Minis and Imps

[pallmall]

#12 Riley was Dave Strong and Fred Hansford.
Can't remember who the #6AU Mini was, will have to consult the files.

[Steve Holmes]

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[Rod Grimwood]

Now that is an impressive grid, any of a dozen cars could win on the day. Good old Bay Park, look at the crowd and also the people in the pit area.

[Shano]

Hey Amco - check out that orange bonnet and flairs on row 2...

[AMCO72]

Yeh, Bay Park 1971. Jim Richards is there in the earlier colour scheme for the Sidchrome Imp. Reg Cook on pole. And yes look at the crowd....bet a few of them had a smile on their faces! A great grid though and close ,hard racing.

[Milan Fistonic]

This is the ex-Peter Levet driven by Mike Boyle at Chamberlain Road Hillclimb.
Mike rallied the Imp as well as using it in hillclimbs and club racing.


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[GD66]

Yeh, Bay Park 1971. Jim Richards is there in the earlier colour scheme for the Sidchrome Imp. Reg Cook on pole. And yes look at the crowd....bet a few of them had a smile on their faces! A great grid though and close ,hard racing.

Good call Amco, and Rod too... for all its shortcomings as a technical track, Bay Park was always a good theatre for racing as it was so easily-seen for most of the crowd. Could that be local flyer Peter Harris on the outside of the front row ?

[AMCO72]

Excuse me Mr. F. in Wellington.....could you please identify the grid for us. I'm sure you can.

[Shano]

Orange bonnet .... row two = Rod Collingwood. Do I see the Barry Phillips Team Cambridge Mini back in the mix - just to the right of the gap through the grid?

Milan - that Imp would have been a terrific car for club level racing.

[kiwi285]

Those cars always provided some great racing where ever they were.

[Steve Holmes]

Here is some great footage from Warwick Farm in 1968, in which the skill shown by the Mini Cooper drivers to hassle the Mustangs is really impressive.

[video=youtube;tyjxtl_pk4Y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyjxtl_pk4Y[/video]

Parts 2 and 3 can be viewed on the Warwick Farm Touring Car Race 1968 thread found here: http://www.theroaringseason.com/showthread.php?245-Warwick-Farm-Touring-Cars-1968

[kiwi285]

Here are a couple more photos for this thread.

[Leo D]

A rare shot of Graham Ritter at the wheel of one of the ex works Castrol Imps..... Hume Weir. Graham tells me that he only recalls driving the car once in this configuration. It's the only picture Graham had ever seen of the car painted gold.

[Leo D]

Harry LeFoe leading John Goss at Calder...

[Steve Holmes]

Oh wow, these are beautiful! I love the Ritter version.

[Rod Grimwood]

AMCO72, Bloody bullies picking on your baby. I think it is Mr Phillips giving Mr Collingwood a telling off, now if that was an Aussie he would just say "it's a contact sport" and nothing would happen about it.

[Steve Holmes]

Thats a cool photo Rod!

[AMCO72]

Rod, I have a slightly different photo to that one, but it doesnt show the impact that your one does. That photo was taken at Baypark and amazingly was the ONLY time the car was damaged in it's 2 year history with Collingwood. Mr Phillips wasn't in the least bit apologetic, and Dave Panckhurst, Rods mechanic and builder of the car, and I had a 'chat' to Barry at the McLaren festival of speed, about that 'incident' but he KNEW NOTHING!!!!! Racing incident, yeh right. Could you do me a favour and F/W that photo to my Email address so I can copy it and put it in the 'history book'....... mailto:?subject=&body=
Thanks . Gerald.

[Steve Holmes]

Pretty amazing that was the cars only bash Gerald, especially considering those guys drove those things at 100% all day long.

[AMCO72]

Yep, sure is Steve, those guys gave, nor expected any quarter, and I would say 120% all day. It was fortunate that it was usually out the front, not tangled up in mid field where all the action usually is....[.see the NZ V8's!!!] Rod wrote me a long letter in 1985, describing their antics over the 2 seasons. Among other stuff he says....quote..... the 1971/72 season saw us winning first time out and also being victorious in 18 out of 20 championship heats, with one 2nd and one 3rd to our credit. We won every round on aggregate and scored a maximum of 90 points. The championship in those days could only be won in the open class ie. 4200-6000 cc so we could not be classified as saloon car champs, even though we scored 30 more points than Paul Fahey in 70/71 and 41 more than Rod Coppins in 71/72. That changed the following year but too late for us. The car was only damaged once in all it's racing with us....when Phillips put me into the fence at Baypark and only failed to finish one other race with a blown clutch [non championship race]. In total we won 58 races over 2 years, including heats and non championship races, never finished further back than 3rd and with two DNF's....unquote.....so fairly remarkable, but as I said somewhere else, it wasn't that the car was any faster than the others in the field, just that it finished races by being reliable, a tribute I think to Dave Panckhurst's engineering skills. Actually our chat with Barry was very amicable, like us all he has mellowed with age, and is great that his son, Graeme has purchased his Dads old car, and intends to restore it in the Cambridge colours that it was campaigned in all those years ago.