25 replies to this topic

[Porsche718]

Hi all,

 

I'm trying to get the results for the first few years of Formula Ford in Australia - 1970, 1971 and 1972.

 

They were formative years for the class in Australia, but reporting was very poor - some races being held in conjunction with "mixed" racing cars fields.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Cheers

 

Edit: The points awarded for first, second, third etc would be helpfull too. Thanks

Edited by Porsche718, 15 October 2022 - 06:38.

[Ray Bell]

I don't think any Driver to Europe races were ever held with combined fields...

 

I'll have a look in RCN, but I think you have those, don't you?

 

There were occasional Formula Ford features in the magazine, they would have given some underlying detail.

[Porsche718]

1970 there was one at Warwick Farm on September 6. I cannot find results for another round in 1970 which I suspect was also a mixed field.

 

Yes. I have been through RCNs today reading everything I could see and the articles by Peter Wherrett. I laughed when I read that a meeting was held within the Formula Ford ranks to "elect" a journalist to represent the class and Peter was selected. He wasn't even there!

 

Subsequently he was informed and he said yes, so at least in 1970 and into 1971 he was RCN's "man" for Formula Ford. During that year he drove Alan Vincent's Bowin a couple of times.

 

1970 is a real mess. RCN reports list 2 different meetings as "Round 4" and the AARC Warwick Farm official results list the September race as Round 5 when there had already been 5 rounds!

 

During 1970 a couple of rounds had date changes because either NSW or Victorian competitors could not attend the scheduled meeting. So, with so few competitors, I suspect a couple of rounds may have been "excluded" from being counted in the championship, then reinstated after the season. But that is only my surmising.

 

It would not have made a difference as Richard Knight had almost double the points of his nearest rival and would have won regardless.

 

The interesting thing is "Driver to Europe" doesn't seem to be mentioned until 1971 when reports started to be a bit more complete and were all seemed to be stand-alone races. I thought it started in 1970, but hey, I've been wrong before .... LOTS.

 

Moving on to 1971 when the sun rises.

[Ray Bell]

It seems that Melbourne quickly became the centre of Formula Ford activity...
 
Sandown Park's November 9 meeting of 1969 saw the first FF race with ten cars entered. nine arriving at the meeting and eight starting. Richard Knight won in the Stillwell Elfin 600 from Murray Coombes in a Lynx and Bob Minogue in an Aztec.
 
On November 23 Murray Coombs won at Phillip Island in a race dominated by FFs but including other cars. Next came Winton, where FFs were mixed with F3 cars and Bob Minogue won in a Aztec from Brian Andrew (Andrew FF) and Knight third after a lose.
 
At the January 18 Calder there was a field of nine, Knight winning from Minogue and Phil Webber in an Elfin
 
The first FF race in NSW was at the 1970 Tasman meeting at Warwick Farm, where Knight won again after Minogue tangled with the pace man, Bob Beasley in Wright Ford's Bowin P4a, and Beasley set the lap record at 1:41.3, over a second better than Knight managed, in regaining second from Minogue and repassing Knight. Beasley had been running the Bowin in other meetings mixed in with other classes, I see no mention of other NSW FFs up to this time, his experience was showing and only a damper failing half a mile from the line prevented him winning. Knight from Beasley and Minogue.
 
The following week there was a FF class in a race at Sandown's Tasman meeting, Knight simply dominated that to win from Beasley and Webber.
 
Possibly the first race where they showed the way things were going to go was at Calder on March 22, with Knight winning from Webber and Beasley. There was a dotting of odd cars in the easter meetings at Bathurst, Hume Weir and Mallala, also at Oran Park on April 12, some of the owners getting some race experience as they awaited races of their own.
 
I'm inclined to think that the first round of the series was the Warwick Farm race, as the report on the Sandown meeting of April 19 says that the ten-lapper there was Round 2 of the series. Knight again won from Beasley and Graeme North, who'd been knocking on the door for several meetings with a Wren. Beasley and Knight shared the lap record.
 
May 17 at Winton Webber showed a lot of pace and took the FF record, but there was no separate FF race. Knight and Jon Davison ran the Stillwell cars at Calder on May 31, Knight in a brand new one, but it was mixed class racing and Phil Webber again showed good pace. The next round was on August 2 at Amaroo Park, another Knight from Beasley affair with Gary Rush third, Coombes next and then John Edmonds in an Aztec.
 
It was Oran Park a week later that saw Round Four, Knight from Beasley yet again, Rush next from Webber and it's hard to work out the placings after that, but Geoff Hood in a Wren was mixing it with Edmonds and Colin Bond while Peter Wherrett in the Alan Vincent Bowin had a spin.
 
