At the final press day for GPLive at Donington Park in the UK, the threat of snow failed to stop a lunch time demonstration of one of the great cars that will be featured at the event on May 18–20.
VR’s European Editor, Ed McDonough, was in the driver’s seat for a series of demonstration laps of Ayrton Senna’s 1984 Toleman-Hart TG184 F1 car. The car, which was Senna’s practice and qualifying machine at Monaco and his spare at Brands Hatch in ’84, did only one race at the U.S. Grand Prix in Detroit. It was brought into action after a first-lap crash caused a restart and Senna drove chassis 01 until the rear suspension failed. The car then sat in storage and in a private collection for many years until being purchased by Alistair Davidson. The stunning Candy-liveried turbo car was restored but never run on a circuit until the Donington test. In fact, Senna was the last person to sit in the car. After Davidson gave it a warmup, McDonough then ran several laps of the Grand Prix circuit, a world exclusive for Vintage Racecar. We will have a full “Profile” in a future issue.
According to McDonough: “You can imagine the thrill of driving any Senna car, but when you think that he really started his GP career in these cars, it was a great privilege to be part of that. How he threw this 900-bhp oversteerer around Monaco…in the wet…is unimaginable! The chance to see lots more of these ‘super’ cars at Donington in May is not to be missed.”
A number of other important GP cars were also present including examples of Williams, Wolf, and McLaren in preparation for the GPLive spectacular. Current GP teams have announced their intention to be at Donington in May along with races for Euroboss and TGP categories, with a 40-car demo of Cosworth DFV-powered cars spicing up the program. For full details, see www.gpliveuk.com.
