The Roaring Season

A Collection of Photos from Oulton Park and Kyalami. Late '60's and early 70's.

Mario Andretti at the SA GP in either 1975 or 1976. Can't remember exactly when I took the photo.

Chaswin wrote:Mario Andretti at the SA GP in either 1975 or 1976. Can't remember exactly when I took the photo.

That's from 1975.

If the rest of the pics are anywhere near as good as your opener, this is going to be amazing!

That's when all cigarette advertising was banned on the race car but Mario still has the Viceroy on his helmet !

(Ken H)

A scene at Kyalami Clubhouse corner during a GP support race. The crowd is typical for those days in the early 1970's. You should note that all these photos were taken at the "old" Kyalami which ran clockwise.

A change of venue. Graham Hill's Lotus in the paddock at Oulton Park around 1968. In those days you could wander around the paddock and get great photos. Taken with a 28mm Pentax fish eye lens as far as I can remember.

Richard Attwood and Rhodesian driver John Love's Porsche 917K at the 1970 Kyalami 9 hour. The only time one of these cars appeared in the colours of Gunston, a local cigarette company. The car eventually retired.

I wonder if the owner of this Aston Martin GT Zagato pictured in the paddock at Oulton Park in the late 1960's would have raced it if he realised it would be worth around $10 million in 2021.

Chaswin wrote:Richard Attwood and Rhodesian driver John Love's Porsche 917K at the 1970 Kyalami 9 hour. The only time one of these cars appeared in the colours of Gunston, a local cigarette company. The car eventually retired.[ATTACH=CONFIG]70169[/ATTACH]

I really love this photo. Cool that they repainted the car just for this event. I think the Team Gunston colours are some of the best ever in racing. There were a bunch of different cars; single seaters, sports cars, saloon cars, and they all looked fantastic in these colours.

Heavy Metal. The winning Ford Falcon Sprint of Brian Muir in the 1968 Oulton Park BSCC race at the Gold Cup meeting. Falcon Sprints were placed 1st, 2nd and 3rd. (Muir, Pierpoint and Hobbs).

Chaswin wrote:Heavy Metal. Saloon car racing was interesting at Oulton Park in the late 1960's. Hill and Clark in Lotus Cortina's running up against big V8 engined US saloons. Is this a Galaxy?[ATTACH=CONFIG]70188[/ATTACH]

Wow, what a cool photo! This is a Ford Falcon Sprint. These cars dominated the BSCC for much of the late 1960s under Group 5 rules. They were homologated at just 980kg, and were originally designed to contest the 1964 Monte Carlo rally.

How do you make one of those brutes weigh only 980kg?

This one is for Steve Holmes. Another SA car in Gunston colours. This is the locally developed Ford Capri Perana. It was a Capri 3 litre fitted with a Mustang V8. Unfortunately it retained the live rear axle which made it a handful on bumpy corners. These are much sought after in SA today.

Yet another Team Gunston car, this time in the 1970 Kyalami 9 hour. It's a Chevron B16 Spider driven by long time Chevron team driver Brian Redman, who was also a regular at Oulton Park.

Chaswin wrote:How do you make one of those brutes weigh only 980kg?

Ask "Paul B"

Chaswin wrote:How do you make one of those brutes weigh only 980kg?

Nobody has ever actually managed to achieve it. Its just that this was the figure Ford entered when filling out its FIA homologation sheets in 1964. And for some reason it was never questioned. The competition Falcon Sprints were fitted with fibreglass bonnet, boot lid, front fenders and doors, plus lightweight bumpers. But even then they couldn't get anywhere near the minimum weight limit. Falcon Sprints are now hugely popular in historic racing in the UK and Europe.

Chaswin wrote:This one is for Steve Holmes. Another SA car in Gunston colours. This is the locally developed Ford Capri Perana. It was a Capri 3 litre fitted with a Mustang V8. Unfortunately it retained the live rear axle which made it a handful on bumpy corners. These are much sought after in SA today.[ATTACH=CONFIG]70189[/ATTACH]

Wow, so cool to see this. Period colour photos of this car are actually very rare. Thanks Charles!

Chaswin wrote:Heavy Metal. Saloon car racing was interesting at Oulton Park in the late 1960's. Hill and Clark in Lotus Cortina's running up against big V8 engined US saloons. Is this a Galaxy?[ATTACH=CONFIG]70188[/ATTACH]

Thats a great shot, Probably one of the clearest photos I've seen of a Falcon racing back then. The cars were very developed by 1967/8 the rear guards were flared in order to get the wider rims on and off, I believe they ran 8 inch rims for group5 the front guards were radiused and flared so the wider front tyres would clear, and that's as low as the front of a Falcon could go. The race weight was circa 1150 kg depending on how much fuel the 104 ltr tank had in it.

The Howmet TX (Turbine eXperimental) was an American sports prototype racing car designed in 1968 to test the competitive use of a gas turbine engine in sports car racing. Planned by racing driver Ray Heppenstall, the TX combined a chassis built by McKee Engineering, turbine engines leased from Continental Aviation & Engineering, and financial backing and materials from the Howmet Corporation. It failed to finish at Oulton Park in a one hour race, but attracted plenty of attention. Photographed at the 1968 Oulton Park 1 hour sports car race.