Touring cars set to feature in 2018 Castle Combe Classic

A grid full of period Touring Cars will be one of the crowd-pleasing highlights at the seventh Castle Combe Autumn Classic in October.

The race for pre-1966 cars will be held in memory of Terry Sanger, a local hero through the 1960s as he raced more and more outrageous saloon and touring cars.

After a break in 2017, the fabulous spectacle of pre ’66 touring cars will be back in 2018 and the event organisers are already working to attract a grid full of American V8s, Lotus Cortinas, Alfa Romeos, BME 1800s and Mini Coopers. The sight of these cars sliding into the corners and racing door handle to door handle will be a real highlight of the race programme. It is a race that, for the older Castle Combe fans, will rekindle memories of drivers like Vince Woodman, Geoff Mabbs, Ron Fry, Steve Neal, Brian Cutting and Richard Longman.

The race will be open to cars complying with FIA Appendix K regulations, which ensures period authenticity. With more than 100 eligible cars now based in the UK, the team at Castle Combe is aiming to attract a 30-car grid for this special race.

The Terry Sanger Trophy, meanwhile, will celebrate the life of a true racing character who was inextricably linked with Castle Combe. Remarkably, his life story encompassed two of the key features of the 2018 Autumn Classic: as a youngster he was marshalling at Quarry when Stirling Moss crashed in 1953. Later, Sanger raced a Ford GT40 and contested the daunting Targa Florio road race in a factory car in 1969.

But it is for his saloon car racing that the Bradford-on-Avon driver is best remembered. He raced cars extensively in the 1960s and was famous for racing an early special saloon, a Ford Cortina Mk1 with a Ford V8 engine installed. Later, having retired from racing, he regularly drove the fast intervention medical car at the circuit.