Shellsport International Championship 1977

[Bryan Miller]

With Chris's advice that Matthews guys built it up at March I believe we need to accept the fact that the car is a 723 updated to 73B specifications .
Lets say Matthews has 2 mechanics go down to March , with a price already agreed for the changeover to F/Atlantic which may include trade-in for old F3 bits surplus to requirements , maybe it would cost 1/2 the price of a new car , certainly a viable way to go .
In regard to the incorrect callouts in period of owner/drivers updating their cars , I believe the only way out is to call it what it actually is [ i.e. how it started life ] e.g. BT29 chassis zzz , and a note stating car also referred to as BT30 in period.

We have a BT6 here that became a BT18 and then a BT36 simply by changing body panels, by the time it was a BT36 !! it was running in Amaroo Park clubbies but with a MK4 Hewland and a 1300cc pushrod Ford , a far cry from a correct BT36, which it didn't even fully represent as it only has a BT28/9/30/35/36 nose cockpit section but no large side tanks.

Bryan.

[Andrew Kitson]

I'll definitely ask Stan next time I speak to him. Off topic...again...I'm pretty sure he had just the one mechanic though in F3, think it was a guy called Roger Chalk? My father was Stan's mechanic when he raced in special saloons in 68/69. In '69 he simultaneously went to the JRRDS at Snett doing races in an FF Lotus 51 and learning how to keep it on the black stuff (there same time as Emmo).

[allenbrown]

I picked Simon Hadfield's brains on the 723/73B issue this evening and he advises that the tubs were quite different at the front so quite a bit of metalworking would be needed to take the 73B bits fit the 723 chassis. He thinks it more likely that they had a new 73B tub and added the running gear off the 723. The uprights would have been the same - just about the only thing that was.

From 1973 onwards, Simon advises that March tubs varied less and less from year to year, right through until 1980 when ground effects, as he put it, "buggered things up".

If that's right, and Simon does know this stuff very well, the differences between a 73B and a 74B would have been relatively minor.

(By the way, he occasionally 'lurks' here so mind what you say.)

Allen

[Andrew Kitson]

We can say 'Thanks Simon, see you at the Stoneleigh historic show' Well done Allen.

[allenbrown]

I found another reference to a Musetti March: Autosport 6 Apr 1978 p58 mentions "Bill Wood (ex Val Musetti F2 March)". In the results (p59) it's called a March 752. Wood appears on other occasions in 1978 and the car is sometimes called a 762 but this is the only mention I've seen of it being ex-Musetti.

This makes me even more confident that the car that went to New Zealand was the 73B/74B and the car that stayed in England was the 742/752/762. So this Bill Wood car would be the one Divi had used briefly the previous season.

Has the NZ car been positively identified as 742/U1?

Allen

[Bryan Miller]

Allen, up in our hot topic thread , I asked how do I find the old B29 thread , that is where we were discussing it.
I did the eligibility inspection on March 742-U2 in Sydney at BMW dealer Rob. Shields premises in 1997 .

The paperwork submitted called out 742-U2 and I would have without fail verified that number on the ch.plate during the inspection.
The history given by the applicant is as follows , all in N.Z. Reg Cook , John Doey[ Dozy] ???, Ken Smith , John Mackinlay, thence to Rob Shiel in Sydney , no dates for the NZ stuff at all.
Chassis plate was fitted and the tub carried 732-69 under the roll over bar in the usual position.
Cams requested proof of early UK/European history as car was fitted with BMW M12/7 2 litre , but no evidence to support that it was a car originally run as F2 , the car was then sold to the U.K and one posting on the B29 thread is by the then current owner of both U1 and U2.
Further , another competitor in Australia wished to purchase car and sent to Duncan R. an enquiry re the car , also listing 742-U2 as the plate no. , Duncan replied that he could find no trace of the car in his records , however that 742-U1 was fully marked as a works development chassis.
Bryan.

