4 replies to this topic

[Bloggsworth]

My brother e-mailed me asking me if we were there that Boxing Day - Now you would have though one of us would have remembered, but after 52 years the meetings sort of merge into one another, we lived in Sevenoaks so we often went to Brands during school holidays.

It was the day Graham Hill debuted the Lotus Super 7, and Jim Clark in a Border Reivers Elite came second to Colin Chapman. I have a recollection of Chris Bristow in a Cooper Bobtail colliding with a Lotus 11 at Bottom Bend (My faulty memory keeps suggesting Innes ireland, but I am unsure), and the two drivers had a punch-up there and then. If these two events were contemporaneous, then we were indeed there. We may, of course, have been there anyway and I have merely conflated two events.

[Eric Dunsdon]

My brother e-mailed me asking me if we were there that Boxing Day - Now you would have though one of us would have remembered, but after 52 years the meetings sort of merge into one another, we lived in Sevenoaks so we often went to Brands during school holidays.

It was the day Graham Hill debuted the Lotus Super 7, and Jim Clark in a Border Reivers Elite came second to Colin Chapman. I have a recollection of Chris Bristow in a Cooper Bobtail colliding with a Lotus 11 at Bottom Bend (My faulty memory keeps suggesting Innes ireland, but I am unsure), and the two drivers had a punch-up there and then. If these two events were contemporaneous, then we were indeed there. We may, of course, have been there anyway and I have merely conflated two events.

Graham Hill won his race in the Lotus Super 7 from Peter Gammon's Lola. The place seemed full of 'Loti' that day but I recall Bill Wilks having a good race with his Frazer-Nash behind Chapman and Clark. Oh, and Don Parker won the 500cc Formula Three race in his Cooper-Norton. I dont recall the incident involving Chris Bristow though.

[raceannouncer2003]

Some results here:

http://www.racingspo...2-26-18334.html

http://www.racingspo...2-26-18335.html

Vince H.

[Graham Gauld]

My brother e-mailed me asking me if we were there that Boxing Day - Now you would have though one of us would have remembered, but after 52 years the meetings sort of merge into one another, we lived in Sevenoaks so we often went to Brands during school holidays.

It was the day Graham Hill debuted the Lotus Super 7, and Jim Clark in a Border Reivers Elite came second to Colin Chapman. I have a recollection of Chris Bristow in a Cooper Bobtail colliding with a Lotus 11 at Bottom Bend (My faulty memory keeps suggesting Innes ireland, but I am unsure), and the two drivers had a punch-up there and then. If these two events were contemporaneous, then we were indeed there. We may, of course, have been there anyway and I have merely conflated two events.

The Jim Clark/Colin Chapman battle with the Elites was at the Boxing Day 1958 meeting. I have attached my photo of Clark in the white Border Reivers Elite ahead of Chapman and Mike Costin in the factory cars. Chapman had only met Clark for the first time a few weeks earlier and Jim told me that prior to this race he had gone to the very public toilets at Brands. He overheard Colin Chapman and Mike Costin discussing how they would make a race of it and this annoyed Clark and he went out determined to beat them. He led all the way until in the closing laps he came up to lap Paddy Driver, I think it was, in an Austin Healey Sprite and was baulked by Driver letting Chapman nip through and win the race with Clark second. It was a great racing debut for Clark at Brands Hatch as he had never raced there before.



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[David McKinney]

It was in reading about that race, 12,000 miles away, that I "discovered" Jim Clark, because - as has been mentioned elsewhere - Colin Chapman was a first-rate driver. And it was "his" car

Until then Clark had seemed to be a competent D-type driver

The 1959 season, in the Elite and the Lister, completed my conversion