Formula Ford

I'm sure JC didn't race a Valour. Would have to look up the old mags to see what his winning mount was. In would have thought probably a Van Diemen

Larry Mulholland left me test-drive the Swift at Timaru during the championship season. It was - I think - the fourth FF I'd driven, and was immediately struck by how driveable it was, with much softer suspension than the competition. Trouble was, my shoulders were a lot broader than Jeff Pascoe's and I simply couldn't drive the thing properly. A huge disappointment

When Rob Lester bought the car, he stiffened the suspension and it never went so well again...

This is potentially too good a thread to drop down the pecking order.

I was intrigued with Howard stating that Jim Richards and Paul Radisich are in a small club of NZ drivers who made it big overseas but who never did FF. I don't recall if it ever happened, but I do remember the 'MotorAction' preview of the 1973/74 championship because Richards was due to drive, I think, a Titan Mk6.

I saw as much FF racing as possible in the 70s but saw a lot more in the late 80s/early 90s when I sort of 'helped' young Phil Hellebrekers - he started with the ex Glenn Clark Pinto Trailers Reynard 83F in 86/87. He took delivery of a new Swift a few seasons later and I'll never forget a wonderful day at Bay Park when he cleaned up - with the son of the Gemco-Olds driver close behind.

I'm getting to my point - also Swift mounted that year was Paul Larsen. He was totally dominant, won the championship and went back to Chch. I'm not sure if he raced much afterwards but on the strength of his FF performances in his championship year - he should have gone very well in a Pacific. I guess the world has plenty of 'Paul Larsens'.

Michael,

Glad you could join us, I sense we may have more coverage of single seaters in these pages!

Until proved wrong (and that has happened before) I think I am correct regarding JR and Paul Radisich being FF- less, however your contention that JR was at least entered for a meeting is interesting because he had a number of backers who were keen for him to try single seaters. When John Anderson bought the March to NZ for me for the inaugural Atlantic/Pacific series, despite my having negotiated a starting money package with Ron Frost, the NZIG organisers offered John quite a lot more money if he would let JR run in the car.

John's immediate answer was no so discussions went no further and therefore I have no idea if this was just NZIG floating the idea and/ or who's idea it was.

Interesting - I wonder if JR knew of all this. The only open-wheeler I can recall him in was the Matich F5000 - I don't recall a FF drive ever happening...

And thank you for the welcome old chap

Mary Carney nee Donald had a Titan FF ex Doug Heeny from Greymouth. Doug ran the car as a formula libre car in the South before Mary obtained the car and reconfigured it as a FF. It is quite possible that JR was offered a drive of this car back in those early days.

Jim Carney bought the Titan with, from memory, the idea of JR doing the championship races with it, and Mary doing the lesser stuff. I'm sure JR never raced it, though I have a feeling he might have had a test run (at Pukekohe?). Mary raced it once or twice, with very little to show for her efforts

Yeah I'm sure the car 'Motor Action' promoted as being destined for JR was a Carney owned Titan Mk6.

Frankly, given his various saloon car responsibilities, I'm not sure where Jim would have found the time to do it justice.

Howard mentioned at the start of this thread the FF 40th annivesary dinner at Hampton's back in January. Peter Hughes and Neville Bailey were a couple of guys I'd never before met - both a really nice guys. The Bowin that Peter won the 1973/74 title in was advertised on Trade Me recently - it has been a front runner in Sth Island historic racing for a while now and last season was returned to orange 'CMR' livery.

The Elfin 600 that David Oxton raced in the 1970/71 season (Formula C) and 1971/72 (when he won the first FF title) was raced by Grant Walker prior to him getting the Titan that he used for his 1974/75 title.

The Elfin has vanished.

Did it go back to Australia (we saw heaps of them at Phillip Is at the Aussie 40th anniversary of FF), is it still here or did it get turned into something else. Anyone know? - because David Oxton would love to know where it is!

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Originally Posted by David McKinney

I'm sure JC didn't race a Valour. Would have to look up the old mags to see what his winning mount was. In would have thought probably a Van Diemen

Larry Mulholland left me test-drive the Swift at Timaru during the championship season. It was - I think - the fourth FF I'd driven, and was immediately struck by how driveable it was, with much softer suspension than the competition. Trouble was, my shoulders were a lot broader than Jeff Pascoe's and I simply couldn't drive the thing properly. A huge disappointment

When Rob Lester bought the car, he stiffened the suspension and it never went so well again...

