I had the honour of driving for Ecurie Ecosse from 1984 until 1987, four of the most enjoyable years motor sport of my career.
My involvement with the team was thanks to my dear friend Ray Mallock who was approached by Hugh McCaig to build a Group C2 car for the 1984 World Sports Prototype Championship.
Ray telephoned me about the project and asked if I would like to drive for the team, obviously I was delighted to accept.
Our
first race was the 1984 Monza 1000k's and if my memory serves me
correctly we finished Second which laid the foundation for a successful
future for the team.
Driving the Ecosse was an absolute delight,
with its very low frontal area 13inch front wheels the car was very
rapid in a straight line but sadly lacked a little braking power due to
the small front brakes in the 13inch wheels. This however did not
detract too much from the cars stunning performance.
Later in the
1984 season we ventured to Le Mans for the first time, I had driven
there twice already in a Porsche 935 and a Lola Sports car. I was given
the initial testing laps in the car and Ray had worked out the top gear
ratio, increase of tyre diameter and rpm of the engine to give me an
idea of when we would reach 200 mph.
After a couple of warm up
laps I then set off on my first full throttle run down the long 3.5
mile Mulsanne Straight. Once in top gear I watched the rpm rise as I
sped along the straight, I passed the 200 mph rpm mark which Ray had
calculated and it continued to climb to the point where the little car
was doing 215 mph.
Then there was a loud BANG!
My heart
jumped a beat, I froze, not wanting to move the steering or touch the
brakes in case I speared off to the side of the track....I had never
been this fast in a car before and we were covering the ground so
quickly, it was very exhilarating till the bang!
The car seemed
to remain stable and as the speed decayed I gingerly applied the brakes
and started to try and see what had gone wrong. When the bang occurred
there was a loud rushing noise together with lots of dust being drawn
into the cockpit.
The car had probably lost half it's speed and
felt as though I could get out but we were still doing over 100 mph. As I
looked around I was shocked to see that the drivers side Perspex window had
disappeared!
We couldn't test top speeds in the UK so this was the first time the aerodynamics had been subjected to these high speeds.
What
had happened was the airflow over the outside of the car and the
differential of the pressure inside the car caused the window to depart
the car, it was like sitting in a balloon when someone burst it.
After
driving the car gently back to the pits and having a large brandy we
replaced the window but this time cutting a series of holes to relieve
the pressure.
We never had the problem again throughout the cars career.
Initially
we ran Cosworth 3.3 litre V8 engines until 1986 when the team
negotiated with Austin Rover to use the V6 6R4 rally engine. This
slightly less powerful but lighter unit was tuned by John Dunn of
Swindon Race engines. It proved an ideal partner as we went on to win
the 1986 Group C2 World Team Championship beating Spice Engineering for
the first time.
Driving for Ecurie Ecosse will forever bring a smile to my face.
Mike Wilds
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Memory added on December 7, 2012
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