The first run at Silverstone
Just two UK owners
engine in it and last ran in about 2009 . So then it sat for a long , long time and Marcus Pye found it or knew of it .
“ I bought it though Tony Martin , who owns Backdraft Racing . They built the Cobras . I bought it along with a March 76B that was Dave Charlton ’ s car and I ’ ve now sold that to Paul Nightingale from Spire Sports Cars . They came in the container together . I bought the pair and immediately sold the other one to Paul , which helped with the finance to build the 782 . It ’ s two years ago that we got it out of container at Harwich and brought it home .”
The March finally ran in testing at Silverstone for the first time in mid-May after a complete rebuild in
“ Richard Evans has built up this absolute work of art ” the hands of talented racer and engineer Richard Evans , who had previously rebuilt his own ex-Eddie Cheever 782 . “ The Hart engine is built by Connaught and it ’ s got an original 1978 Hart engine . I managed to find one and we ’ ve completely rebuilt it . Obviously Richard has done a lot of work . It is a credit to him . He ’ s just so fastidious .
“ It ’ s a proper genuine car . Chassis 23 was Brian ’ s from new and it ’ s absolutely spot on . Henton was always quick in it . He got poles and he was leading races and it broke on him . He only had one Hart engine , which probably belonged to Brian Hart . And that was it . He had the one engine and he was racing
Hundreds of hours of work went into the rebuild
against the factory teams . He could get on the front row with it but he was always up against the fact that he never had enough money to do it properly .
“ We ’ ve spoken to Brian and at some point we might get it up to Sywell and let him run up and down the runway in it . He ’ s now 77 . They ’ re hard to run as a privateer and we try and make them run a whole season . The works cars had a team of guys at every race and they ’ d take the engine out after every race .
Charteris concluded : “ Richard Evans has built up this absolute work of art . He ’ s done an amazing job . It really is a credit to him . I never thought I ’ d have a racing car , let alone end up with one of these . I thought the 782 was right out of my league but because of the way it came , it was affordable .”
Leading the Derek Bell Trophy pack at Donington Park last month
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