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Hi Dave, when the old boy ran the swift he ran as per set ups from larry mulholland and basically did what larry said.
problem was that he hated his time in FF and missed his mates in Vee's so back he went and i jumped into The swift.

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Originally Posted by Rod Grimwood

The sorry part of any class of motorsport is that you will always have a couple who cause a few problems, and FF is no different except that when one driver gets a bit toey it impacts on alot of other drivers as the competition is so tight and even. I have watched some amazing racing over the years. In the original days of FF you could just about put a blanket over the front 6 and very seldom was there problems, and they all went onto better things. I believe it is still the feeder for single seat drivers. The Toyota series was all go and then the expense became overbearing. FF gives the average kid with a bit of help or backing a chance to polish his/her skills. FV then FF and progress on as skills increase and budgets come onboard. Some can go straight in with a cheque book, and some of them make it and alot don't. But others who go through the "system" tend to go further. I believe there is a very big place for FF in our motorsport.

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I agree totally Rod,ff was the best training class by quite a margin until cost's started to get out of hand and we fell into this' tin tops are the future/v8 supercar dream'.now the young guys go the suzuki swift instead and learn nothing technical.maybe with Mitch Evans and richie stanaway etc moving through it may help ff to get going again
TRS cost's are actually not over bearing and approx half of what we came across with GT3,its just that single seaters aren't viewed as necessary at present --purists like us know different though.

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Originally Posted by Oldfart

From the early days when a car I had some involvement with (a converted National Formula car which had one too many gears for a short time) until now, I really struggle to accept the way that these are driven with little or no respect for the cars, nor the other drivers' well being. Close competition is fantastic, being close enough that almost every FF race I have evr seen has resulted in broken cars does me no favours.
I go to stock cars to watch bash and crash, no wonder some of the current F1 drivers feel the need to play stockies, they have their training in FF.
Rant over!

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you are not wrong--the current drivers come in very young now and are not about to stick around,they are generally fast but haven't learnt the subtle race craft skills yet.It wasnt that long ago that vees was a 2-3 year program and ff a 2-3 year program before moving on if you were good enough by then and had some budget.
we now have young drivers retired before they are 20 years old if things dont go to plan.

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Originally Posted by TonyG

2 questions as we now have this thread.
1) Is the Cuda that Ross Stone built still around and also another called a TUL I believe ? I think it was Tul and not Tui as that was what I had written on the back of the photo at the time. I have a pic of this one here somewhere at Pukekohe.
Regards
Tony

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The TUL showed up with kevin ingram(built by bruce turnbull) around 85/86.the thing was fast but fragile and gave Shane higgins and myself a hurry up in the 86/7 season with our van diemens.It had wishbones so strong that if you shunted you ripped the pick up points out of the chassis and you could put the wishbone back on when the pickups were re welded to the chassis.getting the engine in and out was a 'mare' as well.we actually ended up buying it and rob and my sister debbie did a few races with it but decided a form of death wish may be required as a driver after numerous failures, a young greg murphy(who worked for me at the time) also did a winter series round in it after he shunted one of my rf90 vd's in practice--great concept though and if Bruce turnbull had some developement budget it could have been a different story--the Tul went eventually to wanganui for a restoration- owners name escapes me for now.

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Originally Posted by richard lester

Hi Dave, when the old boy ran the swift he ran as per set ups from larry mulholland and basically did what larry said

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Nice to see you here, Richard

I based my comments on what Rob told me at the time - maybe Larry fed him duff gen. It wouldn't be the first time that sort of thing has happened!

Likewise good to see you here Richard, give the old folks a hug from us both.
I was running Lyn Johnson in the Cuda against Jeff in the Swift and at that time both those cars were great race cars in traffic but they were not that great as out and out fast lap cars as Mike King and Lou Scholum could usualy both put in faster laps than either Jeff or Lyn. Jeff however had in my opinion, more talent and more determination to win than the other three and that is why he came out on top so often. As many of us know winning is a habit, so is coming 2nd & 3rd. Jeff made a habit of winning.
Kevin Ingram was another with a talent level similar to that of Jeff's but not quite the same level of committment and determination to succeed. I also think that Jeff had more out and out racecraft skills than the others that were running during that time too.

