The Egal will race again a sprint at Long Marston airfield near Stratford on Avon . Rob Beck thought it was a good idea that I should drive it . Rob said : ‘ Now Barrie , you know this is a very powerful car . I ’ ll give you some tips on starting , I ’ ve done a lot of this sort of thing . You take the revs up to 2000 and when the light changes , you dump the clutch and floor it . Then change gear very quickly .’ I went for my first practice run and alongside me was Malcolm Gartland in his GT40 . The green light came on and I did exactly what Rob had said and disappeared in a huge cloud of blue smoke . It turned right , straight towards the GT40 , then it went left and used all of the straight to sort itself out .
“ Then there was a tannoy call for Barrie Williams to go to the clerk of the course . I pottered over there and was given a great big lecture about sprint starts . Then I went back to the car and Rob said : ‘ Dramatic . Yes , I ’ m awfully sorry , I made a mistake . I meant 1000rpm ’.
“ I raced it for the rest of the 1967 season but by the end of the year we were becoming uncompetitive . The first time we really noticed it was at
Silverstone . I led through the first two corners and was then passed by about three cars going into Woodcote . They could stop and we couldn ’ t . The Chevron B8s and Ginetta G12s ran all over us . We could pass them on the straights but realised we couldn ’ t get any bigger brakes on it .
“ I ’ ll always remember a race at Castle Combe . I had a half-crown bet with Ron Fry , who was racing his Ferrari 250LM , that I could beat him . He was on pole and I was second and we had a bet that I could beat him to Quarry . I did beat him to Quarry , but when I backed off over the brow , the gearbox exploded , all the oil came out , I spun into the inside and stopped . He went off into the bank on the outside and I ran across and asked for the half-crown ! There was no real damage done , but we were both off the road .”
“ The other race I really remember in the Egal was at Oulton Park against Brian Redman , who was in the Red Rose lightweight E-type . I beat him off the line , got down through Cascades and going up to Island the spigot bearing seized in the gearbox and the gearbox exploded again . I managed to drive it round to the pits and Brian won that one .”
2021 : Off the line at Shelsley Walsh
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