By TANIA PHILLIPS
A HIGH-quality field of more than 200 cars spanning 91 years of motoring has entered for the 21st annual Historic Leyburn Sprints this weekend.
The entries range from a 1925 Austin roadster to a 2016 racing car called a Fly and represent every decade in between in an extraordinary cavalcade of motoring and motorsport history.
The round-the-houses time trials mark the 21st year since the community of the small Darling Downs village created an event to commemorate the running of the 1949 Australian Grand Prix on a disused wartime airstrip nearby.
Leyburn has become one of Australia’s longest-running and best-known grassroots racing events, with proceeds being returned to community organisations and projects.
Cars race one at a time against the clock in 55 classes covering sports, racing and touring cars. With seven runs per car scheduled across Saturday and Sunday, spectators will enjoy non-stop action.
Competition is expected to be closest for the outright fastest time – awarded with the Col Furness Memorial Trophy – with nine starters in the prestigious Formula Libre racing car class including 2014-’15 winner Dean Amos in an English Gould specialist hillclimb car powered by a Judd Formula 1 V8 engine.
Amos’s usual close rival, 2012-’13 winner Warwick Hutchinson, won’t be here this year with his rotary-powered Van Diemen, but there will still be plenty of contenders.
Four Formula 3-based Dallara single-seaters, built in Italy, will be devastatingly fast around the one-kilometre course – on a conventional circuit, these cars are faster than V8 Supercars. Drivers will be Vikki Paxton, Bruce McKenzie, Michael Von Rappard and Steve Woodbridge.
One of Australia’s most accomplished drivers, three-time Australian Gold Star Champion and Malaysian Grand Prix winner Paul Stokell, will make his second Leyburn appearance in a Radical sports car.
The outright field will be completed by Neil Lewis in the 1270cc Fly, George Brook in a Formula Renault and David Quelch in a Honda-powered Black Arrow.
More than 80 of the entries are for cars that did not contest last year’s event – meaning spectators will have plenty of exciting new machinery to follow.
New or old, the variety is fascinating. It covers everything from Holdens and Fords to Hillmans and Lotuses. There are cheap cars and priceless ones, slow ones and fast ones.
For spectacle, it will be hard as always to miss Jamie Chant’s NASCAR-engined Falcon XY GT, Stuart Reid’s replica 1991 Audi quattro S1 Group B rally replica, or the regular flock of TransAm touring cars such as Mike Collins’ red Mustang.
Too fast and noisy? The field features two Goggomobils that might find it difficult to out-run a bicycle, but which nevertheless will be popular sights on-track.
Off-track, there’s plenty to see too. Don’t miss the Shannons Show ‘n’ Shine on Sunday, the Vintage Caravan show all weekend, the market stalls, historical display and food stalls.
And this surely is the only motorsport event in Australia where spectators can watch the racing from the front lawn of a 150-year-old country pub.