We also ran against each other for the full South Island FF series and again Jeff got the best of Lyn with from memeory Jeff winning about 90 - 95% of the encounters between the two of them over the season. 2nd was not an option for our Jeff.
We let him loose in Keith Laneys RT4 at the end of one Timaru meeting and within a few laps that was the quickest that car had ever been around the place and within a few more he was close to competative FP times, could he have raised the funding it would have been interesting to see what he could have done with one

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Originally Posted by Carlo

Likewise good to see you here Richard, give the old folks a hug from us both.
I was running Lyn Johnson in the Cuda against Jeff in the Swift and at that time both those cars were great race cars in traffic but they were not that great as out and out fast lap cars as Mike King and Lou Scholum could usualy both put in faster laps than either Jeff or Lyn. Jeff however had in my opinion, more talent and more determination to win than the other three and that is why he came out on top so often. As many of us know winning is a habit, so is coming 2nd & 3rd. Jeff made a habit of winning.
Kevin Ingram was another with a talent level similar to that of Jeff's but not quite the same level of committment and determination to succeed. I also think that Jeff had more out and out racecraft skills than the others that were running during that time too.

We also ran against each other for the full South Island FF series and again Jeff got the best of Lyn with from memeory Jeff winning about 90 - 95% of the encounters between the two of them over the season. 2nd was not an option for our Jeff.
We let him loose in Keith Laneys RT4 at the end of one Timaru meeting and within a few laps that was the quickest that car had ever been around the place and within a few more he was close to competative FP times, could he have raised the funding it would have been interesting to see what he could have done with one

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hi carlo,
i well remember those days--i used to enjoy watching Jeff race and as a young fulla not far away from getting into ff myself he was the guy i aspired to be.hell of a nice guy too and was very helpful to dad and i took as much info as i could digest as well.jeff had a great race brain and in my opinion was one of the best weve seen in ff,paul larsen ,shane drake,ashley stitchbury and gary croft werent too bad either(slightly different era though)..i also remember well lyn's harness marks after his wigram shunt ,that era had some extremely talented drivers who raced hard and fair and then retired to the bar.
you know its tough now that most young drivers/families start circuit racing with a career as motivation.very few have the passion to do without the luxuries of life while they get established and crikey do they ever come and go at a high rate now.

Thank you Richard for clearing that up. I always wondered if I had the name right. I grew up watching your dad, then yourself and sister come through. It was great racing to watch. If I remember correctly you had quite a set up with all the cars you were running as part of the team. The good old days !
Regards
Tony

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Originally Posted by richard lester

The TUL showed up with kevin ingram(built by bruce turnbull) around 85/86.the thing was fast but fragile and gave Shane higgins and myself a hurry up in the 86/7 season with our van diemens.It had wishbones so strong that if you shunted you ripped the pick up points out of the chassis and you could put the wishbone back on when the pickups were re welded to the chassis.getting the engine in and out was a 'mare' as well.we actually ended up buying it and rob and my sister debbie did a few races with it but decided a form of death wish may be required as a driver after numerous failures, a young greg murphy(who worked for me at the time) also did a winter series round in it after he shunted one of my rf90 vd's in practice--great concept though and if Bruce turnbull had some developement budget it could have been a different story--the Tul went eventually to wanganui for a restoration- owners name escapes me for now.

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Originally Posted by richard lester

you are not wrong--the current drivers come in very young now and are not about to stick around,they are generally fast but haven't learnt the subtle race craft skills yet.It wasnt that long ago that vees was a 2-3 year program and ff a 2-3 year program before moving on if you were good enough by then and had some budget.
we now have young drivers retired before they are 20 years old if things dont go to plan.

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Richard, its great to have you on here, welcome to the site.

This is an interesting point you've made. Why do you suppose this is? Is there now more pressure on them to achieve success quickly in each class they compete in? Are young drivers now expected to win a championship in their first season in a new class, then quickly move on to the next class and do the same thing? Is a driver who spends more than one season in a class without winning a title or coming close to it, considered not to be made of the right stuff these days? Its almost as if a young guys career stalls if he doesn't quickly pass through each class on the ladder and instantly achieve success.

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Originally Posted by Steve Holmes

Richard, its great to have you on here, welcome to the site.