[David McKinney]

Originally Posted by Bryan Miller

The paperwork submitted called out 742-U2 and I would have without fail verified that number on the ch.plate during the inspection.
The history given by the applicant is as follows , all in N.Z. Reg Cook , John Doey[ Dozy] ???, Ken Smith , John Mackinlay, thence to Rob Shiel in Sydney , no dates for the NZ stuff at all.
Chassis plate was fitted and the tub carried 732-69 under the roll over bar in the usual position.
Cams requested proof of early UK/European history as car was fitted with BMW M12/7 2 litre , but no evidence to support that it was a car originally run as F2 , the car was then sold to the U.K and one posting on the B29 thread is by the then current owner of both U1 and U2.
Further , another competitor in Australia wished to purchase car and sent to Duncan R. an enquiry re the car , also listing 742-U2 as the plate no. , Duncan replied that he could find no trace of the car in his records , however that 742-U1 was fully marked as a works development chassis.
Bryan.

My notes, taken when the car first appeared in NZ for the 1977 international series, describe the car as a 75B and list the number as 742/1, it having apparently been converted to Atlantic spec in 1975. I can no longer recall whether I read that number off the chassis-plate or whether the owner told me. It is possible one or other of us left off an extraneous 'U' but I doubt I would have done that if I had read the number.
Reg Cook raced the car in the 1977/78 NZ season and then retained it unused until it was sold to John Gobbe (pronounced Gobey) in 1982
The good news is that Howard Wood, who first raced the car in NZ, is now a 10 Tenths member so may be able to enlighten us

[Bryan Miller]

David and Allen,

This is perplexing , my brother had dealings re his 772/77B which had also been through the same source and they had added a BMW badge to anything that stood still on the car , which led us astray, the same source later advised my brother they had put the badges on '' because it looked good''.
I needed to talk to this gent again re. another matter and he advised he had another March that they were '' restoring'' , however he was unable to advise details.
I have to say this out loud now , anything that has been in N.Z has to be treated with great caution. Apologies David.
The garbage we were ''fed '' re. my brothers 772/77B was to make it more saleable , linking it to Desire Wilson.
Something here is not correct , David would not have made a mistake , and I saw the plate .
Perhaps we can get in contact with the gentleman who posted an enquiry re both 742-U1 and 742-U2 as he advised he owned both.

The only other possibility is that the owner advised David , but gave him the wrong number .
Bryan.

[allenbrown]

Curiouser and curiouser.

Sorry if I'm going over old ground but how was this car linked with Musetti? I notice neither of you mention anything about its pre-1977 history. Is the only link to Musetti the number 742/1?

Allen

[Bryan Miller]

Allen,
Chris's post # 10 on the Chevron B29 thread.
Bryan.

[allenbrown]

Originally Posted by Bryan Miller

Chris's post # 10 on the Chevron B29 thread.

... which is here and says:

Originally Posted by Chris Townsend

Howard Wood is described as racing a 75B in the '77 Tasman. Motoring News in UK said this was ex Val Musetti, meaning that underneath it all was either the ex Stan Matthews 73B [itself possibly built on a recycled 712M] or a 742 tub of indeterminate provenance.

Well I'm confused (again). If that car was being called a 742, it clashes completely with Musetti's F2 going to Bill Wood. Unless he had papers for the F2 car and not for the Atlantic and a chassis plate swap helped him export the car. Much as I don't like that theory, I can't see any reason why Musetti would sell his F2 car to Howard Wood as an Atlantic and his Atlantic to Bill Wood as a F2.

Allen

[Bryan Miller]

Allen,
Post 205 in the Chevron B29 thread is from the chap that at that time owned both 742-U1 and 742-U2 , U2 being the ex N.Z./ Aust. car.
Bryan.

[Chris Townsend]

Allen and Bryan

I don't think that Musetti's cars had that stable an identity. In summer 75 he
had one car, built from the ex Oates 73B [itself ex Matthews 723]. He bought a
"new" tub for this, because the report in MN on the British GP says it was this that
was wrecked when he and Cook collided in practice at the British GP meeting.

