News in brief, August 2004

Jonathan Baker will team up with Carlos Barbot to share the Lola T70 of the Portuguese racer in several more Group 4 races this season. Having started with victory at Montlhéry, they were due to share the car in the round at Dijon and at the Le Mans Classic.

* * *

A repeat of the New Zealand F5000 series is planned for January and February 2005. A group of UK-based cars are expected to race against around 10 cars from New Zealand. Mike Wrigley’s Lola T332 won eight of 12 races held in 2004.

* * *

Joey Watts-Farmer, the daughter of Archie Frazer-Nash, was on hand at Cadwell Park in June to present the awards for the annual ‘Chain Gang’ race for GN and Frazer Nash cars. Tom Walker (GN Special) won narrowly from Richard Scaldwell (Parker GN).

* * *

Four-time National Group N champion Jeremy Easson joined the Armajaro MSA British Historic Rally Championship on the Mid-Wales Stages and vowed to return after taking fifth in the post-historics in a Porsche 911. “I’m well impressed; it’s absolutely brilliant,” said Easson. He aims to contest the Bulldog Rally and the Roger Albert Clark Rally later this year.

* * *

Italian racer Pietro Silva has acquired the ex-Crown Racing Lola T292 that Chris Craft took to the 1973 European Sportscar title. Silva will restore the car and plans to refit one of the Tecno V8 engines that powered the car in 1974 with Jean-Pierre Jaussaud at the wheel. Silva has three of the high-revving 2-litre V8s and hopes to run the car at major events in 2005.

* * *

For the first time in its 16-year history the Classic Marathon heads into Scandinavia this September. From the start in Lubeck, the 2004 event takes crews across Denmark before catching a ferry to Norway for what the organisers promise will be spectacularly rugged landscapes and truly outstanding rally roads.