Do Look Back

1971 was a very significant year.  From a personal perspective, I started my automotive career-proper at BMW, while, much more significantly, the BRM P160 proved highly competitive in Formula 1, LPs of great quality were released, such as Sticky Fingers , Who’s Next and Tapestry , there was the announcement of cars like the Alfasud, Maserati Bora and BMW 2002 Tii, and . . . hope sprung of a new dawn in the Cam-Am Challenge, with the addition to the grid of the Lola T260 and its driver, Sir Jackie Stewart. BRM at Monza, September 1971 A Lola T70 Mk.2 in the hands of John Surtees had won the inaugural Can-Am Challenge in ’66.  However, since then, the M8 McLaren in its various iterations had steam-rollered the opposition, firstly as the Bruce and Denny Show (Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme), then with Peter Revson partnering Hulme after McLaren’s death in 1970.  At the time, many of us resented the McLaren ‘win machine’ as the cause of the Group 7 series becoming boring because of repetit

Ollon is a small Swiss town with a population of about 8,000. Situated near and to the west of the River Rhone,  it is a little to the south of the western end of Lake Geneva, about 400 metres above sea level.  Heading west, mountainous topography is encountered, including the notable peak of Les Diablerets.  In this direction, after some 5 miles and at an elevation of 1,260 metres, Villars sur Ollon is reached, a village inhabited by around 2,000 people.  The connecting road, with several hairpin turns, was first used as a hill-climb course in 1951.  Every other year, (with some exceptions), for the following two decades it served as one of the most popular hill-climb venues.  By 1958 the event’s status was good enough to allow it to feature as a round of the European Mountain Championship, regulated and governed by the FIA. At the start of the decade pure racing cars were dominant at the head of the results table.  In 1960 this can be seen in the list of the ten fastest times: Barth’