Race Report: Crystal Palace, 18 June 1971

There was a good entry for this non-championship race that was unusually held on a Friday evening but sadly heavy rain all day long rather damped the proceedings and several drivers went home after practice in order to save their cars for Sunday’s Lombard Championship round at Brands Hatch.

The non-starters after practice were the Brabham’s of Randy Lewis, Brian McGuire, Alan Jones, Sonny Eade, Ronald Rossi and Sandy Shepard, also missing was Alan McCully’s Lotus and Norman Moffet’s Crosslé. Fastest in practice was James Hunt in his new March Holbay 713M and for the race he chose an interesting combination of Dunlops on the rear and Firestones on the front of his car. However odd Hunt’s tyre choice may have seemed it obviously worked as he left the rest of the field behind, trailing along in his spray. It was the fight for second that had all the action with Roger Williamson having a great battle with the Puma-BRM of Bob Evans, the Puma benefiting from a BRM with bigger valves and a new camshaft and metering unit. Fourth place went to an untroubled Andy Sutcliffe and his Lotus 69 with Ronald Rossi still nursing a bandaged arm from his Silverstone shunt fifth in his regular Brabham.

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