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Vintage meeting and commemoration mark historic Pembrey event
publication date: Jul 21, 2010
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author/source: Peter Hughes
 | While Pembrey Circuit celebrates its 20th
anniversary
this year, the cars in action there this Sunday recall an even earlier
era of motor racing.
The Vintage Sports Car Club is paying its first visit to the circuit for
over 10 years in a varied programme.
Pembrey Circuit is marking the event by commemorating one of Wales’s
motoring greats, renaming the circuit’s media centre The Parry Thomas
Centre. | John Godfrey Parry Thomas, the son of a Wrexham vicar, was one of
Britain’s greatest automotive engineers as well as a fearless racing
driver winning countless races at the daunting Brooklands circuit. But
today he is most remembered for his land speed record breaking
achievements in the car with which has become synonymous, the 27 litre
aeroplane engined Babs.
In the 1920s Carmarthenshire’s Pendine Sands was the venue for many
speed record attempts and in April 1926 Parry Thomas took the record
past 170mph. In February of 1927 Sir Malcolm Campbell visited the Sands
and raised the record by nearly 5mph and the following month Parry
Thomas returned to Pendine. Sadly, the visit ended in tragedy, the
fearless Welsh driver losing his life in a crash.
After the accident Parry Thomas’s team buried Babs in the sands and
there it remained until 1969 when his fellow North Walian Owen Wyn Owen
excavated the car and spent many years restoring it to its former glory.
Babs now spends each summer on display at Pendine Museum of Speed but
this weekend an away day will see it on display at Pembrey for the
naming ceremony.
Unveiling the plan, Pembrey Circuit Director Phil Davies commented,
“Wales has a rich automotive and motorsport heritage of which we should
be proud. We have already commemorated one Welsh great by instigating a
Tom Pryce Trophy and, given our location so close to Pendine it seems
appropriate to remember another Welsh hero.”
While the naming ceremony will take place during Sunday’s lunch break,
the day’s racing programme consists of 10 races featuring some of the
most evocative names from motor racing history competing for some of the
most highly regarded Trophies in the VSCC’s illustrious cabinet.
Two ERA ‘Voiturette’ Racers line up for the Historic Seaman Race for
Pre-1961 Racing cars which is running alongside the Vintage Seaman
Trophy for Pre-1931 Racing cars, making for an interesting battle. Ben
Fidler’s 1936 ERA AJM1 and David Morris’s ERA R11B will be setting the
pace whilst Stephen Shoosmith’s 1931 Type 51 Bugatti will be one of the
front running two seater sports-cars. Anthony Howat’s mammoth 27 litre
engined Hispano/Delage will be battling against Geraint Owen’s 1930 Type
35B Bugatti and Robert Carr’s AC/GN Special for the Vintage Seaman
Trophy. Geraint is the son of Babs restorer Owen Wyn Owen, Bryan Gill’s
1930 Lea-Francis Hyper TT is one of the more competitive cars in the
Standard and Modified Pre-war Sports-Car Race. He will be making the
most of his 600 mile round trip from Harrogate in North Yorkshire and
will be giving the similar car of Jeremy Brewster a real run for his
money. The French Talbot-Lagos of John Guyatt and Richard Black will
also be front runners, with Toby Heelis in his 1939 Delage hot on their
heels.
Frazer Nash is famous for its series of chain driven cars and their
sideway cornering antics. Fans are assured of plenty of entertainment
with no fewer than eight ‘Chain Gang’ cars present in various guises.
Equipe GTS bring things a little more up to date with their two 30
minute races. Their grid of late 50s and 60s historic production
sports-cars features two Triumph TR4s, MGBs, a TVR 1800S, WSM Sprite and
a sole MGA.
| | Tickets cost £12 on the day and children aged 15 and
under are free.
Practice begins at 9.00am, with the first race Equipe GTS at
11.30am. After lunch Race 2, a short scratch race for Pre-war Cars,
gets the afternoon’s racing underway at 1.15pm. | | | |
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