source
23 years on from his victory in the Formula Ford Festival, Brands remains a Moreno favorite
As it does for many people in the world of motorsports, Brands Hatch holds a place near and dear to the heart of Roberto Moreno. Although he plies his trade for the Herdez Competition Champ Car team these days, Brands Hatch was the site of one of the most important days in Moreno’s young career - when he won the Formula Ford Festival in 1980.
Brands Hatch was also among the first tracks Moreno raced on after moving to England from his native Brazil in 1979. Never one who has been burdened by a lavish budget, Moreno arrived at the Kent circuit for the first time in typical "Pupo" style.
"I owned my own team," he recalls. "I was the mechanic, the time keeper, the driver and the transport driver. I towed my car - a Royale RP26 - on an open trailer behind my road car, which was a VW K70L. Volkswagen had quit making that car, so you could buy them real cheap. I had just arrived in England and I didn’t speak English very well, so my friend Nelson Piquet did all the talking for me when I bought the car!
"I remember that first race at Brands Hatch. I drove the car from the paddock down through the tunnel to the pits… and I didn’t even know which way to turn when I got to the end of the tunnel."
Presumably, Moreno was equally "lost" when he first entered the race track itself. If so, he must have quickly found his bearings as witnessed by the fact that he qualified on pole and finished "first or second" in the race itself.
He went on to finish sixth in the ‘79 Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch and returned the following season as a leading contender for "Formula Ford World Cup Festival." Along with his teammate, another Brazilan expatriate named Raul Boesel, Moreno was running a works Van Diemen sponsored by Canadian Club in a field that included a number of other notables including Jonathan Palmer, Tommy Bryne, Didier Theys, Jon Beekhuis, Cor Euser, Anthony Reid and Andrew Gilbert-Scott.
Told that this story on ChampCarWorldSeries.com would be accompanied by the photo of him driving the Canadian Club Van Diemen on full opposite lock, Moreno was quick to volunteer: "I know the picture you’re talking about. If you look closely, you’ll see that I only have one hand on the steering wheel… just a couple of fingers. The car changed directions so quickly, it was better to drive with one hand. I drove the whole race that way."
Pierro Taruffi, Jim Russell, Bob Bondurandt and Skip Barber might not have approved, but Moreno’s unorthodox style certainly proved effective. Against a starting field of some 210 entries, he started on pole and won his quarter final, started on pole and won his semi-final, then started on pole and won the final.
"I beat Tommy Byrne in the final," he says "and if I’m not mistaken, I believe I lead every lap."
That was no mean feat, as anyone who has ever done a standing start at Brands Hatch can attest. On a track which is seldom (if ever) entirely straight or flat, the first few rows of the starting grid are on an uphill slope approaching Paddock Hill Bend. What’s more, the track also slopes dramatically downhill from drivers’ left to right, placing the pole-sitter at a significant disadvantage.
"It’s very difficult to start from the inside of the front row at Brands Hatch for a standing start," says Moreno. "The car on the outside has the advantage because the other guy is down in a bowl at an angle and as soon as he lights-up the tires the car goes sideways. In those days, the guy who won the pole didn’t have a choice of which side of the grid he wanted to start."
Although Champ Car drivers won’t be making a standing start at Brands Hatch, plenty of other challenges await there - as Moreno well knows.
"Paddock Hill is off camber, over the top of a blind crest," he says. "Your stomach gets butterflies as you go over the crest - the car gets light and you’re fighting for grip. Then you go down the hill through a compression like on a downhill ski run and all of a sudden you have tremendous grip. So you go from hard braking to going light and sideways and then to high grip. Except probably for the old Nurburgring, there’s no other corner like it in the world.
"Then you go up to the hairpin where, again, the car gets very light and you need good traction before you go back down the hill through a left hand bend. It’s a pretty straightforward corner but you’re experiencing a lot of g-load there. Then after a short straight you’re into the esses at Surtees which are just flat in a Formula Ford. In a Formula Ford, it’s so quick and in an instant you’re hard on the brakes for Clearways. It’s one of the most challenging places on the track because you have to change the car’s attitude so quickly. You have to stop the car in a very short time, then put the power down exiting Clearways… It’s a tough task.
"Overall, Brands Hatch is a busy circuit. It’s going to be tough in a Champ Car. There’s no time to rest. Even the straightaway is not really straight."
Undoubtedly, it’s a track that figures to reward drivers who are intimately familiar with its secrets and intricacies. Certainly, Moreno is not alone among this year’s Champ Car drivers in knowing his way around the 1.25 mile circuit. But none know it better and none would be more pleased to add another significant Brands Hatch memory to his career than the wily Moreno. A word of advice, however: keep both hands on the wheel this time, Roberto.