This is an interesting point you've made. Why do you suppose this is? Is there now more pressure on them to achieve success quickly in each class they compete in? Are young drivers now expected to win a championship in their first season in a new class, then quickly move on to the next class and do the same thing? Is a driver who spends more than one season in a class without winning a title or coming close to it, considered not to be made of the right stuff these days? Its almost as if a young guys career stalls if he doesn't quickly pass through each class on the ladder and instantly achieve success.

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Hi Steve,
yes you are quite right--as i have said to many people "there are plenty of fast drivers out there but not many racers".i must admit i cringe a bit watching various races at tier1 and 2 events seeing some of the poor decision making going on.
I think part of the problem is that newcomers dont have much of a structured plan looking ahead.it's pretty much win this year-move up and win again next year and so on.learning tracks/cars/teams/and how to race arent really taken into account too much.i think there is also the element of the quicker we can move up the less we will have to spend on this class.
i see lots of kids come straight from karts ready to be world champions and they and the parents dont realise how much different the disciplines are and how much more has to be learned.Kids like Mitch and richie are not only naturally gifted to start with but their camp's know the game well and can bring them along at a far quicker pace.
I have had some involvement in F/BMW(asia) and that whole structure world wide was based on "your son can make it all the way to f1-give me your checkbook and we will see what we can do".so the kids study lots and lots of data which is fine i guess,but then you need someone to teach you how to transfer that to the track(i think they refer to that as old school now !!).I have seen the "dude you need to be faster thru turn 3" turn into a visit to the wall because the kid just kept his foot in it hoping he would get around.
better stop before i get accused of ranting!!!

Nothing wrong with ranting Richard, thats what this site was built for! Its fascinating to hear things from your perspective. You must have seen a lot of talent go to waste over the years through bad management? Its interesting, but 20 years ago, young guys trying to make a career for themselves coming from NZ were very much single seater focused, but that seems to have changed, as they know they can make a pretty good living in Australia now in V8 Supercars. There was a time when tin tops were the back-up plan, if the single seater career didn't work out, but now a lot of young guys (in Australia also) are focused only on making it to V8 Supercars.

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Originally Posted by David McKinney

I'm sure JC didn't race a Valour. Would have to look up the old mags to see what his winning mount was. In would have thought probably a Van Diemen
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I'm pretty sure it was a Valour. An unremarkable car that he bought from Don Elvy. As I recall he put in many hours at Ruapuna testing and developing it and won the FF national championship with it in 84/5

I left NZ before the series was completed. He certainly started the series in a Reynard RF84

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Originally Posted by David McKinney

He certainly started the series in a Reynard RF84

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That being the case my recollection must be incorrect. He definitely campaigned the Valour very successfully at some stage. Maybe it was earlier?

Johno Jonstone is still alive and keeps reasonable health I will get Mr Donaldson to ask him how many he built.

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Originally Posted by Russ Noble

That being the case my recollection must be incorrect. He definitely campaigned the Valour very successfully at some stage. Maybe it was earlier?

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On thinking about it I think he ran the Valour the previous season then went to the UK and worked with Reynard for a few months and brought a damaged car home then built a new one around the retrievable parts. I think John built a new chassis for the car during the rebuild.

Richard, Grant Ellwood dropping in, still living in the backwoods of Virginia, USA.
This is a great forum for catching up with past racing friends. I remember getting a lot of help from the Lester family during my sporadic drives in several of Richard's Fords. Particularly memorable was the Tul which was getting a bit tired at the time (or was that me!)and had a load of understeer, particularly at Manfeilds sweeper. Richard explained that I should "pitch it" at entry to get the tail out and that advice worked really well as I can't remember how may 360s I made. And luckily I couldn't see anything hard coming at me because the tyre smoke was too thick!
Lots of memories.....

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Originally Posted by richard lester

hi carlo,
i well remember those days--i used to enjoy watching Jeff race and as a young fulla not far away from getting into ff myself he was the guy i aspired to be.hell of a nice guy too and was very helpful to dad and i took as much info as i could digest as well.jeff had a great race brain and in my opinion was one of the best weve seen in ff,paul larsen ,shane drake,ashley stitchbury and gary croft werent too bad either(slightly different era though)..i also remember well lyn's harness marks after his wigram shunt ,that era had some extremely talented drivers who raced hard and fair and then retired to the bar.
you know its tough now that most young drivers/families start circuit racing with a career as motivation.very few have the passion to do without the luxuries of life while they get established and crikey do they ever come and go at a high rate now.

