The inaugural Kinrara Trophy race at the Goodwood Revival 2016 was held Friday, September 9th at the Goodwood Motor Circuit in West Sussex, England.
The start to the Goodwood Revival race programme could not have been bettered with a frantic and at times frenetic Kinrara Trophy in which nine times 24 Hours of Le Mans winner, Tom Kristensen showed his undoubted class.
The Dane, the most successful of all endurance drivers, has become a regular star at Goodwood and yesterday evening he took on some of the best historic racers in the country to share the winning car in this new 60-minute race. Remarkably, he had not seen Joe Macari’s Ferrari 250 GT SWB Berlinetta before yesterday, having replaced former BTCC champion Jason Plato at the last minute.
Car owner Macari headed the large field of pre-1962 GT cars into the first corner but was soon overwhelmed by a gaggle of professional drivers. As the setting sun cast long shadows over the track, so Adrian Wilmot’s Aston Martin DB4GT and Rob Hall’s Jaguar E-type engaged in a furious battle for the lead. Hall went by on lap four but Wilmot did not give up until an attempt to out fox his rival resulted in a cloud of smoke from his locked brakes and a spin right off the track. The closely pursuing James Cottingham, in another of the E-types, took advantage of this and moved into second.
The field may have been worth something in the region of a staggering £150 million, but these GTs are driven hard and a pair of incidents on lap 11 brought out the safety car. Significantly, this meant that Joe Macari did not fall further down the field and when Tom Kristensen took over the Ferrari, after the safety car pulled in, the race was truly on.
For a while it was still Hall versus Cottingham with Wilmot pulling himself back into contention. Back in the field, though, Kristensen was ominously setting fastest laps. It was a while before the round of driver changes sorted matters out and now Simon Hadfield, who had taken over Wolfgang Friedrichs’ Aston Martin DB4GT, came into contention. Cottingham had also been able to hand over to another of the top historic racers, Andrew Smith and the race again changed complexion.
Now it was Smith versus Hadfield with a vengeance … but behind Kristensen was moving up fast. Into second place went Kristensen with a great move round the outside of the Lavant Kink. Even a racer of Hadfield’s calibre could not hold the multi-Le Mans winner at bay and, with just four minutes left and the cars racing into darkness. Tom took the lead, overtaking again at Lavant. As Hadfield was to remark, coming second to Tom Kristensen can be no bad thing.
Goodwood Revival 2016 – Kinrara Trophy Race Results
1. Joe Macari / Tom Kristensen, 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB Berlinetta Comp
2 Wolfgang Friedrichs / Simon Hadfield, 1960 Aston Martin DB4GT
3 James Cottingham / Andrew Smith, 1961 Jaguar E-Type
Goodwood Revival 2016 – Kinrara Trophy Race Video
[Source: Goodwood; photo: Drew Gibson]
