Just a thought- are we sure there was just one Formula Classic race (or pair of races) at the May BPRO GT meeting?. What makes me wonder about this is that I'm pretty sure I saw a Formula Classic race at Donington- but equally sure I wasn't at that May BPRO meeting.
Was there maybe a second, possibly at the DTM meeting in July, which I'm much more confident that I
did attend?.
I'll have a search back through my old race programmes to see if I've got one for either the May BPRO or July DTM meetings. (Although Donington's my 'local' circuit, at that time I was living about 200 miles away, so only got there a handful of times a year)
Tom Wheatcroft talked about Formula Classic in his autobiography, '
Thunder in the Park' back in 2005- he said that the major problem was issues with the car and engine.
The engines were originally built by Holbay, who were already in financial troubles at the time they took on the contract, and eventually went bust after the death of founder John Read in a flying accident- by this time, Wheatcroft had written off the entire Formula Classic project (at a cost of £1.6m apparently
), although some development work did apparently continue on the car for some time after the series was canned.
According to Tom, they ended up with 26 cars stored in the museum basement at Donington. He does also refer to them running a 'couple' of events, rather than just one.