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Jonno Jonstone built 8 Jonstones and 1 Hussler, the #3 car that is now Norm Smiths car was a new build Hussler with the original Chassis being still in Ch Ch. #9 Jonstone was built as a class 2 car, it is still in Ch Ch.The first cars were similar to BT21 Brabhams while the later ones were close to Van Deimons. Keith Cowan has #1 that is sometimes referred to as a Brabham.

And Keith fitted a BT21 lookalike body a couple of seasons ago - in Midland Racing Partnership livery!

Big Norm was sensational in the Hustler. I've heard some interesting theories why - he was a hero..proved you didn't need to be the size of a halfback to run at the front of FF.

Jonno with some of his cars,he is sitting in #9.

Hello Howard,

Phil Foulkes does not run one of your old Pallisers. He runs a copy built by Kim & Bob Crocker. Sure, it has the original log book but the two WDF2'S chassis number 34 & 35 are not this car. The complete "34" resides in my warehouse as does the remains of ""35" I sold the ex. Ex. Nev Bailey WDF3, chassis no.4 some years back. It had been rolled, bowled & aresholed more times than a "K Road" Tranny.

Originally this started life as a Valour but my old mate Radar built a new chassis and raced it as the RADAR FF. First owner was Ian Simcox (a milkman in Mt. Maunganui I believe). First registered it on 04/09/1972. It was then sold to Trevor Larsen for his driving school at Bay Park. It then went to Geoff Goile of Ataimuri before my very good friend Harold Phillips bought it. Harold & Grant Ellwood altered the car substantially, especially the front end. It then passed on to "Radar" (Steve Grant) who built an entirely new chassis. You'll love this: Radar turned up for scrutineering only to be rejected because he'd used coach bolts in the suspension! Nice one Radar!
This car in now in the Sth. Island. For all the history including the present owner - Don't contact me.

A lesson to learned here: don't rely on your memory after drinking half a bottle of single malt.

The car John Crawford raced was the OCTO1077 F.F. At 3am this morning it suddenly dawned on me that I'd confused two cars, both based on Valour F.F's.
The Octo1077 was built by Dennis Martin to replace a Valour he owned and raced. Named Octo1077 after it's build date. John and Larry Mulholland rebuilt it in 81 and John raced it through to 83. Phillip Butcher then raced it for a season or two. Car still resides in the South Island.

The Dennis Martin Valour chassis wound up in Shag Ellwood's ownership before being purchased many years ago by Don Short. Waikato based Don, still has it including the factory body moulds. As an aside to this, the aforementioned U.S based Grant Ellwood has been bitten by the nostalgia bug and has purchased a left hook, 1200cc Anglia. No doubt he'll cut the top off it and relive the days of his youth.

Six GLH chassis. The last one was purchased by Graeme Cowley who on sold it to me in the early eighties. Now owned by my old mate Barry Leitch (he is old - ask his sons)
and still unraced as far as I'm aware.

You can't beat a good FFord race for me the best race of the year is the Formula Ford Festval at Brands.
Sadly Ford screwed up FFord when they insisted on Zetec engine then went to Duratec and grids dwindled so now in europe there is no base line formula to have drivers from the top championships and various countries come and have a good bun fight.
In the UK we have many club series running and we have classic and Historic series for cars with various cut off dates, some are stronger than others but the Historic pre 72 cars are now silly money.
The best value for money series is Classic FFord for the post 72-82 pre rocker suspension cars are not silly money and there are no big wallet drivers with £5k motors semi pro race prep shop running the car for them and no young uns hot out of karting coming along to show you how to do it 2 seconds a lap faster than last years champ has done it in.
We have many Champion of series at circuits where we have local experts who hotly contest their series with anything form VD RF90-92 cars through to the later VD99-01 cars or Ray 05-09 cars we even have a couple of Spectrums over here now.
For me the best thing about FFord is there is always a race some where every month and some one on the track to race with whether you are front row mid grid or tail end grid filler material.
I enjoyed my last 2 season of driving my VD2k FFord as i have had in my Dallara F3 or my F2 cars.

DRIFT WOOD - ARE YOU HOWARD'S LONG LOST BROTHER?

