Colorado Grand Prix

Continental Divide, 16 May 1965

All cars are 3-litre FA unless noted.

Notes on the cars:

1. Brabham BT2 [FJ-7-62?] (Earl Jones): Believed to be the car sold to Hap Sharp (Midland, TX), and entered for the Road America June Sprints. Sharp's car was also driven by Jim Hall (Abilene, TX) at Continental Divide in September 1962. Likely to be the car of Howard S Cole (Houston, TX) although this identity remains unproven. Cole's first known race in the car was in November 1962. Cole's home town of Houston is just 500 miles from Sharp's base in Midland, a mere stone's throw by the standards of a Texan road racer. Cole raced the car through 1963, then sold it to Ken Leith (Houston, TX), who raced it in an event at Stuttgart Airport late in November 1963. During 1964, the only mentions of Leith's Brabham were in The Shreveport (Louisiana) Times previews of SCCA Divisional races at Mansfield's De Soto Airport in June and at Hilltop Raceway in September, when it was said that Leith would run his Brabham. Leith moved to a Lotus 23B for 1965. An "ex-Hap Sharp" Brabham was then raced by Earl Jones (Los Angeles, CA) in Formula B in 1965. In August 1967, the disassembled "ex-Earl Jones" Brabham was advertised by Richard Timan (San Francisco, CA). It was acquired by David Jaques (Claremont, CA) and was rebuilt as the Mattel Special for Formula B. After racing it as the Mattel in 1970, Jaques updated the car with BT15, BT18 and BT21 bits by the time he advertised it in 1972, it was a "BT18/21". Believed to have gone to an SCCA racer in 1973 who raced it until 1978, and retained it to 1985. He sold the car in November 1985 to the son of a local engine builder. Subsequent history unknown.
2. Lotus 27 [27-FM-8] (G Mason O'Keiff): One of the first Lotus 27s to enter the US was chassis 27/FM/8, ordered by Lotus Southwest to be fitted with Lotus-Ford twin-cam engine for regular customer G. Mason O'Keiff (Houston, TX) to race in the SCCA's new libre category in 1964. O'Keiff scored 9 points in SWDiv and qualified for the Run-Offs, where he finished third. His car was then classified as Formula B in 1965 and O'Keiff used it in pro events. His last known appearance in the car was at the Las Vegas race in April 1966.

Sources

Note that 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' published results.

US information has been taken from SCCA results sheets with additional information from Autoweek race reports and from some entry lists. Thanks to David McKinney and Wolfgang Klopfer for providing these. Identifying the classes and model of some entries has proved very difficult so all new information would be welcomed.

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.

Individual sources for this event

Competition Press & Autoweek 19 Jun 1965 p3. Earl Jones' Brabham was described as ex-Sharp, suggesting the BT2 that Sharp ran in 1962 but it could be a more recent car. Sharp's Cooper was described as "the ex-Brabham 2.5 Cooper", implying that it was the ex-Indy spare rather that the 1.5-litre F1 Cooper that Sharp bought for the 1961 US GP.