Some notes on Barrie’s other drives include a works Chevron drive with Chris Craft at Paul Ricard in the B19. Unfortunately Chris crashed on lap eight so Barrie did not drive in the race. Photos were taken during practice by Jacques Barichella.
D&A Shells Lotus 59 F2. Another tale of what might have been, this Lotus was not well prepared and never made the Thruxton grid on 12th April 1971 which was a great shame.
BOAC 1000 1970 Sid Taylors Lola T70Mk3b
Barrie was invited to partner Howden Ganley at the big Brands meeting. This Lola had a flat tappet engine which was well below the power of the usual T70 Lolas. The meeting was really wet and Goodyear had run out of wet rears for the Lolas, so practice was delayed and the Lola started from the back of the grid with wet fronts but hand grooved rears which made the Lola pretty impossible to drive in the flooded conditions.
Howden would not start so it was left to Barrie to have a go. He nearly spun three times on the warm up lap and only managed three quarters of the first lap before crashing heavily on the start finish line having lost control at Clearways.
This was Barrie’s only serious accident in 8 seasons of motor sport. Only the car and Barrie’s pride was hurt, he was not injured. The shame was that less than 70 miles away sat the Avalon T70 Lola with two sets of new wet tyres but no one knew it was going to be that wet or that no suitable tyres would be available.
In August 1970 Paul Watson, MRC, arranged for Barrie to drive Mark Konig’s Nomad V12 at Jllandsringen, Denmark to follow the two wins in 1968 and 1969 and try for a hat trick. The Nomad was a bit too big for the tiny Danish circuit so practice was not good enough for a front row position. Guy Edwards [Phillips Autoradio Astra] spun in front of everyone on the 1st corner of the first lap, chaos pursued, the Nomad flew over Jeremy Richardson’s Martin, fortunately Jeremy was not hurt but he did get some tyre marks on his helmet. Too close for comfort!
