My Time At Trojan Works, London. By Ken Hyndman

[khyndart in CA]

My friend Patrick.
"Head then went to work for Ron Tauranac, who had sold the Brabham F1 team to Bernie Ecclestone and was building Trojan Formula 5000 cars. Head designed these and even the Trojan F1 car, which was run in six GPs in 1974, with Tim Schenken driving. Dispirited, Head gave up racing. He spent 1975 and 1976 building his own boat but then Frank Williams convinced him to return to the sport, offering him the job of chief engineer of Frank Williams (Racing Cars) Ltd. A few weeks later the team was bought by Walter Wolf, who appointed Harvey Postlethwaite as chief designer. Head stayed on for that year but, at the end of 1977, he and Williams left the team and established Williams Grand Prix Engineering. Williams took 70% of the company and Head 30%."
When I read this article in GrandPrix.com it brought back my memories of meeting up with Patrick in June 1973. We met at the aforementioned cafeteria at Trojan. He was alone and I needed someone to discuss the recent mayhem at the 1973 Indy 500. I liked his friendly attitude toward me and we decided we needed to live closer to work and started to check out accommodations (and pubs ) around Croydon but as neither of us had any money (then) our plans altered. I think he ended up living at home and I moved into a house in the Crystal Palace area with 6 Kiwis and Aussies which kept the rent down but not much else ! I would often go around to the race shop after hours and "hang out " with Patrick as he worked at putting the next Trojan design together. Little did I realize that he would go onto to being one of the best race car designers ever. When I left at the end of 1973 he was planning to go off to design and build boats !
I stopped in to see him in 1996 in the midst of one of Team Williams best F 1 seasons. He was still the same as I remembered him. He showed my son and I around the facility. Sean was more interested in getting to the Tower of London and also seeing where Jack the Ripper operated. Looking at race cars was much more exciting for me than it was for him back then !


1996. Visiting with an old mate.


(Ken Hyndman photos )

You can read more about Patrick at this site.

http://www.williamsf1.com/Team/About.../Patrick-Head/