Round five saw them back at the Farm and this time Beasley won with Larry Perkins second in the Stillwell Elfin. The race did include some other cars, slower F2 and F3s, but the main contenders were the quicker FFs once Ray Winter spun his Rennmax F3 at the Causeway. Knight tried hard for some laps to get ahead of Beasley at Creek and ultimately spun trying, so Perkins was second (and set the lap record) and it's possible that Webber was third of the FFs.
 
On September 27 there was a 15-lapper at Hume Weir, but I don't know if it was a round of the series. For FFs only, Knight won from David Green (Wren) and Webber with Perkins coming back from a spin for fourth, Rush, Hood, Edmonds and Gilbert. A handicap was allotted to the FFs later in the day and went to Edmonds from Hood and Green with only five cars in the race. It was a wet meeting.
 
October 25 saw a round at Phillip Island, Beasley wasn't there and Knight beat Perkins and David Green ahead of Rush, Coombes, Edmonds and Barrett. The lucky break for you is here, the points to this point in the series are shown:
 
Knight 64
Beasley 35
Rush 26
Webber 24
Perkins 17
Coombes 11
Edmonds 8
Hood 5
Stege 4
Russell 3
Young 2
Minogue and Wherrett 1 each
 
There was one more round to go, this was at the Farm on November 22. Knight won from Beasley, Perkins, Rush, Green, Webber, Young and Wherrett. I think the 'Young' is Bob Young.
 
Four seconds and a win gave Beasley 35 points, two seconds and a fourth gave Perkins 17 points, Knight's 64 reflected five wins, a second and either a third or fourth. It all looks a bit hard to work out to me.




.

Edited by Ray Bell, 15 October 2022 - 23:29.

[eab]

Four seconds and a win gave Beasley 35 points, two seconds and a fourth gave Perkins 17 points, Knight's 64 reflected five wins, a second and either a third or fourth. It all looks a bit hard to work out to me.

I gave it a quick look and I can tell that if those points came solely from those positions, there must have been additional rules, eg points for poles, fastest laps, (most) laps led, overtaking or a system in which some scores had to be dropped. And a(nother) confirmation of things not adding up, is your list:

 

Knight 64

Beasley 35

Rush 26

Webber 24

Perkins 17

Coombes 11

Edmonds 8

Hood 5

Stege 4

Russell 3

Young 2

Minogue and Wherrett 1 each

.

After doing this, I took a look at wiki: https://en.wikipedia...rd_Championship

The 70--72 years are actually 'covered', and it says that in '70 the point system was 9-6-4-3-2-1, but like I said, it doesn't add up. Not with your listings and not even with the standings on wiki itself. They have Beasley at 71 points, just 3 short of Knight.

 

 

1970 is a real mess.

[Ray Bell]

I get a clear picture of the points in 1972...

 

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 for the first ten places respectively. Best six pointscores out of the eight races. Which was down a bit on 1971, when there were 12 races.

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by eab
.....there must have been additional rules, eg points for poles, fastest laps, (most) laps led, overtaking or a system in which some scores had to be dropped.....

There wouldn't be any of those except for dropping points, best five of six or best six of eight etc.

....And a(nother) confirmation of things not adding up, is your list:
 
Knight 64
Beasley 35
Rush 26
Webber 24
Perkins 17
Coombes 11
Edmonds 8
Hood 5
Stege 4
Russell 3
Young 2
Minogue and Wherrett 1 each
.
After doing this, I took a look at wiki: https://en.wikipedia...rd_Championship
The 70--72 years are actually 'covered', and it says that in '70 the point system was 9-6-4-3-2-1, but like I said, it doesn't add up. Not with your listings and not even with the standings on wiki itself. They have Beasley at 71 points, just 3 short of Knight.

The problem is that we don't have all the placings...

What I wrote up in the previous post was all I could glean from skimpy race reports. Wherrett was worst of all, too busy talking about himself and not giving actual places, while Ryan was typically frugal with words overall.

[Ray Bell]

The final pointscore in the 1972 series was:

Skelton 57
Leffler 55
Beasley 53
Buesselmann 47
Mingay 38
Hall 30
Larner 21
Searle 10
Murphy 17
Green 14
Coombs, Kennedy 13
Heasman 9
Edwards 8
Carter 6
Edmonds 4
Twigden 1

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by Porsche718
1970 there was one at Warwick Farm on September 6. I cannot find results for another round in 1970 which I suspect was also a mixed field.....

The International meeting (see my post) which had a stand-alone Formula Ford race.
 

.....1970 is a real mess. RCN reports list 2 different meetings as "Round 4" and the AARC Warwick Farm official results list the September race as Round 5 when there had already been 5 rounds!

Clearly the consecutive weeks' in August were rounds three and four, the Calder and Winton events weren't rounds of the series.

