11 replies to this topic

[tyjak]

I am looking for pictures of Warwick Brown's Tasman champion car Lola 332, HU27, in both 1974 livery and the champion year 1975. Also any information on Warwick Brown and the car.

[raceannouncer2003]

From Keith Douglas, one of the authors of the 1982 book "Teretonga 25":

"Yes, by all means scan the photo of the Lola. This year we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Teretonga and at the 07 Speed Fest had a special tribute to George Begg (a constructor racing cars in Southland - his cars were raced in NZ, Australia and the UK). A really great meeting, with another to follow in November.
Cheers
Keith"



Also, these photos:

http://www.mlodeent....5000/wbrown.htm

and lots of info here:

http://www.sergent.com.au/nzmr.html

Vince Howlett, Victoria, B.C., Canada

[David Shaw]

At Autopics:
http://www.autopics....0.html?cache=no
they have at least one colour photo from each year.

[charles r]

Is Max Stewart really in a T400 in this photograph? looks like a T332 to me.

[David McKinney]

'Course it's a 332. The 400 was invented in January 1974

[Allen Brown]

You meant to say 1975, didn't you David?

[Ray Bell]

No, 1974 is right... but the month is wrong...

The cars were in New Zealand and (more or less) ready to run first week in January 1975, they had to be built in November or December 1974.

I've got a story about them somewhere...

[David McKinney]

Dammit
No, what I meant to say was the 400 wasn't invented in January 1974

[tyjak]

Thanks for the pics...........
I would like to see the story

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by tyjak
.....I would like to see the story

Yeah, I don't know about this... essentially it's a story for Australian readers... and it's on my copyright...

Fast That’s Past – Lola T400


Riding the crest of a very successful wave, Lola Cars had dominance in F5000. To keep their lead on the rest of the field, they felt they needed a new model. It came to the Tasman Cup series first – and flopped. Thereafter it was always considered a failure despite the best efforts of the owners.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Production racing cars are something quite different to F1 cars. While each one that leaves the factory will follow its own course, with many of them being modified and tailored to the desires of the owner and/or driver, they will still be (for the most part, anyway) recognizable as the specific model that they are.

So if a car is particularly successful, as was the Lola T332, it will sell well and make profits for the manufacturer. They will go on selling spare parts and reaping the benefits of their successful design.
The downside is that there are greater profits in introducing a new model, just as there are for production car manufacturers. And so the most likely reason for the introduction of the Lola T400 is explained.

No other car looked like threatening the dominance of the T332 on a worldwide basis. But staying ahead of the game with a better Lola would help ensure that the marque would keep on dominating.
The company’s F5000 lineage was a strange mixture. The T90 was big and cumbersome, the T142 somewhat better. Real success started to come with the T300, very much a cobbled together affair based on a F2 chassis, the T330 being a logical and more cohesive development from that design with the T332 being a refinement of the T330.

Markets for the cars existed in America, Australia and England, so the clean sheets came out and the T400 was created.

Initial testing was done by Frank Gardner, who’d had a leading role in the previous cars as well. But Frank left before the job was finished, leaving the prototype in the hands of others.

“They lost something in the translation from the prototype to production,” says Kevin Bartlett. “I think they tried to pretty it up and the made a mess of it.”

Kevin was one of the people that Lola were relying upon to make this car a big seller. The first two cars off the line were shipped to Australia for he and Max Stewart to run in the 1975 Tasman Cup, with the expectation that they’d do so well that the Americans would see the need to update for their annual F5000 series beginning a couple of months later.

The car certainly looked different. It introduced an appearance quite different to the sharp features of the T330 and T332, while the chassis underneath was also more substantial.

Lola had developed some very good detail features with these cars. For instance, suspension links were made with both left and right hand threads in their ends so that either type of rod end could be screwed into them. This meant that a spare part could fit either side of the car, and there was plenty of thread remaining to hold things together despite the criss-crossing of the grooves inside them.

Paul Knott, who screwed together John Leffler’s car later on, was quite impressed with the build of the car. “It was the most magnificent thing to put together,” he told us, “there was nothing missing, nothing needed to be modified, even the headers fitted.”

Those who’ve assembled racing cars over the years would appreciate what he was saying. There is usually something to be done to make things work as they should.

