Fine races from the Derek Bell Trophy and SDC Classic FF1600 Championship headlined the Historic Sports Car Club’s racing at Silverstone on Saturday May 4.
Henry Chart was one of the stars of the day when he stormed up from the back of the grid in consecutive races in two very different cars. Qualifying went badly wrong for Chart when his F5000 Trojan T101 developed an oil leak and then his Classic FF1600 Van Diemen RF81 was struck by water pump failure.
The Trojan was out for the day but team boss Simon Hadfield had the sister car sitting in the garage ready to go and so Chart switched cars and started the opening Derek Bell Trophy counter from the back of the strong grid. In his first race since last August, Chart stormed up the order and rushed ahead to win at a canter as early pacesetter Alex Kapadia was sidelined with a fuel pump problem in his F2 March 762 and Neil Glover slowed his Chevron B37 with mechanical woes.
Chart started from the front row for the second race and blasted clear to win by 37s. This time, it was Kapadia who had to battle up from the back and he took second place before Martin Wood completed the podium in his Formula Atlantic March 73B.
Straight after both DBT races Chart jumped into his FF1600 Van Diemen to contest two epic SDC Classic Formula Ford championship rounds. While Chart raced from 32nd on the grid to fourth place, just a second off the winners, it was Snetterton double winner Benn Simms who just out-fumbled Andy Gosling to complete a hat trick of early season wins in his Jomo JMR7.
Matt Wrigley was right in there too in his Merlyn, while Tom McArthur and Rick Morris were other key players as wonderful battles, in the best Silverstone tradition, featured all the way down a bumper 32-car field.
In the second race a mighty lead battle featured as many as half dozen cars racing wheel-to-wheel but a late skirmish allowed Gosling and Wrigley to edge a fraction clear with McArthur in hot pursuit in Hadfield’s Titan Mk4. That was how they finished with an elated Gosling scoring his first race win against top opposition while Chart bagged another fourth place to wrap up a remarkable day.
Neil Glover won two of the three Silverstone Circuit’s Allcomers races at a canter in his 2017 Ligier JSP3 prototype. Glover missed the third race and so veteran John Sheldon went ahead in his Chevron B16.