Race Report: Thruxton, 24 March 1974

On to round three of the Lombard North Central Championship and the number of competitors continued to inch up with 11 cars making it to Thruxton. Once again the F3 cars found themselves running with another class to make up the grid size, this time it was the Monopostos.

Brian Henton had set a pole time an amazing three seconds faster than anyone else but the race would not prove to be so straightforward with a slippery track caused by the cold, damp conditions. Henton took an immediate lead but found the GRD of Tony Rouff sitting on his tail for the opening laps, the works March was adopting some interesting lines as Henton appeared to be suffering from locking brakes. Lap 5 saw Rouff baulked by a slow backmarker which allowed Henton to open out a bit of a gap which was just as well as on lap 6 as Henton entered Club the brakes locked again and Superhen slide straight on behind the chicane. Rouff now found himself with a ten second lead but it only took Henton two laps to catch Rouff and demote him back to second with a passing manoeuvre at Club. Henton held his lead with out further drama to win by 2.2 seconds.

Behind the battling duo at the front Ribeiro had made a great start from row 5 to slot into third ahead of the Ehrlich of Derek Lawrence who was running wet tyres, unfortunately for Ribeiro the judges decided his start was a little too quick and penalised him 10 seconds. Lawrence soon began to fall away as his tyres proved to be the wrong choice for the conditions. José Espirito Santo moved up to fourth, his March sporting a 2-litre engine this week, and on lap 6 he passed Ribeiro at Club. Ribeiro fell back towards the duel for fifth between the works March of Jose Chateaubriand and the works Modus of Bob Arnott. Chateaubriand and Arnott continually swopped places until lap 8 when the March opened up a small gap but Ribeiro was just too far ahead to be caught. Ribeiro finished fourth on the road with Chateaubriand 0.2 seconds behind but the jump start penalty dropped Ribeiro back to sixth. Marco Moraes and Barrie Maskell had been disputing seventh but Moraes spun the works GRD 374 into the banking at Church and for the third successive race Maskell’s engine let him down and he had to retire.

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