Before the days of wall-to-wall television coverage of all forms of motorsport, many Irish people could only get to see cars race at the once-a-year Phoenix Park Motor Races. I, like many others who became immersed in the sport, got my first taste of the sights, sounds and smells of racing cars at the side of that unique tree-lined parkland track, and was thereafter hooked for life.
One of my earliest memories of the event is walking through the trees after racing had finished and coming across a Modsaloon
Ford Anglia parked well away from the circuit. The car had obviously retired from racing earlier that day, but its driver had so far felt no need to retrieve it, allowing me my first close-up look at a car from what would become my favourite branch of the sport. Racing-car technology was in its infancy in the mid-’70s, and efforts to make standard road cars go quickly produced huge variety on the Modsports and Modsaloon grids, with weird and wonderful modifications, some more effective than others.
That type of experimentation and variety is for the most part missing from the current crop of motor-racing classes, where one-make saloon and sportscar races, spec single-seater classes and highly regulated championships rule the roost. To find real chassis variety, one has to look to historic racing, where machinery from the days before minutely controlled regulations still run in their original form. The good thing for me is that I am now sufficiently long in the tooth for the cars that I first watched race in the Phoenix Park to be re-appearing in historic racing thanks to the Irish Historic Racing Car Association (HRCA) recently moving its cut-off date for eligibility from 1974 to 1979.
Formed in 1984, the HRCA, in the usual Irish way, arose from a split in the Irish Veteran and Vintage Car Club ranks, between those who wished to race and those who wished the club to remain solely a touring association. Having started racing in 1979 as the IVVCC Sports Section, the racers were then victim of one of the earliest known Health & Safety backlashes, as, fearing an accident, the IVVCC asked that racing not take place under its name. In fact, it was so eager to distance itself from sporting activities that it even asked for all of its perpetual trophies to be returned, a situation that has only recently been rectified.
Following their ejection from the IVVCC, the racers continued on an informal basis with Edmund Cassidy, who still remains active as a driver and committee member, doing most of the organisation. It was not until 1984 that the club’s status was formalised with the appointment of its first committee and it was named the HRCA. In the early days the pre-war cars that had made up most of the grids began to fade out of the scene, as MGs took over. Latterly the grids were bolstered by a number of Porsche 911s and Mini Coopers, but the real upsurge in new cars came with the change to pre-’79 rules, opening the way for the return of the Modsaloons and Modsports that are now beginning to re-appear in big numbers.
One racer who also caught the modified racing bug at the Phoenix Park in the ’70s is long-time competitor and commentator Leo Nulty. Following time spent in single-seater and one-make saloon racing, Nulty recently acquired what he calls his ‘dream car,’ the ex-David Hall Imp, which is one of the most fondly remembered cars in Irish motor-racing history. Whether it was Hall or Vivian Candy of Marlboro Team Ireland behind the wheel, this exceptionally neatly constructed and gorgeously finished Imp is probably the biggest single contributor to my love of modified and GT racing, and Nulty is thankfully about to return it to the track.
The return of this car is, according to Nulty, just the tip of the iceberg, as he feels the popularity of HRCA racing is “probably about to explode.” Nulty goes on to explain, “We have a very progressive committee and there are loads of cars out there that are now eligible. Apart from the cars that fit in with the championship regulations, we are also aiming to invite cars that fit in with the spirit of the championship, such as historic rally cars from the same period and maybe some slightly newer cars. We are aiming to bring Irish historic racing to a new level.” The first step for the HRCA’s new era was a well-attended 25th Anniversary celebration and seasonal launch, which saw not only the pre-’79 cars on show, but also the recently introduced pre-’55 class, which will take in three races and two hillclimbs during 2009.
The past couple of years has seen a growth in variety as the club moved away from the road-going MGBs and Midgets to grids that contain pure racing Lotuses, Davrians, Sunbeam Tigers and Imps, modified versions of MGs and Sprites and saloons such as the Ford Capri. Despite the Minis and Porsches moving away to their own separate races, the Historic grids have held up and at the first event of the 2009 season their race was easily the highlight of the day. Watching the ferocious, but clean battle at the front between the ludicrously powerful Sunbeam Tiger of Jackie Cochrane and the ultimately victorious lightweight Lotus Elan of Stephen Doyle was a tonic, especially when compared to the blandness of the one-make races that make up so many race programmes around the world.
Hopefully Nulty and the HRCA are correct and this branch of Irish motorsport is about to mushroom. The current regulations bring a huge number of cars from the formative years of Irish motorsport back into play. Prior to Mondello Park’s opening in 1968, the sport did not have sufficient numbers to support a race event without imported cars, so moving the cut-off forward to ’79 means the sport can begin drawing from a rich local history. All we need now is the unlikely return of the Phoenix Park races to their former glory to breed a new group of generation of historic racing fans.