11 replies to this topic

[m.tanney]

  A while back, there was a thread on unidentified F5000 photos. One of the cars pictured was a Ford-Cosworth engined Brabham BT26 driven by Gus Hutchison in the Continental series in 1970. I know that the SCCA's Formula A was originally for three litre racing engines and opened up to five litre stock blocks in 1968. Were three litre DOHC racing engines always allowed in American F5000? If not, when were they written out of the rules?

Mike

[m.tanney]

  I had a look at the US F5000 results on OldRacingCars.com. The last appearance by an F1 car in an American F5000 race was by Skip Barber in his March 711-DFV at Lime Rock in September 1972. There are some photos of Barber's car at Donnybrooke that year on this site. But were 3 litre racing engines banned for 1973 and following seasons? Were they still allowed, but handicapped out of competitiveness? Or were they still legal, just not used?

[Mallory Dan]

Lots of DFVs in the UK F5000 series in 1976-77...

[BRG]

Originally posted by Mallory Dan
Lots of DFVs

Are you sure? I don't recall ANY DFVs in UK F5000 at any time. But IIRC the 3.4 litre Cosworth Ford V6 from the Gp5 Capri touring car was used in the latter period of the formula.

[Stephen W]

Please note in 1976 and 1977 it was not the F5000 series but was the Shellsport International Group 8 series which included F1, F2 and old F5000 cars.

The only races that pitted F1 cars against F5000 cars tended to be events such as the Daily Express International Trophy at Silverstone. The F5000 element of such races tended to be outside the F5000 championship.

The UK kept F5000 for 5 litre single seaters after the initial year. The V6 Ford engines came in due to being based on a stock block engine even though they were well below the 5 litres upper limit.

[bill moffat]

Not quite F1 but was there not a Tasman BRM entered in the Brands Easter Monday F5000 race in 1969 ? 36 years ago and I was there..scary !

I'll check when I get home.

[Ray Bell]

V12 or V8?

[bobdar]

The 1972 SCCA GCR rules for Formula 5000 allow two types of engines: "3000cc Unrestricted" (including supercharged engines equal to or below 1500cc) and "5000cc Restricted", pushrod motors meeting production levels of 1000 or greater. I don't have GCR's for the later years, so can't say if the 3 liter option was legislated out or not.

The GCR list includes a variety of approved "5000cc Restricted" engines; all appear to be V8's, the largest of which is an American Motors 401 cu. in.: "Maximum displacement shall be 5000cc and may be obtained by alteration of the bore and/or stroke as desired." "Cylinder block and/or cylinder head(s) may not be substituted."

[Stephen W]

The TASMAN BRM in question was a P261 V8 2 litre driven by Ian Mitchell.

At Oulton Park on the 4th April 1969 there were the following runners:

Lola T142 - Mike Walker; Willie Forbes; Mike Hailwood; Keith Holland; Horst Kroll; Doug Hardwick

Lotus 43 - Jock Russell; Robs Lamplough

McLaren M10A - Peter Gethin

Surtees TS5A - David Hobbs

Hepworth-Ferguson - Bev Bond

plus Ian Mitchell in the 2.0 BRM

By September 20th at Oulton Park the runners were as follows:

Lola T142 - Hailwood/Walker/Forbes/Holland plus Ulf Norinder; Derrick Williams and Alan Rollinson in Doug Hardwick's car

McLaren M10A - Gethin

BRP 2 - Kaye Griffiths

BRM P83 - Terry Sanger

Surtees TS5A - Trevor Taylor

Cooper T66 - Mike Coombe

Kitchener K3 - Ian Ashley

the 'none 5000's' were:

Tony Barchou - 1.6 Brabham-Ford BT14/18
John Millar - 2.0 Brabham-BMW BT21
Tony Dean - 1.6 Brabham-Ford BT23C
Steve Thompson - 1.6 Lola-Ford T60
Tony Charnell - 1.7 Lola-Ford T55
Graham Eden - 1.6 Chevron-FVA F2
Jim Charnock - 1.6 Brabham-Ford BT21A

[Mallory Dan]

Originally posted by Stephen W
Please note in 1976 and 1977 it was not the F5000 series but was the Shellsport International Group 8 series which included F1, F2 and old F5000 cars.

The only races that pitted F1 cars against F5000 cars tended to be events such as the Daily Express International Trophy at Silverstone. The F5000 element of such races tended to be outside the F5000 championship.

The UK kept F5000 for 5 litre single seaters after the initial year. The V6 Ford engines came in due to being based on a stock block engine even though they were well below the 5 litres upper limit.

Sorry to be pedantic, but it was 'marketed' as the ShellSport F5000 series !!!

[billthekat]

On the US side, as bobdar points out, the option for the 3-litre engines in the GCR didn't go away it was just that the 5-litre engines were the engine of choice for use in the series. For many and varied reasons the 3-litre engines just never caught on in the US series, on Hutchison having any real success with the DFV, and even he dropped that approach for the stockblocks, creating HRE to service them.

[Stephen W]

PEDANT's BEWARE

The programme from the July 9th 1977 event at Oulton Park reads as follows:

'ShellSPORT International is the name of the major new British motor racing series which replaces the previous European 5000 Championship.
Backed by Shell UK Oil and leading British circuits, it is open to cars complying with International formula 1, 2, 5000 and Atlantic or other FIA Group 8 single-seater cars whose practice time is within 107% of the average of the first three overall.'

The race was billed as a qualifying round of the 1977 ShellSPORT International Championship.

So with no mention of 'ShellSPORT F5000' I suspect the marketing boys knew when to move on!