Founded in the year nineteen twenty-four February 1980

EUROPEAN RACING
MEMORIES
AN UNDERSTATED off-white ski-jacket matched the
mood of the plain but effective Golf GTi parked outside
our London offices. Typically, John Fitzpatrick had
arrived ahead of schedule. In the Porsche briefcase,
which he criticised with a candour unawed by famous
names that was to characterise the interview, were
a selection of relevant and usable pictures from his
racing career.
However, this was not a hungry young driver
conscious of his PR image but the precautions typical of a
man who simply said, “I can be a bit of a pain really. The
things 1 do, I like to do well. ...” A pause for a deprecating
grin, “You could say that is why I did not make a go of
single-seaters or rallying.”
Perhaps the biggest surprise with a driver who won
the British Saloon Car Championship in 1966 and who
has twice won both the European GT Championship and
the Porsche Cup (1972/74), is that he did not turn fully
professional until, “about two years ago, after the Jaguar
thing. Before that I did not really earn all my living from
racing. I did not have to race to earn money, so I used to
do it as a weekend thing that was fun, if you did well.”
To support himself John first worked in the family
specialist business of aluminium truck bodies; in fact
there were actually two such companies to demand
his business attention. A few years ago John became
actively involved in a VW-Audi dealership in Solihull,
not far from his home in Britain at Henly-in-Arden,
Subsequently John Fitzpatrick has retained some
financial interest in the dealership that bears his name,
but it is run by others now.
It was through friends in Shenstone Car Club that
John “Fitz” Fitzpatrick begun to participate in motor
sport. There was no family interest in the sport, in fact
his mother hated it.
“I just did all the Shenstone events in my 850 Mini.
This was in 1961 and some of 1962 when I would take
my road car along to driving tests, sprints, club rallies:
anything.
“There were really two phases to my rallying. The
first spell was in the period we are talking about and I
remember doing things like the Birmingham Post Rally
... that was a good one. The trouble for me was that I
could never find a navigator who was not sick! I did
events with quite a lot of people, even co-driving with
Alec Poole. That was a disaster too, for I got sick then!
Rallying was obviously no good to me, we could never
to get to the finish.”
Midlands motorsport at that time was rich in
characters who were to play a part later in John’s life,
especially John Handley (who now owns Broadspeed
and Dealer Opel Team, as well as a successful roller chain
business at Wolver-hampton) and Ralph Broad.
John remembers his first race as “one of those
reliability trials”, but is far clearer about the second and
third races he did in 1962. “I was a clear and definite last
at the back of the Snetterton field. I was going so slowly
that I could sec my Mum having hysterics all over the
pits. At Oulton Park for my third race we took along
some of my mates and put the car on a trailer, purely for
effect. We didn’t tie it on properly and it actually fell off
the back on the way in. We really did not know until we
came to unload. So it was a rather sheepish bunch who
went back to that rough entrance and retrieved it!”
The next step was to go down to the Broad family
business “to get a few bits for the Mini. I built the engine
myself” — another burst of laughter— “probably in the
garden or something stupid like that, because it was all
filled with sssh, you know what Naturally it blew up at
our first Brands. The engine was destroyed, so we shot
back to Birmingham and ‘nicked’ one from a customer’s
car without telling Ralph.
“The race went well, but I remember how we had
to nip back and restore the engine to its rightful owner
before telling Ralph. Actually, he seemed quite impressed
with our initiative, for we had not known that this was
common practice in racing.
“Anyway he agreed to look after the 850 engine for
me. I think it was on my car that we actually first put
together the words Broad and speed. It was also painted
up in what were to become Ralph’s colours for quite a
few years regal purple with silver stripe.”
Fitzpatrick was successful in all kinds of Minis,
commenting today that it then took him time to adapt
to each car before he could go quickly “Stewart or Clark
were naturals who could go quickly in anything, straight
away. Nowadays experience lets me go fast straight
away too, but it’s not a natural thing: experience is very
important in touring and GT cars. That is why I expect at
least another 3-4 years at the front in these cars.”
In 1964-65 Fitzpatrick replaced Whitmore in the
John Cooper Mini team, racing all three S capacity sizes
in Britain and Europe. He chiefly recalls that: “Ralph
bought an S for Handley and he could beat us: but
1 could beat John H. in a Downton Mini, for it was 10
classes better.
“Why? Well there wasn’t so much in the chassis
in those days, they were usually lowered, running on
Konis, still had the tiny wheels and a rear roll bar . . .
no really fancy spring rates or aerodynamics to worry
about. So it more or less came down to the engine and
Daniel Richmond — who was the nicest bloke you could
ever wish to meet — simply provided the best.
“Daniel always used to take you round to look at
the latest tweaks he had produced, and I remember how
his cars never had wide wheels or fancy stripes. I took
my S down there and they did a super job. Daniel said to
me, ‘Don’t tell Bunty (Richmond’s wife) that we haven’t
given you a bill!’”
At the close of 1964 Fitzpatrick made his first trip
to Australia where he toured with Paddy Hopkirk and
Rauno Aaltonen. This was mainly a publicity trip (they
were looked after by Evan Green) but the team did the
6 hours at Sandown as part of the schedule. Later BMC
returned (without Fitzpatrick) to win at Bathurst in the
annual 500 “miler”.
The 1965 season had variety, racing for Cooper
again and rallying occasionally for Abingdon. John
remembers the RAC in an MG-B as “a total disaster”,
and hilariously recalls his 1965 outing in an 1800 with
an ATV man alongside and a third passenger in the
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