Revival Revealed: Glover Trophy

04th August 2016

Bruce Jones

With Silverstone, Aintree and Brands Hatch all hosting the British Grand Prix between the start of the World Championship in 1950 and the closure of the Motor Circuit in 1966, one might be forgiven for thinking that F1 never visited Goodwood.

However, non-championship races were very much part of the season back then with races under the names Goodwood, Richmond and Glover Trophies. Usually held over Easter weekend, these big-entry events ran from 1953 until 1965, giving F1 fans a great entrée to their season. Ken Wharton triumphed in the first two years in a BRM P15.

These victories were followed by wins for Maserati 250Fs driven by Roy Salvadori and Stirling Moss. Four makes of car won across the next four years, with Stuart Lewis-Evans (Connaught) and Mike Hawthorn (Ferrari) taking victory before front-engined cars took over as Stirling Moss and Innes Ireland won in Cooper and Lotus respectively.

Lotus took two more wins courtesy of Jim Clark. Since the launch of the Goodwood Revival in 1998, though, the Glover Trophy has been a race focused solely on the event’s final years in period, when it catered for cars with the 1.5-litre engines that raced in the World Championship from 1961 until 1965. The rules changed for 1966 so that engines with a capacity twice the size, at 3-litres, could be used. The small-capacity 1.5-litre engines were engineering jewels, achieving their power through revving freely and their performance by being as light as possible, with a 450kg minimum.

Their cigar-tube shape was as clean as can be and the pick of the cars from that period, from BRM, Lotus, Cooper, Ferrari, Lola and Brabham will all be represented, along with the delight of a cluster of the less successful cars of the period adding variety in the form of offerings from Derrington-Francis, LDS and Scirocco.