But what a racing car really needs is proper development, and that was what Kevin and Max found was lacking when they received theirs. They were, in essence, having to develop brand new machines as they trekked from circuit to circuit each week trying to succeed in one of the toughest series ever held.

This is quite apart from having to cope with the usual engine and transmission ailments generated by these high horsepower machines, and initially all having to be done with the Tasman Sea separating them from their home bases.

First time out at the little Levin circuit should showed them that they were in trouble. Seventh on the grid for Bartlett, third and lapped in the race as Stewart retired with engine trouble. It wasn’t going to get a lot better.

“They were trucks to drive at Levin,” Bartlett says, “terrible, porpoising, I wouldn’t mind betting that we had a ground effect situation, we were probably running them a bit too low. But we didn’t have the experience to start from scratch like that.”

At Pukekohe they were again consecutively placed on the grid, KB this time ninth. A gearbox sidelined the faster car, Stewart finished eighth, but would improve to fourth at Wigram after they were 15th and 16th on the grid and Bartlett had magneto trouble. Teretonga gave their best result with KB eighth and Stewart ninth on the grid, Bartlett third and Stewart fifth in the race.

Crossing the Tasman seemed to change only the order they sat on the grid, for Stewart upstaged Bartlett to grab sixth at Oran Park, continuing to seventh in the race but three laps down on the winner. Bartlett finished tenth, 14 laps down, but both cars had finally finished the same race.
Surfers saw Bartlett come from the rear of the grid to score sixth place as Stewart retired, at AIR Bartlett took fourth on the grid from Stewart, but had a brake disc break away and left Stewart to take the sole T400 finish in fifth.

Two third placings for Bartlett, two fifths for Stewart. Not much result for the new cars in seven races, both decided to run their old cars at Sandown to finish third (Stewart) and fourth.

With a couple of months to the first Toby Lee round at Oran Park, some development took place on both cars. But Bartlett had the misfortune to have one of his gofers mis-fit the nosecone on the car, trapping a brake line under the front of the tub. The first serious T400 crash proved them to be tougher than the T332s, perhaps, but it put Bartlett out for a few meetings.

Stewart scored a third at Sandown’s Toby Lee round in a car described as ‘much altered’ in the race report. The Orange driver went on to take a win in one of the 10 lap Toby Lee heats in August.
Later that month the chance came for the T400 to finally break through in a major race. The Australian Grand Prix that year was scheduled for August 31 at Surfers Paradise and was nationally televised. It was also run in a downpour.

For over thirty laps the otherwise unspectacular Bowin P8 of John Leffler led the field. But water got into his electrics and he lost power, Stewart splashed by him to take the win while Bartlett failed to finish.

Stewart had been sixth on the grid at Surfers, but by the third round at Oran Park he was getting his car right up to speed and took the T400’s first pole position. He won a heat too, but in the balance of the year had little in the way of results.

The final event of the Gold Star fell to Bartlett in a tremendous wet weather scrap he had with John Walker at Phillip Island. The race started in the dry and nobody wanted to stop for wet tyres, so we had the spectacle of seeing the two urgently-driven Lolas side by side through the corner onto the straight.

Fighting for control and speed, each of the twitched as their rooster tails of spray flew high, this going on for a few laps before Bartlett spun up the back of the circuit. Walker couldn’t avoid him and speared off the track to damage his car in the bushes, Bartlett recovered to take his first T400 victory.

Stewart must have been gaining confidence in the car, because he took some of the sponsorship money he had from the Sharp Corporation and bought what he believed to be the spare car from Brian Redman’s US campaign. He entered this for Paul Bernasconi in the New Zealand races while he and Bartlett retained their original cars.

What had they done to improve them over the year?

“We fitted the T332 rear end to our car,” Bartlett recalls, “the front suspension was all right, but the aerodynamics didn’t look right.”

Lola had incorporated rising rate suspension linkages into the car, it was decided that doing away with this by reverting to the T332 suspension was beneficial.

Another two T400s had arrived on our shores at this time. Sydney F2 driver Ken Shirvington had bought a Team VDS car from England, while Max Stewart arranged for John Leffler to get one of the unsold ones from the Carl Haas stocks in the US. The T400 was, then, a failure as far as Lola were concerned.

Instead of creating a demand for itself as a new model that would take over from the T332, it had bombed out and the T332 continued winning. Lola worked on upgrades for the T332 instead of persevering with the T400, leading to the T332C.

