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HRDC Press Day at Porsche Centre Silverstone

A great day had by all despite a turn in the weather. The Porsche Centre at Silverstone were fantastic hosts a provided a superb spread for breakfast and lunch. After a short briefing it was onto the track for some demonstration runs and photographs. Their was a good selection of cars from all five of this years HRDC series. To mention just a few we had a Marcos 1800GT and Porsche 904 from GTS65 (for pre ’66 GT cars over 1500cc), a clutch of MGB’s including Barry ‘Sideways’ Smith’s for MGB50, Ian Burford’s Lenham, a Sebring Sprite and Rochdale Olympic representing Grand Touring Greats (pre ’66 GT cars under 1500cc), a Ford Cortina GT, Studebaker Lark Daytona, an Alfa Romeo Guilia and Jaguar Mk2 for TC63 (pre ’64 touring cars excluding homologation specials) and finally from Touring Greats (pre ’60 touring cars) we saw a Rover P4, Ford Zephyr, Austin 105 and MG Magnette. We are all now looking forward to another successful year with the first race next weekend at Castle Combe.

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HRDC Launch MGB50 at Goodwood

2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the MGB and to honour this Julius Thurgood of the Historic Racing Drivers Club will be running the MGB50 series along side his already successful Touring Greats and Grand Touring Greats race series. Yesterday’s event at the Goodwood Motor Circuit saw no less than four Works MGB’s reunited with past members of BMC’s Special Tuning and Competitions Department. Among them were Bill Price, Basil Wales, Peter Browning, Den Green, Brian Moylan and driver Alec Poole. We also saw the likes of Barry “Sideways” Smith who came along to demonstrate the MGB’s performance around the track. As well as the four MGB’s we had the beautiful green  MGA “LBL 301” of Jon Savage. LBL 301 competed in the 1955 Le Mans 24 hour as well as the Mille Miglia in 1957 before being re-bodied by the MG development team in 1958. It was restored by Bob West who brought it down to Goodwood for Tony Dron to expertly pilot around the Sussex circuit. Dron also got out for a few laps in the works MGB’s which he remarked as being “a little quicker”.