The curious case of the Tourist Trophy

This is a kind of call to arms. Or at least a request for information - or evidence - such as photographs and old race programmes. Keep reading, because this is important as it concerns the history of the oldest piece of motorsport silverware still awarded anywhere in the world.

I'm talking about the Royal Automobile Club's Tourist Trophy, which earlier this month became another addition to the bulging, collective CV of one of the great line-ups in sportscar history.

Victory in the World Endurance Championship opener at Silverstone for Audi drivers Andre Lotterer, Marcel Fassler and Benoit Treluyer means their names will go alongside those of Rudolf Caracciola, Tazio Nuvolari, Stirling Moss, Graham Hill and Derek Bell on the plinth of this great prize.

Dating back to 1905, the RAC Tourist Trophy is due to have some more winners' names added © LAT

But it's not going to happen just yet. Because when the engraver sets to work he will be etching the names of more than three drivers. And for the moment he can't be instructed as to exactly who they are. The RAC is not entirely sure of their identity. Nor am I, quite frankly.

The Tourist Trophy is, today, quite rightly awarded to the winners of Britain's round of the WEC. And I don't think there can be any quibble with its presentation to the victors of the annual FIA GT Championship and then the FIA GT1 World Championship fixture at Silverstone between 2005 and 2011. But the trophy had a chequered history leading up to its centenary year in '05.

Between Andy Rouse and Alain Ferte winning the final European Touring Car Championship enduro at Silverstone - the fixture synonymous with the TT to many of us - in 1988, and Pedro Lamy and Peter Kox triumphing for Aston Martin in FIA GT in 2005, the trophy was awarded sporadically and, it seems, haphazardly.

You might remember that Paul Radisich became a TT winner for his victory in the 1994 World Touring Car Cup at Donington Park. Or that Alain Menu twice took the prize in a non-championship Super Touring event billed as the TT at the same venue, though you probably needed to be there to recall those largely forgotten end-of-season touring car races in 1996 and '97.

Yet you won't find the names of these winners anywhere on the art nouveau majesty of the Tourist Trophy. Nor those of Emmanuel Collard and Vincenzo Sospiri, who won the TT at Donington when it was a round of the International Sports Racing Series the following season.

Some British GT champions, such as Calum Lockie, received the accolade, others did not...

It's after '98 that the history of the Tourist Trophy gets confusing and controversial. It was given to Julian Bailey and Jamie Campbell-Walter for winning the 1999 British GT Championship and then to subsequent winners Calum Lockie (2000), Tom Herridge (2003) and Jonny Cocker (2004).

It wasn't given - and this is the confusing bit - to Mike Jordan and Dave Warnock for winning the same title in 2001 and Tommy Erdos and Ian McKellar for their championship success in 2002. Or at least neither Jordan nor Erdos has any recollection of receiving it.

The controversial bit is that the RAC is looking to set the record straight and update the plinth of the old trophy with any missing winners when the engraver sets to work on the names A Lotterer, M Fassler and B Treluyer. But what the club regards as a winner will be disputed by some of those drivers above.

Ben Cussons, chairman of the RAC motoring committee, argues that historically the TT was always given to the winners of a big race. Which is why Radisich, Menu, Collard and Sospiri are set to make it onto the plinth, whereas Bailey, Campbell-Walter, Lockie, Herridge and Cocker are not.

I wouldn't disagree with the RAC's sentiments. It plainly shouldn't have been given to the winners of a championship, something that's at odds with its rich history. But the simple fact is that it was.

The RAC invented the term "presented but not awarded" ahead of 2005 to explain away the missing names, including those of Radisich, Menu and Collard and Sospiri.

It still invokes it today, but only with regard to the British GT champions. Cussons even calls the Tourist Trophy's presentation to Bailey, Campbell-Walter et al as an oversight, which arose from the confusion following the de-merger of the RAC and the Motor Sports Association at the end of the '90s.

Was 1999 presentation of the Tourist Trohpy really an 'oversight'? © LAT

The idea that the Tourist Trophy was presented at the end-of-season MSA prize-giving at the RAC's Pall Mall 'clubhouse' in error, or because there was nothing else to give the British GT champions, doesn't wash. Bailey and Campbell-Walter were handed the thing on the podium at the series finale at Silverstone (by Cussons, according to JCW) and again in central London (by none other than Jackie Stewart).

What's more, the Lister drivers and team boss Laurence Pearce were given a kind of half-size replica featuring the Greek god Hermes, who adorns the top half of the real thing. So too was Lockie, who described it as one of his most treasured pieces of silverware. It doesn't sound like an oversight to me.

Lockie doesn't remember receiving the Tourist Trophy on the podium upon clinching the title and nor does Cocker, and I'm not entirely sure about Herridge. Maybe you have photos from an event of them being given the thing, or maybe there's another race out there that we don't know about for which the grand old trophy was wheeled out.

Cussons says he wants to get it right before he calls in the engraver. Any help in working out who really received the Tourist Trophy would be greatly appreciated. The names around the base of this important piece of British motorsport history need to be correct.

And, to my mind, a driver is a Tourist Trophy winner if he got to lift the thing for his on-track achievements, whether that be in a single race or a championship. This is a chance for us all to make sure that history is recorded correctly and not rewritten.