“We only paid $11,000 for it new,” remembers John, expressing gratitude to Stewart for all he did for him over the years. Leffler’s sponsors, Grace Bros stores in Sydney, were keen to take out a Gold Star title after having the Formula Ford and ANF2 titles fall to their drivers. Overseeing the operation was Hans Tieperman, who had guided Van Heusen Shirts to sponsor the F2 series and Toby Lee to several years of sponsorships as well as his own store’s involvement.

So there were now five T400s in Australian ownership. Three went to New Zealand, Stewart’s two cars and Bartlett’s, for the 1977 4-race NZ series where they mixed it with smaller cars as a prelude to NZ taking the Formula Atlantic path the following year.

The first round at Pukekohe saw Stewart right on form with third on the grid and leading the race until he had an oil leak. Bartlett was third and Bernasconi sixth. Then came Manfeild, where Stewart won from third on the grid, Bernasconi was fourth and Bartlett was sixth.

Wigram saw Stewart second on the grid and Bartlett third, but both failed in the race as Bernasconi came in third, while at Teretonga Bartlett was the only one to finish, taking second, after being fourth on the grid to Stewart’s fifth.

Back home they started in a fresh 4-race series just for F5000s. Leffler joined in at this stage, while Bernasconi’s remained in the ex-Redman car.

This was a very well sorted machine, it seems. Andy Hanright recalls that Redman looked the car over in New Zealand, aware of the deal that had been done, and told Stewart he’d got the wrong car. “This is the one I drove, not the spare!” he said.

It was a non-starter at Oran Park, all the same, Max having had a dispute with the organizers over money. Bartlett was to take second in that race from fifth on the grid, Leffler suffering suspension damage in a clash with another car during the race.

This wouldn’t have pleased Tieperman, who was later to tell him, “You don’t have to win races, just take placings and pick up points.” That would amount to profitable advice later in the year.

At Adelaide the cars were well back, and for the first and only time (possibly anywhere in the world, incidentally) five T400s sat on the grid. Best spot was Bartlett’s, seventh, while in the race Leffler moved through to third and Bartlett was fifth.

At Sandown, where a year earlier the T400s had been discarded, Stewart was to crash his original car heavily. Only two faced the starter then, Bartlett and Leffler, the latter’s better place on the grid putting him closer to an accident when lapping a slow car, while Bartlett had a gearbox problem and gave up the chase.

Three cars turned up at Surfers Paradise, with Bartlett fifth on the grid, Leffler sixth and Shirvington thirteenth. No race took place, however, as a tropical deluge flooded the track and the meeting was abandoned.

The T400s, unloved as they were, were now in a strange situation. With the international visitors gone, they were in the hands of three of the best five drivers in the Gold Star. And with the Toby Lee money disappearing from F5000 racing for 1976, nobody was going to invest in anything to compete with them. Well, nobody with a conventional view of how to win in F5000. John McCormack was working with his Leyland P76 engine to create a lightweight car that would handle better, but the best of that was still a little way off.

So Sandown’s Gold Star opener saw Stewart (now in the Redman car) on pole, with the other three cars well back on the grid. It was Leffler who finished best, however, in third place.

Oran Park saw Stewart come back with a vengeance, pole and a win, with Bartlett second and Leffler third – the only T400 1, 2, 3 finish ever recorded. Calder was a 2-heat affair with Leffler winning a heat and taking the greater number of points for the T400 that day, so he retained his Gold Star lead as they went to the final round at Phillip Island.

Bartlett didn’t turn up, Stewart was a lowly sixth on the grid, Leffler tenth. Overheating put Stewart out, perseverance saw Leffler climb to second and score the Gold Star for himself, for Tieperman and for Grace Bros.

T400 stalwart Bartlett was in a T332 for the International series of 1977. This was the Magnum Wheels car, so only Stewart, Leffler and Shirvington turned out T400s, the latter in just two of the four races.

Stewart failed to start at Oran Park and Leffler didn’t race there either, then at Surfers Leffler filled third place. Stewart then took his car from seventh on the grid to a win at Sandown in one of those typical Sandown events – the ones where cars fall like flies – as the series came to an end.

The tragedy of Max Stewart’s death at Calder followed soon after. Driving the Redman car still, he was unsighted when coming up to pass Chas Talbot onto the back straight, Talbot pulled across to go around a suddenly-slowing Vern Schuppan, Stewart dived for the opening gap only to find the Elfin in his way.

