The great old Avalon Racing AEC bus with a picnic in session. Taken in Austria en route to the Aspen races. Barrie, Dollie Paul Bailey, my old school chum, and the guy with his back to the camera is Tony Beeson’s mechanic, Jack Anstiss who travelled with us on that occasion. Happy Days !
Latest find, is this great photo of René leading the Porsches early on in the 1972 Le Mans 24 hour race. The Kodak T290 Lola 2 litre driven by René and Barrie was the class winner and the first Lola car to complete the 24 hour race.
A great old photo turned up with thanks to Rob Petersen who lives in Zandvoort.Here we see the Avalon Racing Lola T70 Mk3b being chased by Ed Swart in the 2 litre Abarth.On this occasion I retired due to a puncture about half way through the race.
A great shot of Barrie over taking Mo Nunn in the works Lotus.Starting very low on the grid around 30th Barrie keep driving through awful weather to finish 7th overall after a rain soaked race. A good result.
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…..?
Many thanks to Yves Ronga, French photographer extraordinaire, who took this wonderful photo of me driving at Le Mans in the wet bit!
Just got this from from Bjorn Kjer, we think it was taken in Sweden. Very kind of him to send it on, dating from 1970. It shows our pristine Lola about to be loaded onto our red trailer and behind our Ford Transit van which proved to be an excellent workhorse.
A kind friend Yves Ronga, sent me this from the archives.
Montlhery July 72, I am in the paddock and John McDonnell, who is drinking while I am chatting to Francois Lebel, the soon to be [at that time] Mayor of the 16th district of Paris, where later, he gained more fame by marrying Nicholas Sarkozi and Carla Bruni in 2008 !
Thanks to my friends and followers who send me these images and make new posts on my site possible.
The well know automotive artist Andrew Kitson was commissioned to do a picture for the 50th anniversary of the Chevron B8 which must be one of the most successful GT cars ever made. Here is that image which is purely fictional.Andrew shows, Derek Bennett leading Digby Martland, John Lepp, John Bridges, me and Guy Edwards, then Trevor Twaites. I ti a really nice image which I had printed and it hangs in my garage where there are not many spaces left on the wall !
Great to find new pix turn up on line and I found this one of the 1st race on the then new circuit near Salzburg, now I think it is called the Red Bull ring.Here we have Jonathan Williams in the Serinissima nearest to the camera, then the 2 908/2 Porsches of Kurt Arhens, the eventual winner and Rudi Lins with the Avalon Racing Lola T70 Mk3b on the second row, I came 4th on this occasion. Sadly the T70 was no match for the 908 from Porsche.
