To Les Thacker.
Thanks for you photo of the Brands crash.
There are some stories behind that accident which I will relate…….

1/Our workshops are in Margate and on that day in 1970 my T 70 Mk 3b was sitting in our workshop and we had a full set of wet tyres with it.

2/ The car I drove at Brands Hatch belonged to Sid Taylor and the prep was done done by Derek Bennett. The chassis was wonderful, noticeably better than our own Lola. However it had a flat tappet engine in it which was a bit of a start line special. It was pretty weak.

3/ I was please to have set the poor practice time which was nearly a second fast than Howden Ganley who, as far as I know had never driven a T70 before. The time could have been better it had not been , maybe 70 bhp down on power.

4/ The torrential weather was unexpected, specially by Goodyear and they ran out of wet rears for the 17” wheels on the T70’s, so they told Sid the best they could do was to put wet on the front and had groove slicks for the rear !
Needles to say the car was pretty underivable.

5/Howden Ganley refused to drive the car. He was due to start !

6/ I started the race and nearly went of a couple of times on the warm up lap,

7/ On the start line I told Sid of the difficulties and he said just do a couple of laps and come in !

8/ As per your photo I went off after 1 lap. Having lost it at Clearways , caught it lost it caught it and I guess I just turned the wheel the wrong in the end !

9/ Due to the very poor visibility Pedro Rodrigues did not see a yellow flag and overtook someone.

10/ Nick Syratt had him “black flagged” called him in for a dressing down, Pedro was furious and went out again like a demented Mexican and drove the race of his life to win the race.

11/ So, had I not had the accident and Pedro was not called in that race might not have gone down in history as the best sports car race ever !

I guess you might have seen this…..?