South Africa in the 1960 was F1 and sports GT racing. All the leading teams and drivers of the world raced in South Africa. Formula one world championship the Springboks Series and the original Kyalami 9 Hours. South Africa was in the midst of it all.
In 1962 Eric Broadley of Lola cars, built Lola Mk3. The rear engine sports car with a Chev engine. The prototype was raced by South Africans Tony Maggs and Bobby Olthoff in 1963 with mixed results. Then came Ford and bought the design rights from Lola cars with Eric Broadley as the design engineer. Mixing a British engineer with Americans (essentially at that stage scarcely past Hot-Rod concepts) was a recipe for confrontation. So, in anger Eric left the project which then passed on to Carol Shelby. Eric went back to England and then built the Lola MK3 and 3B which is another story.
Ford, (Carol Shelby) after many problems, finally sorted the GT40 which in the later sixties was to win Le Mans four times. By 1965 some GT40’s had found themselves in private hands and Peter Sutcliffe from the UK entered the 9 hours with Innes Ireland. They nearly won with 15 minutes to go a wheel bearing failed with Piper winning. It was a dramatic race. The closest finish ever for a 9 hour. It would also have been the first time that Ford would have beaten Ferrari in world sports car racing. The capacity crowd stayed right to the end. We were still queuing to get out two hours after the race had ended.
In 1966 the Fords broke down and crashed. In 1967 the Ford GT40 (known as Mirage by then) won with Jackie Icky and Brian Redman It was only in 1985 that a Ford GT returned to South Africa. David Cohen bought an original GT40 from the USA. It not only brought back many memories but also stimulated racing and historics at the new Zwartkops in 1988.
In our David Piper/ Passion for Speed Festivals we have had the great privilege of many GT40’s on the grid. In 2002 at the first David Piper event we had Chris Chiles winning the SA TT in his original GT40.
Since 2002 there have been a number of GT40’s winning this special event. Jimmy Price Super performance car which are fully accredited continuation cars; Franco and Dino Scribante GT40’s Peter Bailey in his Bailey GT40 and in 2020 the du Toit brothers in the yellow GT40.
All wonderful tributes to the sixties and the ingenuity of South Africans.
