The greatest moments in Castle Combe's 70 year history

It was 8 July 1950 when Castle Combe staged its inaugural meeting for 500cc Formula 3 cars. The Wiltshire track is celebrating its 70th anniversary with this weekend's Castle Combe Autumn Classic, a two-day bonanza that will again feature motorcycle-engined cars as major draw.

Although it will be staged behind closed doors due to the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, there could be no better time for Autosport to mark the occasion by recalling the key moments in the old war-time airfield venue's history as part of this week's commemorative issue of the national racing supplement.

Future Formula 1 stars shine on new airfield track

Castle Combe was England's most westerly circuit when the Bristol Motor Cycle & Light Car Club organised its first race meeting on the disused airfield, for cars and motorcycles, behind closed doors on 8 July 1950 - a month before Gregor Grant published the first issue of Autosport. Although Davidstow in Cornwall hosted events from 1952-55, Combe endured, through various hiatuses, to be the popular venue it is today.

Early stars included Stirling Moss, Peter Collins, Mike Hawthorn - who won twice on his debut in 1951, driving Rileys, and would be Formula 1 world champion with Ferrari inside seven years - and Ken Wharton.

Moss was ejected from his Cooper 500 in October 1953, having clipped Tony Rolt's F2 Connaught at Quarry. Wharton shattered the outright lap record that day in a shrill BRM V16, leaving it at 1m13.6s (89mph). Some 20,000 spectators witnessed it, underlining enthusiasts' thirst for racing and the fledgling venue.

Abecassis wins RedeX Trophy thriller

Sportscar racing was on a par with single-seater competition at Castle Combe in the 1950s. Aston Martin's future Le Mans winner Roy Salvadori was the standout of the former genre, driving Frazer Nash Le Mans Replica, Maserati A6GCS, Jaguar C-type and DB3S with gusto.

But Squadron Leader George Abecassis - partner with John Heath in Hersham and Walton Motors, whose HWM marque competed in sportscar and F2 races - won the RedeX Trophy international race in October 1955 after Salvadori's Aston broke.

Driving an HWM-Jaguar, Abecassis beat 1950 Le Mans victor Louis Rosier in a Ferrari 750 Monza - by a fifth of a second in a photo finish with the Frenchman. Noel Cunningham-Reid in another HWM finished third.

Abecassis's grandson Jonathan is a regular competitor at the Autumn Classic. Last October he won the FiSCar Intermarque race (pictured) at the wheel of his left-hand-drive Austin-Healey 100/4.

Griffiths Formula spawns birth of HSCC in 1966

Concerned that obsolete sports-racing cars were being sold inexpensively and exported from Great Britain, eminent motorsport photographer Guy Griffiths addressed the situation positively, leaving a legacy for enthusiasts to savour to this day.

His 'Griffiths Formula' initiative was a mechanism designed to give owners of some fantastic cars, which were little more than a decade old, the opportunity to compete and reason to keep them.

The inaugural race at Castle Combe in May 1966 - won by Neil Corner in his ex-works/Ecurie Ecosse Jaguar D-type XKD 504, from Chris Warwick Drake (Lotus-Bristol X) and John Le Sage (Aston Martin DB3S) - laid the Historic Sports Car Club's foundation stone.

The event was run jointly by the Frazer Nash and Porsche Clubs, parts of the AFN Ltd 'family' in Isleworth, which owned the circuit. That important link is why the HSCC's logo still features an iconic Frazer Nash Le Mans Replica.

Formula Ford's roots firmly established at Combe

Castle Combe hosted the second Formula Ford race in July 1967, won by Dan Hawkes in a Lotus 51. The British Racing and Sports Car Club South Western centre - with Howard Strawford now at its helm - launched a championship in 1969, also taking in rounds at Llandow in South Wales.

FF1600 has consistently provided some of the greatest racing at the Chippenham venue, with four-time champions Bob Higgins (Martlets, Royale RP29A and Reynard 91FF) and Gavin Wills (Van Diemens and Swift) and title hat-trick winners Kevin Mills and Josh Fisher its leading alumni.

Higgins still competes alongside his two lads, Adam twice champion himself, taking the family haul to six. That's a total matched by the Fishers, Josh's late father Brian having snared three Combe Special GT championships in Shrike P16 and Skoda 130RS machinery.

Mills's successful team has invariably been among the frontrunners with subsequent generations of drivers and continues to gun for more.

Thunderous Formula 5000s plunder the lap record

Formula 5000 - the American V8 stock block-engined category whose speeds mirrored F1's, albeit at a fraction of the running cost - visited Castle Combe only twice, in May 1970 and 1971, before the arrival of the most sophisticated chassis brought greater speeds.

McLaren M10Bs finished 1-2-3-4 in the pioneering race, defending champion Peter Gethin winning in Sid Taylor's Atlantic Petroleum car from Howden Ganley, Mike Walker and New Zealander Graham McRae, who went on to design some of the greatest cars in the class's history. Gethin and Ganley shared the outright lap record at 56.6s (117.03mph).

Australian Frank Gardner was victorious in 1971 in a Lola T192 - the futuristic F2 T242-based T300 not yet ready - from Gethin and Ganley in McLaren M18s and Ray Allen (winner of Brands Hatch's inaugural FF race in 1967) in an M10B. Gethin qualified on pole with a 56.2s shot, but the race was wet.

Nigel Greensall's ultimate lap record

European Aviation boss Paul Stoddart's passenger ride in Nigel Greensall's Prosport 3000 at Silverstone landed his chauffeur a EuroBOSS seat for 1997 in one of the Australian's ex-Mark Blundell/Ukyo Katayama 1994 F1 Tyrrell 022s powered by a 3.5-litre 650bhp Judd V10 engine.

