Historic Winton
May 25 and 26, 2024
Photos by Tim Shellshear, Rees Mackay, and Andrew Fock, video by Richard Lamrock and report by Rees Mackay.
Winton was on again with its usual range of interesting cars and lovely cars, and a good number of VSCCA members in attendance. The weather was noticeably warm on both days. In the Handicap, Rees Mackay won the Lou Molina Trophy for first pre-war car.
Members in attendance
Competitors from the VSCCA included Peter Sewell as Factory Driver for Junior Member Samantha Sewell; Barrie Young, Weir & Male Austin Special; Matt Snape, Willys Special; Tim Shellshear, MGF; Malcolm Robertson, MG TB Special; Rees Mackay, Riley, with Stirling Mackay driving the other Riley. Unfortunately, the MGTA Tomlinson failed to drive onto the trailer for the journey for John Lackey Jr to drive, although he was in attendance, as were John Lackey Sr, Rob Phillips, Ray Fowler, Don Harrington and Rob Jardine were assisting.
Neil Hamilton, Rod Rossi, Joe Wilson, Colin Barrs, Brian Parkinson, Noel McIntosh, Dermer Bennett, Rob Kemmis, Richard Lamrock and John Murn were also seen, the last also working on the Track Commentary.
First appearances
This was Barrie Young’s first race meeting with the Weir & Male Austin A40 Special, an enormous change to his previous form of motorsport. This lovely little car was built by Ken Wylie in 1948 for Weir & Male to publicise the new Austin A40.
Another vehicle to make its first appearance was a re-creation of the extraordinary Eldred Norman double V8, built in the 1940’s around two Ford V8 engines end to end and other war-surplus components.
Regularity Trials
The Austin 7 domination of the Regularity Trials was challenged by MG, with 9 – 10 of each running, supported by wide range of other cars including a brace of Alvis 12/50’s, Alfa Romeo, Bugatti, Lancia Lambda, Singer, and Vauxhall 30/98.
The Regularity One group is for pre-war cars, usually road registerable, only; and so is an excellent way of giving pre-war cars some good exercise without over extending them or getting mixed up with racing cars; and is highly recommended.
After the disappointment last year when low entries forced pre-war racing cars to be combined with pre-1960 racing cars, there were 15 pre-war entries and 21 pre-1960 entries that were still combined. We can hope that the larger number of entries will encourage the organisers to separate the fields next year.
The large and interesting field created large speed differentials which fortunately did not create great difficulty. Indeed, they were managed extremely well in the Handicap race, when 24 seconds covered the finishing 22 cars.
~ Rees Mackay