AMOC Racing Season Finale at Silverstone on Saturday
This Saturday (October 6th, 2018) competitors will be heading to Silverstone for the final rounds of the AMOC Racing season and the annual St John Horsfall race. One the feature races on Saturday is the Pre-War Team Challenge incorporating the St John Horsfall Memorial Trophy named after famous Aston Martin racer and War hero St. John “Jock” Horsfall. A racer at Brooklands pre-War who collaborated with Aston Martin on developing his cars, he was then a wartime MI5 operative.
When racing resumed post-War, Horsfall won the 1946 Belgium Sports Car Grand Prix, the 1948 Spa 24-Hours in David Brown’s untested new DB1 prototype, and then a year later finished fourth in the Spa endurance race driving solo. The car he used to take that fourth place at Spa will be racing Saturday in the hands of David Freeman, the 2-Litre Speed Model - known since then as the ‘Spa Special’.
Of the Aston Martins eligible for the trophy, a favourite has to be Peter Dubsky in his 15/98 Two Seater, a car that sold for £575 when new in 1937, and who drove through the field to win the first Pre-War race of the season at Donington Park in July. While other contenders are being raced by David Ozanne, John Briggs, Richard Lake and Christopher Scott MacKirdy.
More excitement will be the deciding race of the AMOC Intermarque Championship concluding the season and revealing this year’s Driver Champion. RobHollyman has been a front-runner in his blue Porsche 964, taking three wins from the four races to date, only off the podium when finishing at Donington Park in July after gearbox issues. Reigning champion Bob Searles bolsters the Porsche ranks in his 944 Turbo, shared as usual with Tony Jardine, the pair looking to have finally overcome engine issues that have dogged them this season.
Adding depth to the Porsche ranks is Karl Weaver, making his 2018 Intermarque debut on Saturday in his Cayman, while the mighty V8 928 of Adrian Clark, fifth at Snetterton last time out, rounds out the Porsche challenge.
Lawrence Squires has consistently taken the maximum score from class B in BMW 323i, and been neck-and-neck with Hollyman all season, only slipping behind by the narrowest of margins after Snetterton last month. Gavin Dunn has twice had his M3 on the podium this season and sits just under eight points behind Hollyman in the points, so is another with the potential to leave Silverstone as champion. Tensions will be running high this Saturday, as competitors will have to wait till the end of the day for the 45 minute race final.
The bright yellow Turner of Steve Watton has won two out of the four races in The Jack Fairman Cup to date, Watton missing the season-opener at Oulton Park, then taking second at Snetterton last month, losing out to the 1958 Cooper Monaco of Tony Ditheridge. Robi Bernberg returns to the series to make it two Coopers on the grid, his ex-works T39 Bobtail is a fine example of the popular Cooper sportscars of the mid-1950s.
Also marking the heyday of British sportscars from the end of the decade are a number of MGAs, with Barrie Carter, Neil Cawthorn, Mark Ellis, Phil Elder and Martin Stowe all out in the Abingdon marque’s classic.
Equipe GTS and Equipe Pre 63 will also be concluding their series with AMOC on Saturday entertaining with two exciting races packed with 50s and 60s sports car classics.
