy Race in #1451.

(Paragraph on subsequent history of #1451 removed 03/04/11)

My thanks again to Steve & Ed Arnaudin, hope you have enjoyed Ferrari Friday at Gettin’ a lil psycho on tyres, looking forward to seeing what tomorrow brings, don’t forget to come back now !

* Please note :- I do not in anyway endorse, or have any commercial interest in the products or distributors highlighted in today’s feature, I am merely passing information on as an enthusiast of all things motoring, I have no experience of handling these products nor have I used these vendors. I recommend anyone interested in these items or distributors do their own thorough investigation into suitability, reliability and particularly prices of both products and vendors before making any purchasing decisions.

26 11 10 Erratum Julio Batista’s son has informed me that today’s featured car was white when his father owned it in 1958, his Dad had never raced it, if he had he would have painted it yellow as he did with his TR # 0698. Apologies for any confusion.

Gettin' A Li'l Psycho On Tyres

Art Tidesco blogs on all things motoring

Tag Archives: Ferris

Pursuing The Unfair Advantage – Penske Cosworth PC3

Firey Derek Reed – Brabham Chevrolet BT43 #BT43/1

Balena Close, Poole, Dorset – Penske PC1 #001

Gould Charge – Penske PC10

Masking Tape Special – Ferrari LWB 250 GT California Spyder #0919