The opportunity to track test David Abbott’s Lola T430 was real dream-come-true stuff for motor sport journalist and author Ross MacKay
“So this is it,” I found myself thinking, as Motorsport Solutions’ race engineer Andrew Bell buckled me into David Abbott’s ex Peter Gethin/ Warwick Brown, Australian Grand Prix-winning Lola T430 Formula 5000 car.
I was originally pencilled in to track test the car at the second New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing/ Bruce McLaren meeting at Pukekohe in January, but when Sunday’s lunchtime parade was cancelled, the only option was a flying trip to Christchurch a fortnight later for a couple of 20-minute sessions at Powerbuilt Tools Raceway, before the car was packed into a container and shipped across the 
Tasman for the Australian rounds of this season’s MSC series.
So what’s it like?Good question. And one I don’t mind admitting I’m still pondering as I write this. The short answer is ‘like nothing else I’ve ever driven and by no means an easy car to hustle around a race track.’But that doesn’t really help, does it? So humour me while I provide a longer and more detailed answer.
End of an Era
The T430 was one of the last, in actual fact probably the last, ‘new’ Formula 5000 single-seater produced, and was officially launched as a replacement for the ill-fated T400 in 1976. However, interest in the formula was waning, and what teams and individual drivers who were on the look-out for new cars appeared to favour was the ultimate CS version of the benchmark T332.
That said, Teddy Pilette, Peter Gethin and Warwick Brown made significant progress with the two T430s Team VDS patron, Rudi van der Straten, did buy. As did Australian driver Alfie Costanzo, who continued to race HU1 across the Tasman long after the formula had foundered elsewhere.
As for me? Well — I stalled David’s car on my first attempt to make it from the Motorsport Solutions’ building at the end of the Powerbuilt Tools Raceway pit lane to the pit apron, then compounded my embarrassment by heading to the tunnel (between the secretary’s office and the toilet block) only to find it blocked by a car and the track ATV.
That forced me to fumble around with the five-speed Hewland DG300 gearbox trying to find reverse (which like first gear is on a separate plane parallel to the second-third and fourth-fifth ones, but with a fairly serious detent) before inching backwards and forwards until I had enough room to head a little further down pit-lane to the ‘test day’ track entrance.
It was at this point that car owner, Abbott, arrived, and in my flustered ‘I-must-be-looking-like-a-complete-idiot’ state all I could manage was a quick wave before the task in hand — man-handling his kicking, bucking, seemingly recalcitrant race-car out onto the race track — reclaimed the lion’s share of my by now frazzled mental processes.
Once there (finally!), albeit with no time to settle in, warm the tyres (was I even supposed to?) or pretty much anything else, I eased the long travel throttle down and rumbled out onto the race track.
A Tight, Technical Ribbon of Tarmac
For those of you who don’t know it, Powerbuilt Tools Raceway is a tight, quite technical ribbon of tarmac 15 kilometres west of Christchurch. Originally built on dry, stony land in the early 1960s, it has been progressively added to over the years to the point now where the ‘long’ circuit I was using measures 3.3 kilometres.
Within that distance are eight main corners and a couple of high-speed kinks, the first at the end of the long start/finish straight, the second half way between turn one and the hairpin. Having raced Vees, Mazda RX-7s and motorcycles there I know the place like the back of my 
hand — or at least I thought I did, until I found myself trying to work out what lines to take in the T430.
At which point the reality of what I was actually doing — driving a pukka state-of-the-art race-car, one that in its day was as fast as a comparable Formula One machine — hit me.
BNT V8s front-runner Eddie Bell still holds the Pro 7 (Series 1 RX-7) lap record round the 3.3km circuit with a best time of 1.40.383. Without digging back through my records my best in the Fuelstar RX-7 I raced before Bell appeared on the scene would have been a high 42 or low 43.
And when I raced my Vee (they’re now called Formula Firsts, but the cars remain 1.2-litre Volkswagen-powered) I would have been lucky to see a 48.
Contrast those times with the 1.19.23 McRae GM1 driver Chris Hyde set at the Lady Wigram Trophy round recently, and it’s obvious why I was having problems trying to place the car on the track.
Even 10 seconds — or more — off Hyde’s pace I was circulating at least another 10 seconds quicker than I had in my RX-7, more in the Formula Vee.
With a freshly re-built 5.0-litre (302ci) Chevrolet V8 behind me I had 391kW (525hp) of peak power and 596Nm of peak torque at my disposal.
In power-to-weight terms that’s not quite (according to Wikipedia) in the 690kW/600kg territory of a 2005 Williams-BMW F1 car. But with 
a dry weight of 656kg it’s a hell of a lot closer than anything else I’ve ever driven. And almost incomprehensible for a car which is now 34 years old.
Getting Comfortable
However, lap times were the last thing I was thinking about in my first exploratory session as I struggled to get comfortable in the car.
The problem was the seat insert. I’m a little longer in the back and leg than David Abbott, and though there was plenty of room in the footwell, my knees were forced hard up against the rail on which the instruments were mounted.
Fearing the problem was one I couldn’t sort out quickly (knowing that in most cases seats are tailored specifically for the owner/driver) I returned to the Motorsport Solutions workshop with a heavy heart.
