Race Report: Thruxton, 6 August 1972

Thirty cars arrived at Thruxton for this non-championship Echo Trophy race, practice accidents accounted for the Ensign F371 of Ken Mackintosh, the March 723 of Russell Wood and the Martini Mk9 of John Bisignano. Other drivers who didn’t make the race for sundry mechanical reasons or because they didn’t appreciate the weather conditions were Brendan McInerney, John Marston, Lee Kaye, Cavan Riley, Simon Sherman, Bob Shellard and Jorge Pinhol.

It was Tony Brise that made the best start in the heavy rain and at the end of the opening lap he had opened up a significant lead over Jochen Mass and his brother Tim. Alan Jones moved his GRD up to third on lap three demoting the similar car of Tim Brise to fourth whilst second place man Mass was beginning to reel in the leading Brise in his Brabham.

Mass made his move on lap 5 and the STP-March took the lead from the Montessa Motorcycles Brabham and although Brise closed up on a couple of occasions when Mass was lapping backmarkers the German always looked in control. Behind Tim Brise in fifth was Brian McGuire followed at some distance by the Ensign of Mike Wilds, next up was the GRD of Mo Harness and the Brabham BT38 of Randy Lewis.
The top six positions remained the same for the rest of the race although Tim Brise was lucky not to leave the track when he was forced wide whilst lapping the Chris O’Brien BT38 on the last lap. Mo Harness in his new GRD lost a couple of places, on lap 8 to Randy Lewis and on lap 21 to Mike Tyrrell, other than that the race was fairly incident free. At the finish Jochen Mass took a relatively untroubled win in the poor conditions setting fastest lap on the way, such was his rate of progress he lapped everybody bar the next four finishers.

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