Brilliant Basildon

Sir,

I wasn’t going to go to the Retro ’97 event in Basildon. I already had an engagement and, after Goodwood there was little indeed, I thought, that a parade through the streets of an Essex new town could offer by comparison. How wrong I was! Engagement cancelled and faced with nothing else to do, I wandered off to Basildon in a sulk to encounter the most charming motoring event on the calendar. Unlike Goodwood, which has become increasingly corporate, it had a truly friendly atmosphere, where your heroes walked around with grins on their faces, not, I felt, because they had been paid to. The cars were incredible and all the more remarkable for the incongruous setting in which they were found. Man of the day was the chap driving the Simtek F1 car. Modern GP cars are not exactly easy to drive on purpose-built circuits, so what it must have been like in Basildon I can scarcely imagine.

I am sure all readers of MOTOR SPORT who attended this curiously wonderful event would want to join me in congratulating its organisers.

I am yours etc,

B.F Pom-Brewer, Kensington, London (And so say all of us… AF)