"Free practice at Combe was in pouring rain," recalls Greensall, who set a 50.59s (130.93mph) time. "It was fantastic slithering round inside the record. Qualifying was on a drying track, so my first lap on slicks was the race's standing start, which reset the record officially.

"We were pulling about 175mph up Avon Rise - with spikes of wheelspin in sixth gear - and lowered the time progressively until the gearbox started to break up. I did the last four or five laps in fifth, with everything crossed, but we made it to the chequered flag.

"It's amazing how many people remember that day. I'd love a crack at the current track's record but love racing there, in anything."

Lap records fall again in post-chicanes era

Rising speeds were countered by the introduction of two infield deviations from the old aerodrome perimeter track over the winter of 1998-99. While not universally popular, the Esses (between Quarry and Old Paddock corners) and Bobbies (named for circuit owner Howard Strawford's newly departed lieutenant Bob Davies) on the return from Tower to Camp were seen to improve safety and spice up racing by adding two overtaking zones.

Mike Millard (Prosport LM3000) logged the first lap record at 1m05.61s (101.50mph), taking average speeds back to 1965 levels, when Chris Summers (Lotus-Chevrolet 24) broke the 100mph barrier.

The quickest cars racing regularly in 1999 were resident Special GT series contenders and double champion Bob Light progressively reduced it to 1m03.389s in his 6.2-litre Ultima-derived B6 Sport.

The closest to Dan Clarke's 2005 F3 best of 59.387s (112.14mph) remains Tony Sinclair's 1m00.649s (109.81mph) in his self-designed and built Jade-Nissan 2 sportscar in 2006.

Formula 3 returns after 30-year hiatus

In Castle Combe's early years, 500cc Formula 3 was a staple of meetings, and hugely popular since the motorcycle-engined movement is credited as having been propagated in nearby Bristol. The subsequent 1000cc screamers visited in the 1960s but, when two-litre British F3 arrived in 2001 for what would be a five-season run alongside British GT, it broke a 30-year lull.

Jochen Mass (Brabham BT35) had won the 1971 Shell Super Oil series round from future F1 world champion Jody Scheckter (Merlyn Mk21) and Roger Williamson (March 713M) in its first of three 1600cc seasons.

Current F1 TV pundit Anthony Davidson - who pushed the lap record back through the one-minute barrier in 2001 - South African F1 medical car driver Alan van der Merwe, Danny Watts and Portuguese Alvaro Parente won twice each. Watts' famous 2004 victory marked a breakthrough for the Lola Dome chassis amid a sea of Italian Dallaras.

Autumn classic retrospective reflects the past

Eight historic races peppered throughout the 2012 Grand Finals meeting proved popular and paved the way for the first dedicated Autumn Classic in 2013. With the accent initially on marque contests, top gun to date is recent round-the-world aviator Steve Boultbee Brooks, who won five races from 2015-17 in his ex-Kangaroo Stable Aston Martin DB3S.

Former hillclimb ace David Grace has topped Austin-Healey fields four times, while Blakeney Motorsport trio Patrick Blakeney-Edwards, Martin Hunt and American Fred Wakeman has the best collective record across pre-war Frazer-Nashes and a Jaguar E-type.

Spindly 500cc F3 cars from the dawn of the circuit and the subsequent Formula Junior epoch have regularly been showcased.

Fresh from finishing 10th at Le Mans last month, 2018 FJ victor Richard Bradley is back in his Brabham BT2 this weekend. Another welcome returnee is the GT & Sports Car Cup Pre-'66 enduro, with a wonderful grid featuring 2018 winner Gary Pearson (Jaguar E-type), with competition from British Touring Car racer Rory Butcher and Richard Kent in similar cars.

The story behind England's only single-venue racing club

By Stephen Lickorish

Another of the key moments in the history of the Wiltshire circuit was the formation of the Castle Combe Racing Club ahead of the 2006 season.

A variety of clubs had stints organising events at Combe - initially it was the Bristol Motor Cycle & Light Car Club, and for several decades the British Racing and Sports Car Club's South Western Centre was in charge. But circuit owner and centre chairman Howard Strawford decided he wanted more freedom and instigated the creation of the CCRC.

"He sought a little more autonomy - they were more or less confined to a staple diet of BRSCC championships, and they had some great championships, but Howard sought more flexibility to have races of other types and from other clubs," explains CCRC chairman Ken Davies.

"The club flourished and two years after that, in 2008, the Castle Combe Racing Trust was formed as an offshoot - it was born out of some of the surpluses from the early days of racing."

The Trust supports good causes at the circuit, including new medical equipment and facilities for marshals.

After its formation, the CCRC continued to operate Combe's long-running Formula Ford 1600, GT and Saloon categories and then launched a Hot Hatch series for 2017. This has proved very successful, attracting grids of more than 30 cars this year, despite the difficulties posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

"It's been a popular grassroots series that's very down-to-earth cost-wise and it's a very competitive series," says Davies, who adds that the club is continually evolving its race offering to look at ways of attracting new competitors.

"One of the secrets to its success is that it's not a championship so people can do ad hoc races. That's a concept the Classic Sports Car Club have used to very good effect."

While that has been a success, and the club was among the first to return to action after the COVID-19 suspension, Davies admits being a single-venue club has positives and negatives.

"We're bolted to a circuit so when we started racing a couple of months ago, there were clubs without a circuit, struggling to get venues," he says. "We had an instant solution.

"But the circuit is licenced for 10 race meetings a year and motorcycles are incredibly popular, so North Gloucestershire Motorcycle Club have at least one weekend. We usually end up with eight race days, but we could probably, as a club, handle more than that."

This season was also due to feature commemorations of 25 years of the Saloons and 45 for the GT championship, but those anniversaries are now set to be marked next year instead as the club honours its history as well as looks to the future.