By the time the Gold Star series began, Leffler had modified his car further, and Bartlett was back in the T400, with Leffler scoring pole position and third place, Bartlett following him home.

Just these two T400s remained active, Shirvington having put his (also damaged) car away. Leffler was trying to defend his Gold Star, Bartlett was aiming to win it again, but by now John McCormack’s McLaren was up to speed and neither would succeed against it.

Strangely enough, the best result for the series was at the circuit which suited the McLaren the most, where Leffler inherited a win when Alf Costanzo retired his T332. Leffler had taken third from Bartlett’s fourth at Surfers, but only the Phillip Island win bettered this achievement.

As the 1978 International series began, only Lyndon Arnel was down to drive a T400. He was put into Bartlett’s car for the Surfers race and ran 14th. Then Alf Costanzo ran it in the Grand Prix at Sandown (Bartlett had the Brabham BT43 for these races) and achieved nothing better than his second on the grid at Calder.

After four seasons, the T400 was past its prime. The T332 was still fast, but later cars like the T430, McCormack’s McLaren M23, the Elfin MR8 and the Chevron B37 had come along and were quick in the right hands.

Bartlett’s car was by now visibly different. No big airbox, the oil radiator in the front, exposed within a narrowed nose that provided more room for wings at that end of the car. “It was much better, I think we stumbled onto a bit of ground effects,” Bartlett recalls. They increased the spring rate from 300lb in to 550.

In 1979 John Wright took over the Leffler car and by the Australian Grand Prix at Wanneroo in April was gaining pace. Aided by a crash eliminating Larry Perkins and Alf Costanzo, and then a quick pit stop by John Walker he was running at the front in that race until the engine let go a few laps from the end.

His was a unique involvement, straight from Formula Ford to F5000, and reeked of the personal confidence the man exudes. He recalls the car being in a sorry state when he got it, then taking it out for his first drive only to have it rain.

“I started to understand the car driving it in the rain on slicks,” he says.

Help from Harry Galloway in developing the car made it quicker in time. A Surtees wing went on the back. “Then the car wanted to go straight ahead when I wanted it to turn,” he recalls, “so we got some massive springs from Bob Lovell and turned in a 39.9 at Oran Park.” Wright also claims to have been the first to break the minute at Sandown, but says his time was disallowed.

Even when F5000 died, the memory of the cars was strong with those who’d been watching them for a decade. One such watcher was Clubman racer, Mike Lance. He badly wanted to race them, but was never able to seriously contemplate it.

But at the end of 1982 he learned he had only weeks to live, so he sold his possessions and bought the John Wright car. Working on his own, he prepared it the way he wanted it, rejecting morphine that might ease his pain, so that it could be ready to take to the circuit.

On January 17, 1983, he drove five slow laps of Oran Park. He was then lifted from the car and had his first morphine.

Mike Lance had the potential to be a great driver, he made his Clubman go quicker than anyone else could have done and would have, I believe, been a real flier in F5000. But those laps he drove were slow, because he didn’t want to bring the sport into disrepute by doing anything silly. Two days later he died, but in his death he’d brought just a little more life into the Lola T400.

Ray Bell

[philippe7]

Originally posted by Ray Bell
Yeah, I don't know about this... essentially it's a story for Australian readers...

Well, I can assure you that this was an excellent read, even for my french self

......but I confess I have always had a soft spot for the Tasman series....probably because the headlines of the first issues of "Motoring News" I ever bought , when I moved to Britain in the 1972-1973 winter, were all about the Tasman and I was fascinated to discover a whole new world of circuits, drivers and cars that I'd never read about in "Sport Auto" ...Teretonga, Levin, Pukekohe, Bartlett, Matich, Mc Rae, "Johnnie" Walker, Max Stewart, Dave Oxton, Begg........

[raceannouncer2003]

Again, from "Teretonga 25", the story of the '74 and '75 (and part of the '76) Formula 5000 races there...ooh, and that would be Warwick Brown's Lola behind Chris Amon in the photo?





Or, better yet, buy the book! It was published in 1982, but I think there are some left! I have contact info for one of the authors, Keith Douglas, if anyone wants to get in touch. And Michael Clark has contacts too, I think!

Vince H.