Jack Sears Memorial Trophy (pre-1960 saloons)
2018 FL John Young , Jaguar Mark I – 1:36.893, 88.42mph – POLE Justin Law, Jaguar Mark I – 1:36.110, 89.14mph
Ah yes – touring cars, my personal distaste for these lumps of junk being well-known, I still secretly enjoy watching them race but would never (you understand) really admit to it.
Well the Jaguar Mk1s are claimed to be 1958 cars so what was a representative 1958 Jaguar lap time around Goodwood? At Whitsun, 1958, Duncan Hamilton won in ‘Noddy’ Coombs’s Mk1, and along the way set fastest race lap at 1:48.2, 79.85mph – fully 12secs off Justin Law’s and John Young’s best 2018 lap times. There had not been a saloon car race at that year’s Easter Meeting, because the Duke and the BARC combined still regarded such races as a Silverstone circus act. That Whitsun race had been the thin end of a wedge.
Attitudes were changing into 1959, when the Easter Monday Fordwater Trophy race catered for saloons, Ivor Bueb won in Tommy Sopwith’s Equipe Endeavour Jaguar Mk1 and set fastest race lap at 1:48.6, 79.56mph. On Whit-Monday Sir Gawaine Baillie’s Mk1 set fastest lap at 1:46.6, 81.05mph. By Easter Monday 1962, Roy Salvadori and Graham Hill would each drive a Coombs Jaguar, and their shared fastest race lap that day had come down to a 1:37.8, 88.34mph. This is still more than a second off the 2018 Revival mark, and both those world-class drivers had 3.8-litre engines, not just 3.4s. By Easter Monday 1964 the Jaguars were obsolete, outdated, out-powered and out-classed not only by Jack Sears’ 7-litre Willment-entered Ford Galaxie (1:35.2, 90.76mph) but also by Jimmy Clark’s works Lotus-Cortina (1:35.8, 90.19mph). But hey – tyre technology has moved on, the track surface is less bumpy and not that upon which the superstars raced during Goodwood’s frontline years. And some areas of technological scrutineering might not, perhaps, be quite as searching as at frontline level back then…