Race Report: Brands Hatch, 31 October 1971

This was the penultimate round of the Lombank Championship and despite still being in with a mathematical chance of overhauling Roger Williamson, Colin Vandervell and his works Brabham were absent.

Practice saw Roger Williamson running a new ’72 spec Holbay in his March take pole position from Alan Jones in his usual Brabham BT28 and James Hunt, who also had a ’72 Holbay mill in his March 713M.

Surprise sight of the weekend was third row starter Bev Bond who was trying the new Royale RP11 debuted by Tom Pryce the weekend before.

Alan Jones got the best start and lead at the end of the first lap from Williamson, Hunt, Hull (BT28) and Bond but lap 2 saw Williamson move into the lead he would hold to the finish by slipping past Jones at Kidney. Hunt then made a concerted effort to get ahead of Jones which the Brabham driver resisted strongly and on lap 8 the two cars made contact at Druids resulting in Hunt spinning down to sixth. Now Jones found himself under pressure from Hull in his similar BT28 and on lap 16 the Kiwi got ahead of the Aussie and for the next four laps although Jones did all he could to regain the place it wasn’t to be and Hull took second by 0.2 seconds. Hunt finished fourth right on Jones tail with Rikki von Opel fifth. Bond had fallen away from the leading group with his Royale and was passed by von Opel, he fell further back and got involved in a group consisting of Stan Matthews (BT28), David Purley (Ensign) and Alan McCully’s (Lotus), eventually retiring with no oil pressure. Purley retired on lap 13 with a broken throttle cable.

f3 HISTORY

RACES