Amon And Clark In Fast Runs

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31588, 27 January 1968, Page 15

Amon And Clark In Fast Runs

Headed by C. Amon and J. Clark, the overseas entrants in the Teretonga International race of 90.06 miles easily outstripped New Zealand’s top resident drivers in the final qualifying trials, yesterday.

Amon in his Ferrari V 6 and Clark in his Lotus-Ford V 8 put in their best laps of the 1.6-mile circuit in 60.1 sec—an average speed of 96 m.p.h.

This was 3 m.p.h. faster than the lap record set last year by D. Hulme in a Brab-ham-Repco V 8 in one of the qualifying heats. Hulme, now the world champion driver, had a disappointing run yesterday morning in his 1600 c.c. Brab-ham-Ford. It was misfiring intermittently and the best he could manage ' was 90.07 m.p.h. which made him the slowest of the overseas entrants.

For the first time in the New Zealand international series, the Vl2 B.R.M.’s showed their potential. B. McLaren returned his best lap at 94.5 m.p.h. and his team mate, P. Rodriguez, was fractionally slower at 94.19 m.p.h. The Australian, F. Gardner, equalled the time of Rodrigiuez in the Alec Mildren rac- | ing team Brabham-Alfa Romeo VB. .

Driving a Formula two car, like Hulme, the English private entrant, P. Courage, took his 1.6 McLaren-Ford around at an average speed of 93.57 m.p.h. to establish a very comfortable margin over the world champion. Fastest of the resident drivers was J. Palmer (1.6 Mc-Laren-Ford) with 88.69 m,p.h.

The current leader in the l. national formula series, G. Lawrence, turned in a very respectable 87.08 m. to head off narrowly K. Smith (1.5 Lotus-Ford), whose speed was 87 m.p.h. Next were D. Oxton (1.5 Brabham-Ford) and I. Dawson (2.5 Brabham-Climax) with 86.57 m.p.h. and 86.3 m.p.h. respectively. None of the others qualified at more than 80 m.p.h and this will probably be the limit set by the organisers of the final race in the New Zealand section of the Tasman Championship series. The qualifying trials were run in fine hot weather and the track was very slippery. A number of drivers made off-course excursions—fortunately without damage to themselves or their cars—in the course of the morning.