No he is my father and my mother said he was a charming man and would like to meet him again someday!

Leave town for 3 days and return being defamed from all sides!

Hi Russ, it figures that the chassis from WDF2 #34 still exists. I have always told Phil he should hunt the chassis down and reunite it with its running gear.We assumed that Kim built a new chassis in 1976 incorporating our spare bellhousing because he had shunted the original chassis too badly to repair. Is that the case or did he merely build a new chassis with the updates to give the then 6 year old car a new lease of life? And by extention is the original chassis straight and complete?

And Drifty, welcolme to theroaringseason, this is the real deal, no bullshit here!

Hello Howard,

Certainly hope you don't feel that my remarks are defamatory. Far from it. Don't actually like these internet raves but thought I should at least put the record straight regarding the Pallisers and Kim's two "specials". My old friend DGM will no doubt chasten me for having a brilliant memory re. trivia but if he got his arse into gear and produced the concise history of NZ motor racing. Of which he is more than capable of doing. Then I would not be replying to you now. You could chew David's ear. "Listening Dave"?

Phil knows I have the complete car. We've spoken about it over the past few years.
Even has "Crocker Bothers Racing" on the bodywork! Although I think the signwriter of the time was being rather "pc" in putting the "r" and "c" into the sign.

The car Phil has is the second "Special" built by Kim & Bob. "Trident 2" as it was known. Trident 1 is still in existence also. I had it for many years before on selling it.
I do have the full history of these cars so no fudging on my part.

Not sure whether you realised but the two Pallisers you and Donald bought, were both raced by Bob Evans in the British FF series. Bob later went on to race F1 for BRM. He probably would have raced for DGM as well if he'd known him!

All the best,

Russ

The prior history of #34 was unknown to us although its condition when we bought it out of the UK would suggest very little use as it was like a new car. The second car we bought (Chassis no unremembered) we also bought out of the UK from a wild character called Mike Taylor who was a Snetterton specialist and we were led to understand the car held the FF lap record there. Whatever its chassis no it had started life as the works car and was built entirely from round tubes unlike the customer cars which featured a lot of square tubing for ease of manufacture. It was considerably lighter than #34 but in a very sad state when we got it. I only drove it in testing but it felt quite different to #34 and if I recall correctly quicker too.

Donald ran it in the 1973/74 championship season, we replace much of the damaged chassis tubes and sold it to John Dempsey who had been running an ancient Lotus converted to FF. Is that the car (#35) that you also have Russ or is there yet another Palliser?

Only three Pallisers came out here. The two that you and Don bought (WDF2/NO34 & NO35 and WDF3/NO4, the Neville Bailey car. WDF2/34 was owned in the UK by Dr.David Chrisp who lent the car to Bob Evans during his championship winning season with WDF2/35 which as you have said, is the ex. works car that Mike Taylor had.

Do you recall adding extra pickup points to the front of 34? This car is complete by the way but I've never had it put together.

In March 74 Don and yourself advertised two Palliser rolling chassis for sale and one complete car. I've always presumed this to be a misprint - any thoughts?

I am pretty sure we fabricated alternative lower front pickup points for anti dive. With the then current Dunlop control tyre we found running the car as soft as possible was better and the anti dive allowed the ride height to be set much lower but still soft.

The Dunlop control tyre was the reason we went to so much trouble with the bell housing extension on the Cheetahs as the front tyres did so little work with conventional weight distribution. This is also why the Schollum bros Elden of Steve Millen went so well as it was very much "cab forward" too.

In March 1974 we would have either purchased or agreed to purchase all the Ray components from Don Hutchison and were in the process of designing the Cheetahs so anything and everything would have been for sale! At the time we had the two complete Palliser cars so I cannot explain (nor remember) advertising a roller as well.

That explains the advert. The rolling chassis advertised was more than likely the Ray73.
If I recall correctly, Bert Ray arrived at a deal with Pallisers Len Wilmhurst and Hugh Dibley to continue manufacturing the cars as Ray-Pallisers. This was after Pallisers went into voluntary liquidation in 1971 and as you know Don Hutchinson made the Ray73 when he was working for Bert.

Thanks Howard, another mystery (albiet a minor one) explained. By the way, I had the 73 myself but never raced it. It's now in the Sth.Is.