[ReWind]

Thanks for bringing Enno Büßelmann to my attention, arguably the most unknown German-born racing driver.

 

Alas, he is already gone, having passed away in 2009 at just 67 years of age.

[eab]

There wouldn't be any of those except for dropping points, best five of six or best six of eight etc.


The problem is that we don't have all the placings...

What I wrote up in the previous post was all I could glean from skimpy race reports. Wherrett was worst of all, too busy talking about himself and not giving actual places, while Ryan was typically frugal with words overall.

"Not having all the placings", yeah I thought so already, hence the "if"-s and all in my post.

Also, regarding the best-five-of-six for example, that doesn't align with the points standings that we're working with. 'Yours' has 64 for Knight with still a race to go, and wiki has him at 74 after "all 6 races". Obviously, with just 9pts for a win, that's impossible with just those 6 races, let alone were you to drop the worst result. Just going by your "Knight's 64 reflected five wins, a second and either a third or fourth", this already implies there were at least 7 races if we focus on the number of placings, and even more if we go by the "64 points" (using the 9-6-4-.. system).

We simply lack correct data.

[MarkBisset]

pichost

 

 

Steve,

 

Understand the problem having fished around in the past.

 

The '50 Year History of FF in Oz' (1969-2019) book is running very late but getting close. I know Phil Marrinon (FFA  committee member and Vic state rep), a top-bloke, is working on the project at present. No idea what the appendices are at the back of the book but maybe some work has been done on this stuff; philandkerry13@optusnet.com.au

 

If that's not a flyer he may know of an FF Nutter - there are a few of us! - who has done some of this work.

 

The admin of FF is/was Melbourne centric as the 'father' of the class was here, Paul Harrington, worked for the LCCA when he first arrived from Blighty (before heading to Auto Action) and used the LCCA admin as a resource, which segued into Margaret Hardy's FF Admin role here.

 

Harrington above at Calder alongside the FoMoCo owned Bowin P4A and a journo (??) about to have a blast. With those tyres it's 1970-71

 

mark

Edited by MarkBisset, 15 October 2022 - 23:03.

[Porsche718]

pichost

 

With those tyres it's 1970-71

 

mark

 

From what I understand, an English race tyre appeared in Oz in late '70.

 

Some competitors had them but elected to finish the season on the above tyre in interests of fairness.

 

Just for Warwick Farm alone, in 1971 the race tyres bought the laps times down by about 4 to 5 secs by the end of the year.

 

I agree with "eab", the points for 1970 don't seem to add up. 

 

I also agree with Ray, the Tasman meeting at Warwick Farm was round 1 of the FF series. 

 

So that leaves seven rounds being reported (poorly in some cases) in RCN. Now if there is a missing round (which I suspect) then we get points that are very close to the table in "wiki" for all drivers. 

 

On that point, Beasley finished the season on 41, not 71 as wiki quotes, that is a misprint.

 

And Ray, I hadn't thought about the "dropping of worst result". That could be the case, but then it seems to me that Richard Knight retained all of his? Go figure.

 

Intriguing.

 

Steve

Edited by Porsche718, 15 October 2022 - 22:56.

[2Bob]

Australian Competition Yearbook 1971 provides 1 page about "Formula Ford Series".  Will post pictures when I upgrade my hosting site!  Needless to say points shown (total) don't agree with any posted above!

[2Bob]

 

[Ray Bell]

I make it seven rounds...

 

With the 9-6-4-3-2-1 points the maximum attainable would be fewer than Knight scored. He won five, scored a second and possibly a third out of the seven 'confirmed' rounds. If, however, the Hume Weir race was a round he would have six wins and a second to count, dismissing his poorer Warwick Farm result. 60 points. 64 if he kept that result and finished third.

 

Beasley had a clearer number because he didn't go to Hume Weir anyway. Four seconds and two wins, 42 points, none to drop.

[cooper997]

April 1969 Autosportsman ran this, straight after their F5000 piece.

 

 

 

 

Stephen

[eab]

So that leaves seven rounds being reported (poorly in some cases) in RCN. Now if there is a missing round (which I suspect) then we get points that are very close to the table in "wiki" for all drivers. 

 

On that point, Beasley finished the season on 41, not 71 as wiki quotes, that is a misprint.

 

Steve

Yeah, before I posted previously, the misprint option crossed my mind and that it should be 41 instead of 71 (seeing Ray had him at 35 with still 1 race to go), but even then the numbers don't align with any calendar with less than 10 races. And that's even with no points dropped at all

 

I make it seven rounds...

 

With the 9-6-4-3-2-1 points the maximum attainable would be fewer than Knight scored. He won five, scored a second and possibly a third out of the seven 'confirmed' rounds. If, however, the Hume Weir race was a round he would have six wins and a second to count, dismissing his poorer Warwick Farm result. 60 points. 64 if he kept that result and finished third.

