FEATURE : BENN SIMMS
Winning at Snetterton in April
History lessons in a Jomo
Benn Simms is one of the most successful single seater racers of the last two decades within the Historic Sports Car Club ranks . Paul Lawrence found out more .
Benn , now 46-years old and from Asfordby Hill near Melton Mowbray , followed his father Paul into racing when he was 18 , and has raced just about every season since . Tragically , Paul died during the Covid pandemic and he left an enormous gap in the Historic Formula Ford fraternity but Benn has raced on in memory of his father and , this year , has taken on a new challenge .
One of the projects in their stable of racing cars was a rare Jomo JMR7 from 1968 , one of the early Formula Ford 1600 designs . The car is easily old enough to run in the Historic championship for pre ‘ 72 cars , but Benn decided to take on an even bigger challenge for 2024 and race in the Classic Formula Ford Championship for the cars from up to 1982 .
Though he is competing against cars that are a decade , and more , younger than his rare Jomo he ’ s doing rather well so far and leads the championship coming to this weekend ’ s double-header at Brands Hatch .
In truth , the Jomo never made much impression in FF1600 first time around , so the fact that Simms is leading the Classic Championship with five wins from the six rounds to date shows that it was a decent package that just needed some development . “ I think we ’ ve proved that to be honest , the way the way it works now ,” says Simms . “ Back in the day , it never had any budget . Keith Vickery , the designer of the car , was a lovely , lovely man and really passionate about it . Sadly , he died about six years ago . He came and looked at our car , and he was so pleased that we got some results in the car a few years back . But it never really did anything in its day .
Only eight Jomos were built and that production total was based on just five original chassis , three of which were upgraded . When Vickery was building the cars he was friends with the people behind the Russell Alexis Formula Ford . “ So they used to confer and whilst there are a few similarities between the Jomo and the Alexis , there ’ s not actually that many and the cars drive completely differently . It ’ s quite bizarre when you look at them . Keith used to do a bit of wheeling and dealing , because the uprights on the back of the Jomo are shared with the Macon . So the early Macons run the same uprights and I think he cast them and then sold them to Macon as well . That just made it a bit easier and a bit more affordable . Keith actually went to the lengths of remanufacturing the rear uprights , which was fantastic . Unfortunately , we ’ ve lost that resource now .
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Benn and Paul Simms