Legacy Of Famed Kiwi Drivers To Live On At Skope Classic Meeting This Weekend

The legacy of some of New Zealand’s greatest racing drivers - Graham McRae and Bert Hawthorne amongst them – will be honoured by members of the NZ F5000 Association at the re-scheduled Skope Classic historic motor racing meeting in Christchurch this weekend.

With at least four of the 12 cars set to contest the SAS Autoparts MSC NZ F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series races at the Skope Classic at Mike Pero Motorsport Park-Ruapuna either designed, built, and driven under his own name, or designed but built and driven by others, it would be hard to miss the contribution, for instance, that noted Kiwi driver and engineer Graham McRae made to the category.

It was 50 years to the day, on January 22 this year, in fact, that McRae won the 1972 Lady Wigram Trophy race in the bright neon pink STP-backed Leda GM1 001; the very same car being driven at the Skope Classic meeting this weekend, by talented young Christchurch ace Michael Collins.

Sadly, that same year (1972) another talented Kiwi driver, Bert Hawthorne, from Kaiapoi, north of Christchurch, was killed while practising for the German round of that year’s European Formula 2 championship at Hockenheim on Friday April 14.

Hawthorne’s best series’ finish overseas, was second the year before (1971) in the US Formula B championship in a car – the Tui Mk 1 – designed and built in the UK by fellow Kiwi, Allan McCall.

At just 28 years of age, it was a cruel blow for his family back home in Kaiapoi not to mention the close-knit local motor racing scene where he had got his start – but 22 years on, to honour his memory, the Canterbury Car Club and Hawthorne family have put up a special Bert Hawthorne Memorial trophy for drivers contesting the SAS Autoparts MSC NZ F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series races at the Skope Classic from this year on.

The Bert Hawthorne Memorial trophy joins the Stan Redmond Memorial, a trophy awarded to the driver who, over the course of the weekend exhibits the same sort of pace, grace, and passion for F5000 racing that Redmond, one of the founding fathers both of the NZ F5000 Association and the SAS Autoparts and MSC-sponsored NZ F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series, now entering its 19th year, did.

The SAS Autoparts MSC F5000s will be on track across all three days of the revived Skope Classic meeting (which usually runs over the first weekend in February, but his year was postponed thanks to Covid-19 crowd limits) with morning and afternoon practise sessions on Friday, qualifying in the morning and the first race of the weekend on Saturday then the other two races – including the longer meeting feature – on Sunday.

Set to head the field are the two locally-based Graham McRae-designed GM1 cars of Michael Collins (the Alistair & Vicki Hey-owned Leda GM1 001) and the production McRae GM1 (009) of three-time former SAS Autoparts MSC NZ F5000 series champion, Steve Ross from Dunedin.

Ready to take the battle to the local GM1s are 2021/22 series’ quickest Rnd 1 qualifier and races 1 & 3 winner Grant Martin, and ‘Mr SAS Autoparts,’ Davd Banks, in their US-built Talon MR1s, cars based on the GM2 that Graham McRae designed and originally built to supersede the GM1.

Joining these four on the grid, meanwhile, will be the Lola T332s of Banks’ son Codie, former NZ Formula Ford champion Kevin Ingram, Hampton Downs resident Tony Galbraith and his fellow Muscle Car/F5000 racer Bruce Kett from Hamilton, and the ex-British Hillclimb Championship Chevron B32 of series new-face, expat Englishman Alastair Chalmers.

The meeting will also see a strong entry of Class A (for earlier era cars) McLaren M10B models headed by category stalwart Tony Roberts in his recently acquired ex Kip Ackerman South African series car M10B (400-08), ably supported by Toby Annabell from Hawera in Taranaki, and Aucklander Frank Karl.

The SAS Autoparts MSC NZ F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Serries is organised and run with the support of sponsors SAS Autoparts, MSC, NZ Express Transport, Bonney's Specialised Bulk Transport, Mobil Lubricants, Pacifica, Avon Tyres, Webdesign and Exide Batteries.

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