2010
Tasman Revival Race Meeting
The 2010 Tasman
Revival Race Meeting is now in its final day at the superb Eastern
Creek Raceway, 40km west of Sydney, Australia.
The meeting is reliving the
golden era of open wheeler racing in Australia and New Zealand in
the 1960s and 70s.
Some 400 entries have filled
the grids at the meeting, with separate fields for Group M (1961-1965),
Group O (1966-1969), Formula 5000, Formula Ford and Formula Vee. The
categories have being supported by pre-war & early post war racing
and sports racings cars, and 1950s-70s production sports and touring
cars.
Highlights thus far for the
meeting include excellent performances by Bryan Sala in the F5000
races where he is competing in Bill Hemming’s Elfin MR8. Sala,
a former F3 driver, now father of three has not let fellow Victorian
Andrew Robson slip away. Robson, driving his Lola T332 holds the lap
record, and is pretty much on that pace this weekend. A small contingent
of New Zealanders have come across the Tasman. Sadly though, a first
lap incident involving four cars in Saturday morning’s race
caused repairable damage to three NZ cars, but not for the Dudley
Cunningham Lola T332. This particular T332 was the prototype car,
which runs a different front up-right setup to the other T332s so
has being retired for the remainder of the event from racing.
The Cunningham car, however,
is the car that Australian Warwick Brown took to win the last Tasman
Series by 2 points in 1975 so a temporary setup is on the car for
Brown to demonstrate his old machine in today’s demonstrations.
The Group O racing cars, the
ones that will provide the front action in the Tasman Revival Feature
Race have put on some excellent racing in their first three events.
John Bowe (driving Trevor Simpson’s 2.5litre Climax powered
Brabham BT23) had the best start from position two on the grid in
the third race for these cars, but by the end of the first lap had
lost 3 places. Rob Hall (defending Tasman Revival Rsce champion from
2008 in the ex Chris Amon Ferrari 246T) took the battle to John Smith
(Dawson-Damer Collection ex Graham Hill Lotus 49) for the remaining
5 laps, but the mighty power of the 3.0 litre Cosworth DFV provided
another race win for the 1977 Aust Formula Ford Champ.
More recollections and interesting
stories to follow.
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