By the start of 1976 in a MN feature on Musetti it remarks that he has two cars, but that they are effectively bitsas. One of these is the 742 that gets hired out with BDX engine. However, the second of these cars - which at that stage he's using in libre - can't yet be the 752 [chassis 15] with GAA engine, because Walkinshaw is still selling that at the end of April 76. Once he gets that running mid 76 one of the cars becomes redundant, but I guess it's the 723/3B/4B as he continues with the "742" in libre and rents it.
I think we can identify one car going in to Musetti, [the Matthews/Oates car] but there are also a load of spares and he's making them into bitsas. I've always been somewhat sceptical of that claim that Wood had an identifiable chassis, though not that it was 'ex Musetti'.
The March records say that 742-U1 went to David Franklin in December 1975, and this would then have a traceable UK hillclimb history for a while which would preclude it being a Musetti car. 742-1 went to Japan new and looks as though it was Kazuyoshi Hoshino's car into 1976.
In the UK Musetti wouldn't have needed a plate, and he didn't race abroad. But he might have needed a plate to export a car and simply made one up then - putting it on the Atlantic car [which by this time has a rebuilt "new" tub from mid 75 - the 732 tub Bryan observed, which in itself suggests a rebuild as the Oates 73B should have had a 723 tub [or older].
Bryan - I remember with the Saunders 75B which came into NZ at the same time you were shown NZ government registration docs, because all cars had to have them, which fully detailed the import. Were these available for "742-U1 and "U2"

Chris

[allenbrown]

Hi Chris

You mention that you've "always been somewhat sceptical of that claim that Wood had an identifiable chassis". Howard Wood or Bill Wood?

Also, you mention that that Musetti's Atlantic car should have had a 723 tub or older. I recall discussing this with Simon Hadfield after those pictures were posted of Matthews' very different 1972 and 1973 cars and he expressed doubts that anyone would attempt to built a 73B out of a 723 as the tubs were so different. He thought it much more likely that Matthews would have been provided with a new tub for that exercise so it is possible that a tub stamped 732 is from the original 73B. We have seen F2 tub numbers on Atlantics before haven't we?

Simon may spot this thread and put me straight on this.

Allen

[Chris Townsend]

Allen

Atlantic Marches [73B onwards] were normally built on the F3 tub.
A lot of 73Bs were kitted older cars [admittedly usually 712Ms] but Robert
Smythe seems to have converted his [though he might have run a t/c rather
than BD series], and we have an observation of 733-7 as Spitzley's "74B" with BDA.

If an F2 tub appears it indicates to me that something's gone wrong in the car/scenery relationship. Also, F2 tubs [742 at least] could go the other way. One of Depaillier's crunched tubs goes to Dyfed Roberts to rebuild the ex Jose Santo 733.

I meant Howard Wood. I think that Bill and Howard both get ex Musetti cars but we aren't going to be able to put clear identities on them, and we can have almost as much fun with the coincidence of Woods as we are with BT28-2; BT28-20 and BT29-20 seemingly having the same owners!

Chris

[allenbrown]

OK, in that case I agree with you that the 732 tub in Howard Wood's car must have something to do with the "new" tub in 1975.

I think I will make a cautious change to my G8 results to connect Divi's 1977 outing to Val's usual F2 car. We don't know what it was but at least we can be pretty confident that it was the same car. As it's usually called a '752' or a '762', it probably neither of those!

Allen

[Bryan Miller]

Allen/Chris,

Two answers, 1] no N.Z. vehicle registration papers were offered in regard to 742-U2 .

2] my own March 74B is on tub 732-26 .

Bryan.

[Howard Wood]

March 742-U1
We purchased what we understood to be 742-U1 an ex March development car from Val Musetti in late 1976. Even then the provenance was a little hazy due to the permutations and combinations of Musetti's various cars.

If it helps identify the car, as purchased it was fitted with what appeared to be a 75B shovel nose and cockpit section grafted to a F3 type "louvred" engine cover all in a deep red .It had an Hewland FT200, the "old monster bracket" rear wing mount, Melmag wheels and the engine frames had been hacked about on the exhaust side presumably for a different engine/ exhaust.