Fortunately, once I was out of the car Andrew decided I could get away without the insert, and when I slipped back in there was indeed plenty of room, fore, aft and on each side. There wasn’t much actual padding to speak of, but strapped tightly in I returned to the track for my second session feeling a lot more confident. Too confident, as it turned out.
In the first session I was rolling round the hairpin in third because I couldn’t heel ’n’ toe properly. In the second I was able to find and engage second easily enough, only to spin to a harmless stop soon after thanks to too eager an application of power on cold tyres! Bugger!
Looks Easy
From the grandstands there is simply nothing like a field of Formula 5000 cars massing for, then literally rocketing away from, a rolling 
start. And though we are now all spoiled by full fields of beautifully restored MSC series cars headlining meetings like the MG Classic at Manfeild, and the two new Festival of New Zealand Motor Racing ones at Hampton Downs and Pukekohe, I can still remember the day not that long ago when even one or two cars — Roger Williams’ McRae GM1 being a good example — drew an appreciative crowd.
There have been times, too, when — like many of you no doubt — I’ve watched drivers like series stalwarts Ian Clements, Stan Redmond and Roger Williams thunder round Pukekohe, Manfeild and now Hampton Downs and thought to myself, ‘those cars can’t be that hard to drive!’
And, to be fair, as my experience proved, they’re not.
To race, though? Particularly back then against the likes of US and Tasman champion, Graham McRae, or today in a field of over 30?
If any racing car commands respect it must be a Formula 5000.
With practice the rifle bolt action of the gear lever would, I’d imagine, become second nature. The brakes — which had my torso pushing against the shoulder straps of the full harness seat belts at turn one and the hairpin — certainly did.
Looking back, in fact, I was 100 per cent comfortable with their Velcro-like ability to haul the big car down from 250kph speeds a lap or so into my first session.
The power, though? And the steering and basic handling characteristics of the cars? Both would take me some time.
Power and Responsibility
Like most of the F5000 drivers, Abbott uses a surprisingly long throttle. To the point where even rolling along in the pits I found myself using what felt like 25 per cent of the available ‘throw’ just to get a throttle-blipping ‘karoomba, karoomba’ out of the engine.
Once out on the track it didn’t take me long to work out why.
For a racing engine the 5.0-litre Chevy has real flexibility (which is where an F5000 has it over higher revving but peakier Formula One cars from the same era), but hit 3500rpm and you are literally catapulted forward in what I can only describe as the terrestrial equivalent of The USS Enterprise’s ‘faster-than-light’ warp drive!
With strict instructions from David not to over-rev the recently checked and freshened engine there was no way I was going to hold it in any gear — even second — until the red (in this case bright orange) line.
As it turned out, however, there was absolutely no need. Even with the optional high speed circuit (Pukekohe, Phillip Island and Albert Park) final drive gearing, the minute the needle on the period-style analogue Stack tacho reached the magical 3500rpm mark I felt like I was a boulder in a Carthaginian’s catapult or — to paint a more modern word picture — behind the wheel of a Top Fuel dragster.
Handle With Care
Despite not lapping fast enough to really push the limits of the car, it wasn’t hard to discern its basic characteristics.Turn-in is quick and decisive without being overly nervous, but I was surprised by how heavy the steering was, and how stubbornly the car understeered exiting corners.
With so many slow-in, fast-out corners Powerbuilt Tools Raceway is probably not the best place to experience a car like this, but to both it and the circuit’s credit the more speed I carried into and through the corners, and the later (just like a V8 Supercar by all accounts) I got back on the power, the more neutral and ‘placeable’ the car became.
All too soon of course the time came to peel off the track for the last time and return the car to its rightful owner who, like fellow MSC NZ F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series driver Steve Ross also there that day, was genuinely interested in my impressions.
Which were that Aussie Ken James was right.
I interviewed the Gold Coast-based businessman when he was here for the Lady Wigram Trophy meeting, and when I asked him what his ex Garrie Cooper/Larry Perkins 1979 Rothmans Australian F5000 series-winning Elfin MR8 C was like to drive, he had a ready, and typically colourful, answer.
“It’s just light and so powerful, it’s like having that big Chevy engine strapped to your backside!” he said, laughing. “Of the 12 to 15 cars I’ve raced, and that includes Sports Sedans and NASCAR, the Elfin’s by far the fastest and the most exciting.”
Powerwise, competitors are ultimately limited by the strict period (Appendix K) rules the MSC NZ F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series is run under. Spec-wise, for instance, the engines are for intents and purposes identical to the ones used first time around, including magneto ignitions, Lucas McKay mechanical fuel injection and 23-degree cylinder heads.
But as David Abbott is quick to point out, for most of the current generation of owner-drivers the 373-or-so kilowatts of a freshly re-built engine is more than enough.
“We all have our own limits which we drive to and hopefully not beyond, but because you have bags of everything — power, torque, grip — you do have to be very respectful of them.”
To which all I can say is a hearty, indeed!
Words: Ross McKay Photos: Alex Mitchell
This article is from Classic Car issue 233. Click here to check it out.
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