Brooklands, Surrey, 28 July, 2002
Historic Setting
Auto Italia magazine returned to its Brooklands venue for a superb two days of Italian car
circuit action and displays, amidst the historic buildings and aircraft that make up the
Brooklands museum complex. Blessed with a hot and sunny weekend, the event
attracted large crowds of enthusiasts on both days together with a wide range of Italian
cars and motorcycles, plus numerous trade stands offering a wide range of
merchandise. Even without an event going on, the Brooklands Museum is an extremely
worthwhile day out, encompassing as it does, so much racing and aviation history in
beautifully renovated historic buildings.
Track Saturday
The centre of attention on Saturday was a demonstration track designed and laid out on
the Vickers runway by the magazine’s chief test driver, Roberto Giordanelli. This gave
participants the opportunity to run their cars at speed in safety, and many appreciated the
opportunity to ”burn rubber” much to the delight of the watching crowd, one Maserati
Biturbo driver even managing to execute a complete 180 degree spin in a cloud of acrid
rubber smoke. Apart from the relatively everyday Italian cars on the track, there were
demonstration runs by Terry Hoyle in Luigi Chinetti Jnr’s 250 LM, Sally Mason-Styrron
ran the Tasman Dino, Geoff Williams ran his 500 Mondial, and the museum brought out
their thundering 24 litre Napier Railton. Alright, it wasn’t Italian, but what a spectacle the
glistening polished aluminium bodied monster made.
Hill Sunday
Sunday was a more relaxed social day, with the various Italian one make car clubs well
represented in their allotted areas, together with a number of cars that hadn’t been
present on Saturday. Sally and Dudley Mason-Styrron had swapped the Tasman Dino for
their Maserati 300S, and their was also a pre-war Maserati 26T, # 2518 in attendance,
whilst Paul Grist brought his Alfa Romeo 8C 2900A. Amongst the modern classics were
a Lancia Delta S4 and a Martini liveried 037 model, and a rare non-Italian infiltrator was
an equally spectacular Metro 6R4. A short demonstration circuit had been laid out
incorporating the test hill and part of the old banked circuit, which was used by the cars
just mentioned along with a variety of small engined Fiats and Abarth variants during a
session after the lunch interval. One of the most spectacular of the small Fiats was an
early 600 model, with the roof lowered 100mm, and powered by a highly tuned
Volkswagen engine, which launched it howling up the hill at a rapid rate of knots leaving
black lines for quite a distance as the rear wheels spun for grip, very popular with the
crowd.
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