Race Report: Richmond and Gordon Trophies – Revival 2019
The 2.5-litre era of Formula 1, which ran from 1954 to 1960, is the theme of the Richmond & Gordon Trophies. This means a battle between the elegant front-engined cars that were built by the grandee marques of Europe taking on a host of nimble rear-engined British cars built by Cooper and Lotus.
With their customer engines from Coventry-Climax, Enzo Ferrari once rather sniffily described the British as ‘garagistes’, but within a few years of appearing in Grands Prix their cars could easily outpace the traditional designs. The story was unchanged at Goodwood this weekend.
The front three rows of the grid were dominated by British cars, with the first of the European contingent being the Maserati 250F of regular Le Mans racer Marino Franchitti, which lined up in ninth place. When the starting flag dropped, the front row of the grid shot away to commence a thoroughly entertaining battle for victory and left the rest of the field in their wake.
Gary Pearson took up the early running in his 1960 Cooper T53 ’lowline’ and pole man Sam Wilson’s Lotus 18 slipped back to third, but then when the to-ing and fro-ing was over Wilson was out in front with Pearson chasing him hard to the finish, while dropped oil out on the circuit sent a number of cars into the barriers in their wake.
Photo by Drew Gibson.
Revival
Revival 2019
2019
Race Report
Richmond and Gordon Trophies
