Historic Sports Car Club to celebrate Formula Junior’s 60th anniversary

The Historic Sports Car Club’s presence at the Autosport International show will include a line-up of Formula Junior cars to celebrate 60 years since the open wheel racing series’ inception.

First adopted in October 1958, the class was intended to provide an entry level where drivers could use inexpensive mechanical components from ordinary road-going cars. In its six short years, the design span covered the major progression of racing car evolution from ladder frame front-engined cars. The cars on display at the HSCC stand will demonstrate how much race car design advanced during this short period.

The display is set to feature a Formula Junior car from each year of the championship, including a Stanguellini – the marque that won the very first Formula Junior race at Monza in April 1958 –  and a 1961 Lotus 18 from Classic Team Lotus which Jim Clark drove for the team.

Although Formula Junior only existed until 1963, it remains one of the most popular of all historic racing categories, with huge worldwide interest in the category for 1100cc single-seater racing cars.

Jim Clark (pictured below), John Surtees, Jochen Rindt, Mike Spence, Mike Hailwood, Graf Wolfgang Von Trips, Gerhard Mitter, Lorenzo Bandini, Peter Revson, Giancarlo Baghetti and Howden Ganley, were just some of the names to start their careers in the series.

The 2018 season is a particularly special year for Formula Junior, as the category’s 60th year is also the final season of a three-year Diamond Jubilee World Tour. The Tour, which has already visited Australia and New Zealand, South Africa and North America, will finally conclude at the Silverstone Classic in July.

Grahame White, the chief executive of the HSCC, said he was “really pleased” that the HSCC stand will be celebrating 60 years of the Formula at the show. “It is a great category of historic racing providing superb grids, many different makes of cars and very close and exciting racing, not to mention being where many famous drivers started their careers,” he said.