Article: Ford Falcon Sprint

[Steve Holmes]

Pierpoint backed this up with victory at the following event, Brands Hatch for the Grand Prix event, taking pole position ahead of Baillie in the other Falcon. Baillie eventually finished third behind Jackie Oliver, in a Mustang. An imminent sign was when both Falcons passed Muir’s Galaxie, on the straight, in unison.

Brands also hosted the next round, where Jim Clark returned to beat everyone in the Lotus Cortina on a drenched track. Here both Falcons retired with mechanical problems. This was the last appearance for the Pierpont machine, although Baillie continued on in the final two rounds at Oulton Park and Brands Hatch, taking a good second spot at Oulton, and fourth and third in the 2 Heat Brands Hatch season finale.

BSCC rules being what they were, the series champion could come from any of the four classes, as class results counted towards the overall championship. John Fitzpatrick won the championship driving a Class A Broadspeed prepared Anglia.

1967 BSCC

For the 1967 season, Alan Mann Racing returned to the BSCC full-time, now with Frank Gardner driving the Falcon. The Pierpoint and Baillie Falcons returned, while Richard Bond was entered in a fourth Falcon. Brian Muir would drive the Baillie car.

From what was a closely contested championship in 1966 among the big cars and the faster 4 cylinder machines became a one-sided demonstration by Alan Mann Racing in 1967. The Gardner driven Falcon Sprint completely dominated, winning seven of the ten rounds, including both heats in the opener at Brands Hatch. He finished second to Jackie Oliver’s Mustang at Rounds 2 and 3 held at Snetterton and Silverstone, and the only retirement suffered came in Round 8, at Brands Hatch, when a puncture stopped the flying Ford dead in its tracks. Gardner’s dominant performances in Class D were also enough to give him the outright championship, which he comfortably took from Fitzpatrick’s Class A Broadspeed Anglia. Meanwhile, the Galaxies were gone, and Mustang numbers had dwindled, with Oliver’s example being the only one to challenge Gardner.



1968 BSCC

On average, four or five Falcon Sprints contested each BSCC race in 1968, but the Alan Mann team wasn’t one of them. As a Ford supported race team, they needed to be fielding a car race fans could go and buy off the showroom floor. The Falcon was never available in the UK, but even if it was, this particular model had ceased production three years earlier. Alan Mann Racing would instead enter a new Class C Escort Twin-cam, driven by Gardner, joined by a second car pedalled by a fleet of talent including Peter Arundell, Roger Clark, Jackie Oliver, and Graham Hill. The Escorts would miss the opening three rounds, so had to make do running a single MkII Lotus Cortina for Gardner, as a stop-gap.



Ultimately, Gardner’s utter dominance in Class C saw him crowned as champion. The little Escort even took outright race wins against the big cars at the Brands Hatch GP events, and the Brands Hatch Motor Show 200 which concluded the championship. Gardner invariably gave the V8s a hard time, and usually finished within the top four outright, but again the Falcon Sprints dominated. Bill Shaw Racing, with Brian Muir driving, were the class of the field, winning the opening five races, before Gardner broke their winning streak at the GP event. Then the Malcolm Gartlan Racing Falcon Sprint, driven by David Hobbs, won the next two, before Muir returned to the top step at Oulton Park. Pierpoint, who’d strung together a series of top three results throughout much of the season, finally won the penultimate round, when he powered his Falcon to victory at Brands Hatch.

Although the championship fell to Gardner in the Escort, the season was completely dominated by the Falcon Sprints, as it had been the previous year.