Paddock News

Happy New Year to all our club racers past, present and future. On which subject we are pleased to welcome a new driver to the Pirelli Ferrari formula classic race series in 2020. Congratulations to Andy Riddoch who has secured a Group 3 328 GTB from Tim Walker. This is Tim’s original class winning car that spent last year with Darren Wilson. Andy is new to racing and we understand that some tuition and general guidance has been included in the sale – a wise move.  We would like to wish Andy every success and welcome him to a fantastic race series. 

Our Race Regs will be out very soon and our media and track day at Silverstone is set for March 16th, so not too far away. News on our National Ferrari Owner’s day at Sywell will be posted soon. We are looking for as many race cars and preparers to attend as possible. As well as being just a great day out there will also be the chance to run your car on the 1/4 mile strip against the clock!

Winter well!

Prizes were awarded to both Pirelli Ferrari formula classic and Ferrari Club Racing competitors at a very successful end of season event aboard a paddle steamer on the Thames. Principal awards went to the following:

• Ivan Bishop Trophy      Wayne Marrs
• Trofeo Italia                    Nick Cartwright
• The Big Swifty                Chris Butler
• Stirling Cup                    Richard Fenny
• Stubberfield Trophy     William Moorwood
• Wilkinson Trophy         Colin Sowter
• David Preston Trophy  Barkaways
• Hard Charger Award    Pete Fisk
• Blue Haze Award           Chris Butler

In addition there were Group Awards given to FCR racers:

• James Little
• Richard Fenny
• Tim Mogridge

Some 71,000 people attended this year’s three day Classic Car Show at the NEC Birmingham. It was the show’s 35th anniversary and a Grand Finale to the classic year. This is one of the biggest shows of it’s kind in Europe and the various stats. are all impressive. Some 300 motoring clubs were present for example.

This year our club chose to showcase the Heritage of Ferrari Challenge cars from 348 through to the latest 488. It made a superb and well attended display appreciated by all. Ferrari North Europe joined in displaying the safety car used in this year’s UK Challenge races.

Thanks go to everyone who made it all possible and to Richard Dredge for the photo.

Every year Brian Jackson produces a fabulous record of all the times set by all the competitors in the Club’s hillclimb championship going back to 1987, and he has now updated this to include the 2019 season. It really is a monumental piece of historical record and it shows just how many of our members have competed in this lovely championship over the years. We thank Brian once again for letting us post this document for all to enjoy.

The final race report of the year from Hockenheim is now posted, and with just the end of season events to go we are edging closer to wrapping up another competition year.

With our Pirelli Ferrari formula classic and Ferrari Club Racing series, plus our Pirelli Ferrari Hillclimb championship and the new UK Ferrari Challenge championship we have reported on some 45 races this year. It’s time to thank all our contributors. Guest reporters, photographers and videographers who have all helped make your site we hope an interesting, entertaining and informative place to visit, so thank you all.

We don’t as a rule feature photos of incidents, but this photo supplied to us by Chris Graham was so exceptional we thought we should make an exception – we hope you agree.

The start line incident at the beginning of the second UK Challenge race brought a halt to the meeting as it was deemed too lengthy a job to repair the barriers in a reasonable time. This also cancelled our formula classic race 3. Fortunately nobody was injured in the incident, which is pretty remarkable and in the end is all that really matters. Until then good fun was had by all. Winner of race 1 was Jamie Clarke. It was his maiden win over the all conquering Jason Baker. Full report & photos.

Before our dedicated Ferrari Club Racing web site all Club circuit and hillclimb competitions were documented via printed media. Competition News, as it was named originally, formed a small part of the Club’s Ferrari News magazine before being printed as a separate item. This much later became CompRes which was designed as a lightweight version. Over the years the paper and printing improved and colour was introduced. These publications were distributed to all registered competitors and sponsors etc. However any member could obtain the magazines if they wished. A few of us are fortunate enough to hold complete collections of Competition News and CompRes, and the Club office library also has a set which is available to view by members. These magazines form a quite remarkable archive of Club racing activities from the mid 1980s to 2014.

It is amazing to consider that this was all the work of John and Anne Swift. One can only imagine the time and effort involved over so many years, and we all owe them a great debt of gratitude. Now John has gone even further and has been working on making these publications available on-line. To date we have CompRes issues 001 (Feb. 2005) to issue 099 (Dec. 2014). John is working on previous issues too, but this may take a little longer as they were not held digitally. There will be a separate tab on the site in due course but for now you can see the archive via this link: www.issuu.com/compresults

I can’t imagine that there are many clubs with such a complete and accessible archive and we should be proud of it. For serious research, or just a wander down memory lane it’s quite compelling.

Some of you may have seen our Club’s promotional video for the formula classic series at the NEC or at our RAC prize-giving event. This excellent video is now posted on this site in the video section and is available by clicking here.