At the time of purchase both John Anderson who owned the car and I were working for Alan de Cadenet.After Le Mans 1976 we built a number of Formula 1 film cars based on old MAE type F3 cars for an Al Pachino movie called "Bobby Deerfield" (which mercifully sank without trace).As part of that exercise we had been given a full set of the latest March F1 bodywork and I raced off a mould of this for a body which we subsequently fitted to 742-U1. We also bought a pile of stuff from Ron Dennis who was winding up his Eddie Cheever F2 operation and we fabricated everything else we needed to make the car as close to the latest specs as possible.

However we always described the car as a 742 which we sold at the end of the series to Reg Cook who ran the car in the local Gold Star series.The car ended up in pieces in Cook's workshop for a number of years.

[Howard Wood]

Further to my last post I have been doing some thinking/ digging regarding the 5 Marchs in the 1977 NZ series.
1. Ken Smith: March 76B- 20.
2. Richard Melville: March 76B-14.
These two cars were brand new, ran as a team and had a new tub in the transporter which I think they used at some stage.
3. Howard Wood: March 742-U1 as discussed
4. Alan Crocker: described as March 74B. Alan ran this car in a few British Altantic races in 1975 and I think it was ex Ted Wentz. He sold the car to Ken Smith after the NZ series who would have traded it on.Incidentally Alan still competes in Euro Historic FF using a Ray.
5. Dave Saunders: described as March 75B. Was based on the old 722 type narrow tub and damaged before the Pukekohe NZGP round. Dave Saunders was a Nicholson McLaren Engines employee and as such well able to build/ source anything needed to update the car.

[David McKinney]

Originally Posted by Howard Wood

.....we always described the car as a 742

...though the 1977 Stuyvesant Series programmes list it as a 76B

[Rob Hazell]

Originally Posted by allenbrown

Only one problem left: what on earth was the Musetti March that Divi drove once? It can't have been 742/U1 as that was already in New Zealand wasn't it?

Allen

That was at the 1977 Easter Monday Shellsport race which Val won in the 3.4 litre March. I seem to remember there was a problem with Divina's TS19 and so the deal was done last minute to hire it to her as Val only kept it by then on "stand by" in case there was a problem with the "big" March.

The problem with the chassis numbers on Val's cars was possibly partly related to our trip to the Nordschlieffe for the non-Championship F2 race there in early May 1976. We took both of the BDX F2 spec Marches, (for Val and Tom Walkinshaw to drive), but Val had only raced them in the UK so I seem to remember there was a very last minute need to come up with "carnets" to tie in with chassis plates. However it worked out, we got the cars to Germany and back to the UK without any problems, with Bob Aird and Michel ???? on spanners and me as "Team Manager".

I'm afraid I just don't remember what chassis plates were on those cars when they left the UK, but I'm sure they were "single digit" numbers. Whether they were replaced back in the UK is uncertain!

[Rob Hazell]

Originally Posted by Chris Townsend

Allen and Bryan

I don't think that Musetti's cars had that stable an identity. In summer 75 he
had one car, built from the ex Oates 73B [itself ex Matthews 723]. He bought a
"new" tub for this, because the report in MN on the British GP says it was this that
was wrecked when he and Cook collided in practice at the British GP meeting.

By the start of 1976 in a MN feature on Musetti it remarks that he has two cars, but that they are effectively bitsas. One of these is the 742 that gets hired out with BDX engine. However, the second of these cars - which at that stage he's using in libre - can't yet be the 752 [chassis 15] with GAA engine, because Walkinshaw is still selling that at the end of April 76. Once he gets that running mid 76 one of the cars becomes redundant, but I guess it's the 723/3B/4B as he continues with the "742" in libre and rents it.
I think we can identify one car going in to Musetti, [the Matthews/Oates car] but there are also a load of spares and he's making them into bitsas. I've always been somewhat sceptical of that claim that Wood had an identifiable chassis, though not that it was 'ex Musetti'.
The March records say that 742-U1 went to David Franklin in December 1975, and this would then have a traceable UK hillclimb history for a while which would preclude it being a Musetti car. 742-1 went to Japan new and looks as though it was Kazuyoshi Hoshino's car into 1976.
In the UK Musetti wouldn't have needed a plate, and he didn't race abroad. But he might have needed a plate to export a car and simply made one up then - putting it on the Atlantic car [which by this time has a rebuilt "new" tub from mid 75 - the 732 tub Bryan observed, which in itself suggests a rebuild as the Oates 73B should have had a 723 tub [or older].
Bryan - I remember with the Saunders 75B which came into NZ at the same time you were shown NZ government registration docs, because all cars had to have them, which fully detailed the import. Were these available for "742-U1 and "U2"

