When F1 teams raced for free

Fifty years ago the British Formula 1 fan was very well served. If the 1967 season began at New Year, at Kyalami, and continued at Monaco in early May, in the interim no fewer than three non-championship races were run, all of them in the UK.

At Brands Hatch, Dan Gurney's Eagle narrowly beat Lorenzo Bandini's Ferrari in the Race of Champions, and at Silverstone Maranello's sole representative Mike Parkes won the Daily Express Trophy from Jack's Brabham.

In between times there was a race at Oulton Park, the Spring Cup, and it occupies a niche in history, for this was surely the only time the Formula 1 teams - and drivers - ever raced for free.

The foundations of the event were laid at Spa a year earlier, when the Belgian Grand Prix was run in atrocious conditions, and on the opening lap Jackie Stewart was seriously injured in an accident that might have killed him.

This was the old ultra-fast Spa, of course, and given that it was nearly nine miles round, the capricious local climate frequently made for a circuit dry on one side, wet on the other.

It was just so that Sunday in June 1966. Away from the grid it was dry, but further round the lap it was not, and several drivers aquaplaned off, all escaping unhurt save Stewart, whose BRM went off at - of all places - the Masta Kink, finishing up in a farmyard.

Jackie, whose injuries included a broken collarbone, as well as fuel burns from a split tank, was trapped in the car, and so inept - so absent - was the marshalling that it was left to Graham Hill and Bob Bondurant (who had had accidents of their own) to release him.

The patron of the BRM team was Louis Stanley, and if undeniably he was a pompous and self-important fellow, so also he did more than most for driver safety at a time when it was as good as non-existent.

A minute before the start, an official asked Stanley if he were aware that it was pouring down on the far side of the circuit. No, he wasn't - and, more to the point, neither were the drivers, whom no-one had thought to inform.

So chaotic was the rescue operation - in a vintage bone-shaker of an ambulance Stewart was taken first to a hospital in Verviers, then to another in Liege, before finally being flown to London - that Stanley resolved to do something about it. And thus it was the following spring that the International Grand Prix Medical Service was launched, this taking the form of a huge articulated truck, containing facilities of a greater sophistication than were to be found at any circuit.

The white pantechnicon, with prominent red cross, made its first appearance at Oulton, and did not come cheap, the cost being put at £50,000, which was quite a sum half a century ago - and we need to remember, too, how different were the times in other ways. In today's world it is considered a news story that this year Lewis Hamilton is choosing to travel - gasps of shock all round - without a personal trainer; in 1967 Ferrari's number one driver Chris Amon had a retainer of $1000 a month.

Not surprisingly the drivers, together with a variety of racing-associated companies, willingly made contributions to Stanley's venture, but these did not cover its cost, so it was decided to put on a race for F1 and F2 cars - in effect, a charity event - for which there would be neither 'starting money' for the teams nor prize money for the drivers.

Instead that cash would go towards the mobile hospital, as would the day's takings at Oulton.

Invited to send over a car for which there would be no financial return, Enzo Ferrari did not deign even to reply, and more surprisingly Cooper, too, did not attend. As well as that, an Eagle entered for Richie Ginther had to be withdrawn, as was Ken Tyrrell's F2 Matra, down to be driven by Jacky Ickx. Lotus, awaiting the new Cosworth DFV, entered a pair of F2 cars.

If there were therefore significant gaps in the entry list, and in the end only 10 cars went to the grid, most were of real quality, including BRMs for Stewart and Mike Spence, Brabhams for Jack and Denny Hulme and a Honda V12 for John Surtees.

The man who could least afford to race gratis, privateer Bob Anderson, entered his Brabham, while present in two-litre cars were Bruce McLaren and Piers Courage. In the F2 Lotuses were Hill and, standing in for the tax-exiled Jim Clark, Jackie Oliver.

This was Oulton in its glory days, long before falling victim to chicane blight, and my overwhelming memory of the weekend is the sight in practice of Stewart's BRM H16 - a brute of a racing car - thundering down to Knickerbrook, then up and over the top of Clay Hill on the way to a comfortable pole position, three seconds inside the lap record...

As for race day, the weather was chilly but bright, the crowd - predictably in those days - sizeable, even if, with its small field of cars, one had almost the impression of a club meeting for Formula 1. The race was run in two 10-lap heats, both won by Hulme, and a 30-lap final, won by Brabham, and if the drivers were racing for no reward you would never have known it, Surtees wringing the neck of the cumbersome Honda en route to third place, Hill inspired in the nimble Lotus.

Back in those pre-Bernie Ecclestone days, it was customary in the race programme to list the prize money, but that April weekend at Oulton there was simply this: "To the winner of the Spring Cup race: the Spring Cup, with a souvenir award to each finisher in the final". A pleasing memory from another time.