This is the first few minutes of the 1978 Brands Hatch Indy. The footage is from the cbs sports spectatcular. If anyone is interested in the full broadcast, please contact me.
Still have my programme from this race! Great memories , almost past out when stood behind one of the offy,s as it started up , methanol fumes has that affect!
Awesome. I was at the Silverstone none event. I remember then drying the road with the 'hairdryer' from santa pod and then doing a demo couple of laps as it was too wet to race.
“The idea to bring USAC to Silverstone came from a British company called Motor Circuits Developments (MCD), who decided they wanted some extra events for the tracks they owned. Silverstone wasn’t actually an MCD-owned track, but bringing the USAC series across the Atlantic Ocean for just one race didn’t seem wise, so MCD booked a race at Silverstone to precede their race at MCD-owned Brands Hatch. The two races would be held in October, near the end of the 1978 season. As USAC arrived at Silverstone, it became obvious that MCD’s plan to sell American open-wheel racing to British fans, while perhaps a good idea on paper, had some major flaws. For starters, bringing the entire USAC series to another continent was prohibitively expensive. USAC therefore decided to only take 16 cars across The Pond, and it decided to pick these cars by holding a special qualifying session at Michigan. It’s not clear why USAC thought it was a good idea to pick the starters for two road course races by holding a qualifying session on a superspeedway, but USAC’s decision-making in the late 1970s wasn’t exactly ideal.”
Hmmm I've just learned something about my country..... from an American! -Who'd have thought Leeds Castle was in Kent? I assumed it was in, well, Leeds!
I was there, the tyres were so narrow, l never forget THREE cars abreast down paddock hill bend, think one of the circuits got cancelled through lack of interest?
I wouldn't be surprised if these cars would have posted faster times around the full circuit than the F1 cars of the day. These cars had to be 200hp up on the grand prix cars of the time, and around a track with a decent amount of straights these things would be brutally fast.