Chris

Although 5+ years out of date Chris, I would like to correct one fact here. Crucially, Val DID race abroad with both March F2 spec cars!! That was early in May 1976 and I know because I was on the trip as "Team Manager". We went to the Nordschlieffe for a non-Championship F2 race (featuring Harald Ertl, Bernard de Dryver, the Boxer (Brian Henton?) as well as our cars. The whole trip only kicked off on the Saturday before the race weekend and by the following Wednesday we had set off for Germany!!

The key was that with so little time available, and neither car having chassis plates or export paperwork, something was done with a visit to Bicester and as a result both cars had "non regular sequenced" plates fitted by the time they were loaded! I have a very vague recollection that they were single figure numbers but have no idea of the prefix for them!! Whatever was done, we got the cars safely to and from Germany via Belgium.

The other key part here concerned the second race driver - none other than Tom Walkinshaw!! Apparently he'd been keen to race a single seater at the Ring and his drive that weekend was part of the deal whereby Val ended up a the owner of his 752 GAA March!

[allenbrown]

Great to hear from you Rob.

Did you have a sense of the origins of Musetti's two "742s"? Were they both already complete when you joined the team or do you remember the source of either of them?

[Rob Hazell]

Sadly, I have to say "No" on both counts, and to be honest I was often never quite sure which was which!! Val and I became friends during his "Royale" years (early 1973-ish) - which might have been where he got to know Mike "Bob" Aird? who ran his cars for 2/3 years - but apart from the 1974 British GP support Atlantic race, I only ever saw him race up until 1975 at meetings where I was running my father and others, in Special saloon racing at Brands, Silverstone etc.

That brought us to 1976 when as far as I know, Val was John Dunn's first customer for the Swindon BDX and I was at Brands for the first test of it in January - but it snowed! I was then at Silverstone a week or two later when it did run and was also hired by a Brazilian guys with an extremely pretty girlfriend - can't remember his name but she was extremely ........... !! I presume that BDX was fitted into the newer of the two chassis whilst the older car was the spare and probably still had an Atlantic engine in it for some time. I'm sure Tom drove the newer car in the Eiffelrennen meeting and Val the earlier chassis, but by then there was a second BDX on hand so both cars were ostensibly similar spec.

Once the 752 GAA beastie arrived, I'm sure one of the cars was sold although Val didn't specifically tell me - I was never involved in the financing apart from being given some money to get the team refreshments!! It was the new F5000 car that held most of the interest for us, although Val sensibly got John Bracey and Dave Price to run it whilst Mike (I guess) looked after the remaining 74B/742 to run in the MCD series, and I polished the bodywork and pressured the tyres for him!

That same chassis was kept on into 1977 and with some newer bodywork, was run in the opening round of the European F2 Championship at Silverstone. It was brought out again for Davina at Brands (as mentioned), and run in HIS last two rounds of the Shellsport series that year, although I don't remember what had happened to the 752 Cosworth GAA. He then went off to Canada before the series finished for an extremely lucrative contract on the New Avengers filming.

So really that's just me rambling with memories of that time but essentially I think that his older car was a pre-73 chassis, and I do know that he wrote off at least one chassis during the Atlantic years plus the trip to Germany was the possible source of "errant" chassis number plates in the rush to make sure we at least had some corresponding paperwork and cars to present to customs.

Great to read some of this background - glad I signed up!

Rob

[Paul Hicks]

Been reading through old posts about March 723's and found this enquiry about the Stan Matthews car.
I've found a period photo listing the car as March 723-10
Photo has the Stan Matthew car at croft and shows a crash helmet with stars on.
It looks like a promotional photo. (don't think Croft circuit was used in 1972 F3)

Not sure how to add photos on ten tenths.

The photo is in black and white.
Anyone know what colour the Stan Matthews car was?