My first race car was a 10 year old MGA 1500. Remember them? A nice slippery shape, basic ladder frame chassis, complete with wooden floorboards, four wheel drum brakes and a four cylinder engine.
When I say it was my first race car, that’s not quite correct. It was also my road car and was under an HP contract, which stated that it could not be raced, so I had to enter under an assumed name, and so it was an “Ian Gordon” who started his racing career in March 1965 at the Lowood circuit in Queensland, Australia.
MGA 1965.
MGA had a Derrington X-Flow cylinder head and was flying. By the second lap of practice I knew it was much faster than before. 119 miles per hour down the long Lowood straight was the best that the MGA had ever done.
So on the third lap, I shuffled as low as I could in the car out of the wind, and willed the needle to get to 120 mph. As it finally hit the magic 120, I popped my head up into the airstream and saw the marshals at the hairpin that was coming up all jumping up and down. I was still basking in the 120 mph. “I know it’s quick, but I didn’t know it was that obvious,” I thought.
Then the car began to misfire and I saw the MGA had flames pouring out from under the bonnet!
I headed for the marshal’s post, leaping out and opening the bonnet expecting him to extinguish the flames but he directed the nozzle towards me, as I hadn’t realized that my long socks were also on fire, as those were the days before fireproof suits!
The oil-soaked wooden floorboards were also alight. This was starting to look serious. “Ian Gordon” might have some serious explaining to do to an unsuspecting HP company.
The marshals did manage to extinguish everything, and examination of the engine showed that the banjo fitting into the carburetor had come loose, pumping petrol all over the generator which provided the spark to ignite the lot.
The Saturday evening was taken up with cutting new floorboards, tightening the banjo housing and fitting lockwires and MGA was as good as new. The socks were consigned to the bin. And so “Ian Gordon” lived to compete again.
