Safir Token RJ03 F3 car information needed

[glendalf48]

Hello all.

As a budding historian with a growing interest in motorsport, I agreed to help a friend of mine in researching the history of a recently purchased classic F3 car - namely a Safir RJ03.

To our knowledge (and please correct me if this is wrong), Safir built two of these cars - one in 1975 and raced by Patrick Neve, and the second built in 1976 raced by Tiff Needell. We are fairly certain that it is the latter of the two which now belongs to my friend.

I come to you with limited knowledge, we know some race results, for example the '86 and '88 Toyota F3 championship victories, and the 2nd place at Thruxton in october '76. We also know some of the owners of the vehicle, but have gaps where the car goes completely off radar - namely '77 to '85 and '95 to '07.

If you have any information regarding this classic F3 car, whether they be race results or owners/racers, please do help - records are seemingly difficult to come by at present.

Many thanks in advance,
G

[Matthew Sturmer]

If you contact Reg James, chairman of the Classic F3 club he will probably be able to help you as I know a Safir won the championship a number of years ago and he would know which car it was. You can contact Reg through the club website which is ClassicF3.co.uk.

[Elio]

Is this the yellow car I saw Pat Gormley test at Brands the other week?? (Apologies but I know nowt about the histories of the cars!! - I know that when I saw it the other week it was a completely new name to me, and that the car looked very good).

[Chris Townsend]

The RJ03 was the 1975 car raced by Patrick Neve with considerable success
This car was apparently an adaptation of the still born Delta F3 car
The RJ05 was the 1976 car which didn't arrive until quite late on in the season, but Needell drove the RJ03 at Oulton 10 July 1976 [or at least that's what he was entered in...] Rather unhelpfully, from the programmes that I'm looking at, Safir sometimes designated the 1976 car an RJ02, which was the 1974 F1 car.
The second car was for sale back in 2003 by one "Driftwood", resident of this forum.
According to Doug Nye there was a third car part built when Ray Jessop died, and it was sold off - so there is the outside possibility that you have this car, which AFAIK never appeared in F3, though there is some dispute as to whether it was ever finished. I suspect you have the ex Needell 1976 car, as the RJ02 was in Belgium.

As for results. www.oldracingcars.com is just starting to post full results for F3 series, and 1975 British races are in the queue waiting to go live on the website.
You'll have to wait a little longer for the 1976 ones I'm afraid, I'm still working on them and there are some big gaps.

[glendalf48]

Matt - Thanks for the contact - I'll get onto it right away!

Elio - That indeed would be the car - good to see he's got it out on the track!

Chris - Thanks very much for the info that is very helpful indeed. Whats more, it makes a lot of sense in there only being one RJ03! Though it is a shame we cant claim the Oulton race!

[Unit 2 Racing]

Check out www.f3history.co.uk for some details of 76 car
& results for 75.

[Alan Morgan]

As far as I remember, the Toyota engined car appeared for the first time at Brands at the GP meeting. By that time, Ray Jessop had died, and the team was being run by Alan England and Peter Thorpe.

There was also an F2 Safir, based on a Rondel Motul F2 chassis with different engine bay and bodywork. This car just ran in testing at Goodwood in '75, and in qualifying for the Silverstone F2 round that year.

I thought there were three F3 Safirs in total, but when I asked Alan England a couple of years ago, I think he said there were only two.

[driftwood]

Steve Bradley won the historic F3 in Safir many moons ago