Photo: Chris Amon in Amon AF101New Zealand motor racing icon Chris Amon turned back the clock yesterday with some laps in a Formula One car that he had not driven for 35 years.
The Le Mans 24 hour winner and long time works Ferrari driver took to the track in the Amon AF101 Formula One car that he built with his team back in the early seventies. It was lost for years but has been freshly and beautifully restored to pristine condition by Britain Ron Maydon, and Ron has travelled all the way to New Zealand with the car to race it at the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing and of course, to let Amon re-acquaint himself with a car he is on record as saying "tried to kill me three times."
"That certainly rekindled a few memories," said Amon after the brief run during Friday practice at Hampton Downs. "It was great fun, and I have to say the car looks sensational." Chris will demonstrate a priceless collection of cars that he raced during his career at Hampton Downs today and tomorrow, and again in the second half of the Amon Festival meeting at the track next weekend. These will include the stunning Ferrari Dino Tasman series car with which Chris won the series in the late sixties against the likes of Jim Clark and Graham Hill and the front engined 1950s Maserati 250F.
The Amon built F1 car of 1975 vanished back in the seventies but reappeared almost by chance when current owner Maydon was on other racing business in Germany. "In my role as owner of the Masters F1 Race Series, I was in Germany negotiating some track hire at the Oldtimer GP at the Nurburgring," he recounted. "One of our fellow drivers asked me to call in to see a German car preparer to try and solve a mystery on a totally different F1 car.
"Whilst talking to the owner at the work shop conversation wandered on to other cars he had there. He eventually showed me a pile of bits that he said was an Amon Formula 1 car. Although I had very limited knowledge of racing cars, I’d never heard of one before, it was semi complete and the rough outline could be seen. Anyway, over the next couple of days I came to the conclusion - wrongly it turned out! - that this could be a cheap entry into Historic Formula One racing. I did a deal with the owner and bought the car and he duly delivered it to the docks in Dover in exchange for money. He seemed very happy and eager to drive to Dover and hand it over!
"Once I got the Amon back to my garage I sent an email to Chris, giving him the wonderful news that the Amon AF101 had been saved for history and would shortly be returning to the tracks and could he give me any helpful hints. I quickly received a reply from Chris that I remember to this day, basically saying I should have left the car where it was as it had tried to kill him three times and would probably try to kill me. If I had any sense, he wrote, I would abandon the project.
"For 48 hours I suffered a mixture of heartbreak, annoyance and determination and then to his eternal credit, Chris sent me another email apologising for his first email and listed the things that they had got wrong with the car, and what he thought could be done to correct them. His overriding comment was that the car was ahead of its time, but they didn’t have money to develop it.
"Being hopeless at both driving and engineering, I decided to give the engineering part to someone that was up for the challenge. The work was undertaken by Terry Carthy. Terry being a fine engineer decided that there was very little wrong with the car's basic design apart from the fact it had been made too light. The car was re-assembled and all new components, suspension etc were made to a higher quality and heavier weight than on the original. We decided to show the car at one of the historic F1 meetings in Europe, I was very proud of it.
There is a huge entry of cars from abroad at this year’s New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing, with many coming from the USA, UK and Europe to honour one of the greats in motorsport. Amon is widely acknowledged as one of the all time greats despite not winning an F1 Grand Prix. He got close many times, but was dogged by bad luck and poor reliability, but he proved his worth in Sports Cars – winning all of the big races including the legendary Le Mans 24 hours.
Over the two weekends at Hampton Downs there will be a host of famous names attending or racing, including Howden Ganley, Brett Riley, Angus Fogg, Graeme Lawrence and Formula One designers Adrian Reynard and Malcolm Oastler. Bikes also feature this first weekend, and heading the entry is another Kiwi legend Andrew Stroud.
Eleven classes are racing each weekend. A class for 1980s saloons and GTs has been added with several 1980s Group A cars - some of the most popular saloons ever to race - confirmed.
Classic racing motorcycles will also compete over the first Hampton Downs weekend, with the ever popular Muscle Cars gracing the stage the following weekend. A field of no fewer than 30 thundering F5000 cars heads the entry list, with veteran racer Kenny Smith the favourite to back up his win in the Festival Feature race last year.