 

Beasley had a clearer number because he didn't go to Hume Weir anyway. Four seconds and two wins, 42 points, none to drop.

If your hunch about Knight's results is correct, then that would mean the 74 points attributed to him in the standings provided by 2Bob (which are the same, apart from the 'Beasley misprint', as in wiki) is also a misprint, and we have Knight at 64 points out of 8 races. But as I just mentioned to Steve, the numbers don't add up because you'd need a calendar with at least 10 races to get to 2Bob's point standings.

Also, 2Bob's post speaks about 13 races*, including non-championship ones. But another dead giveaway that something's 'wrong', is the mentioning that Knight won them all. So regardless how many races would've counted towards the championship, his tally should be a multiple of 9, which both 64 and 74 aren't. The post itself states it was an eight-heat series (and also that after the penultimate round, Knight had a 29 points lead over Beasley, just as you mentioned in your 2nd post), which also cannot coincide with Knight having 64, 74 or 60 points if that 13-out-of-13 stat is correct, using 9 points for a win ((9*8 = 72).

 

*That's "13 starts in single seaters" for Knight, so strictly speaking not necessarily all were these FF races, but even in this hypothetically confusingly-written case, Knight's tally should be a multiple of 9 (given the 9-6-4-.. points system), which 71 clearly isn't.

Edited by eab, 16 October 2022 - 02:10.

[Porsche718]

I make it seven rounds...

 

With the 9-6-4-3-2-1 points the maximum attainable would be fewer than Knight scored. He won five, scored a second and possibly a third out of the seven 'confirmed' rounds. If, however, the Hume Weir race was a round he would have six wins and a second to count, dismissing his poorer Warwick Farm result. 60 points. 64 if he kept that result and finished third.

 

Beasley had a clearer number because he didn't go to Hume Weir anyway. Four seconds and two wins, 42 points, none to drop.

 

Ray

 

Which Hume Weir meeting do you suspect was a round?

[Ray Bell]

September 27, Steve...

 

It was run in the wet, most of the runners were there and it was a 15-lapper.

 

eab... Knight had races at Calder in January, March and May as well as a non-title race at the Sandown Tasman meeting. The Elfin FFords were the only open-wheelers he raced to my knowledge.

[Porsche718]

RCN reports the progressive points tally BEFORE the last round.

 

If we accept the final points tally as presented in the 1971 Australian Competition Yearbook (which is the same as the now defunct Australia Formula Ford website), then we have the following  -

 

At the final round 

 

1st Knight  - scored 10 points to make his final points total

2nd Beasley -   "     6   "  

3rd Perkins -   "     5   "

4th Rush    -   "     4   "

5th Green   -   "     3   "

6th Webber  -   "     2   "

 

Well. Anyone else confused?????

[cooper997]

The 1969 AFFR handbook.

 

On different pages it mentions the Register was constituted on 1st June 1969 and officially formed 1st July 1969. Then another date of 10th October when Paul Harrington had likely prepared things for publication.

 

 

Stephen

[Porsche718]

This what I have come up with.

 

Round 1 - Warwick Farm - February 15

Round 2 - Sandown Park - April 19

Round 3 - Amaroo Park   - July 25

Round 4 - Oran Park        - August 9

Round 5 - Warwick Farm - September 6

Round 6 - Hume Weir      - September 27

Round 7 - Phillip Island    - October 25

Round 8 - Warwick Farm - November 22

 

 

A couple of minor places missing - but there are too many points missing. Minogue 4th for 1 point. Peter Stege 4 points but cannot find any result. Many questions remain.

 

The points tally in red is what RCN quoted after the Phillip Island round

 

No matter how I try to figure points - never seems to tally

 

I'll give 1971 a go

 

Steve

[ellrosso]

I may have posted this before but what the heck - such a great Peter Schell shot of Larry in the Esses at Warwick Farm...

[Ray Bell]

Points must begin with 10 for first, 8 for second, going by the totals for the first two...

 

But that's not logical when you look at Larry's result.

 

Unless he wasn't registered for the 'championship' until the second round or something. Unlikely.

 

And Lindsay, there's bound to be a lot of that attitude with the tyres they ran in the early years.

[Porsche718]

Points must begin with 10 for first, 8 for second, going by the totals for the first two...

 

But that's not logical when you look at Larry's result.

 

 

The points spread in that first year is a mess.

 

I have finished going through the next three years and there are also some discrepancies, but no as bad as 1970.

 

 

 

And Lindsay, there's bound to be a lot of that attitude with the tyres they ran in the early years.

 

Those tyres should be the Avons IIRC. A lot more controllable than the narrow "passenger" style tyres from that first year