Tasman Revival

The 2010 Tasman Revival Race Meeting is now in its final day at the superb Eastern Creek Raceway, 40km west of Sydney, Australia.

The meeting is reliving the golden era of open wheeler racing in Australia and New Zealand in the 1960s and 70s.

Some 400 entries have filled the grids at the meeting, with separate fields for Group M (1961-1965), Group O (1966-1969), Formula 5000, Formula Ford and Formula Vee. The categories have being supported by pre-war & early post war racing and sports racings cars, and 1950s-70s production sports and touring cars.

Highlights thus far for the meeting include excellent performances by Bryan Sala in the F5000 races where he is competing in Bill Hemming’s Elfin MR8. Sala, a former F3 driver, now father of three has not let fellow Victorian Andrew Robson slip away. Robson, driving his Lola T332 holds the lap record, and is pretty much on that pace this weekend. A small contingent of New Zealanders have come across the Tasman. Sadly though, a first lap incident involving four cars in Saturday morning’s race caused repairable damage to three NZ cars, but not for the Dudley Cunningham Lola T332. This particular T332 was the prototype car, which runs a different front up-right setup to the other T332s so has being retired for the remainder of the event from racing.

The Cunningham car, however, is the car that Australian Warwick Brown took to win the last Tasman Series by 2 points in 1975 so a temporary setup is on the car for Brown to demonstrate his old machine in today’s demonstrations.

The Group O racing cars, the ones that will provide the front action in the Tasman Revival Feature Race have put on some excellent racing in their first three events. John Bowe (driving Trevor Simpson’s 2.5litre Climax powered Brabham BT23) had the best start from position two on the grid in the third race for these cars, but by the end of the first lap had lost 3 places. Rob Hall (defending Tasman Revival Rsce champion from 2008 in the ex Chris Amon Ferrari 246T) took the battle to John Smith (Dawson-Damer Collection ex Graham Hill Lotus 49) for the remaining 5 laps, but the mighty power of the 3.0 litre Cosworth DFV provided another race win for the 1977 Aust Formula Ford Champ.

Report by: Charles Rogers / HRA