Aurora AFX British F1 Championship Round

Snetterton, 23 Sep 1979

All cars are 3-litre F1 unless noted.

Notes on the cars:

1. Tyrrell 008 [3] (Desiré Wilson): First appearing at the 1978 South African GP, Tyrrell 008-3 was Patrick Depailler's regular car through 1978, and was the car in which he won the 1978 Monaco GP. It was sold to Melchester Racing for 1979, and raced by Desire Wilson in Aurora British F1. It was then acquired by Nick Mason, and raced by John Brindley in the 1982 BF1 series, in HSCC Historic F1 in 1982 and 1983, and in the one-off the MCD British Open race in 1983. Mason sold the car in October 1991, and it returned to historic racing in 1993. It has raced regularly in historic racing ever since, appearing at Monaco in 2002 and in 2008.
2. Lotus 78 [1 JPS15] (Emilio de Villota): After being used by Gunnar Nilsson and Mario Andretti in the first few races of 1977, Lotus 78-1 became the spare car and was then retired mid-season. It was sold to Hector Rebaque for 1978, but became his spare car after he acquired 78-4. It was then sold to Emilio De Villota for Aurora British F1 in 1979, where it was a regular race winner. Norman Dickson bought it for 1980, again for Aurora, and it was sold to Lotus collector Bill Friend at the end of 1981. It was raced by Bill's nephew Roger Friend in HSCC racing. It was sold to Switzerland in 1988, then moved to Italy in 1998. In early 2018, it moved again, to a major collector.
3. Surtees TS19 [04] (Robin Smith): Alan Jones received a new car, Surtees TS19/04, in time for the 1976 Austrian GP, and raced this for the rest of the season. It was raced by Vittorio Brambilla in the South American races at the start of 1977, before being sold to Olympus Cameras for Divina Galica to race in Shellsport Group 8. It was acquired by Alo Lawler in 1978, but was quickly sold to John Cooper, then to Robin Smith. Smith updated it to "TS20S" specification in 1980, and added sports car bodywork for a couple of Can-Am events in 1981. It was sold to Ken Moore and then Rod Tolhurst, both of whom ran it in HSCC F1 in 1983 for Willie Green and John Narcisi. Its next seven owners did not race it, but it returned to competition in TGP in 1999, then raced regularly until 2012. It returned for Monaco in 2016.

Sources

The identification of individual cars in these results is based on the material presented elsewhere in this site and may in some cases contradict the organisers' original results.

These results were compiled primarily from the race reports in Autosport during the season, with some additional information from the results section of Autocourse, and some details compiled by Jeremy Jackson from a variety of sources, including Autosport, Motoring News and the Formula One Register books. All the chassis identities were taken from research elsewhere on this site.

All comments, clarifications, corrections and additions are most welcome. Please email Allen (allen@oldracingcars.com) if you can help in any way with our research.