Hi All,
Just joined after finding this thread via Google. First can I say - brilliant thread, really enjoyed it…!
My father, John Kent, drove the 350hp Leyland T45 at the 1984 Donington Truck Grand Prix with co-driver Mel Bacon. My father also did all of the media work with the truck prior to the event as he was very local to the factory. It was my father at the wheel in the photo that’s on the cover of the official programme for the event. My uncle, then Product Development Manager at Multipart, was one of the masterminds behind the Truck Grand Prix and it was his idea to put my father in the truck. My father had successfully campaigned Lotus and TVR production sports cars for many years with engineering support from my uncle. As such it was a perfect pairing.
My father went on to set (by some margin) the fastest lap time of the whole event, but the pole time was determined by an aggregate across both drivers. I notice the review posted earlier alludes that Martin Brundle and his co-driver had a better aggregate time, but this was not the case. As my father set the fastest time, he was selected to drive in the final and he started on pole - all the photos and video from the event corroborate this including the following Youtube video of the final where you can clearly see he takes the rolling start on pole (effectively the inside for the right-hander at Redgate).
youtube.com/watch?v=WRklEqCBOpU
Due to a team ■■■■-up, the brake linings were not replaced for the final, as such my father had no brakes after the 5th lap of the 20 lap final. Despite this he still managed - somewhat incredibly - to finish in 5th place…! It was a huge shame as with brakes, nobody had any doubt he would have won. After all the qualifying he was clearly the favourite. The eventual winner, Italian Duilio Ghislotti in a Volvo was disqualified for technical irregularities some days after the event. His team did have brilliant pasta served out the back of their trailer in the paddock behind the pits though…!
I spent the event in the hospitality suite with a bunch of then celebs that were drafted in to take part in the “Yorkie Challenge” which used a number of then brand new Leyland Roadrunners painted in Yorkie (chocolate bar) colours that had to do various challenges like distributing free Yorkie bars round the track to the spectators. I remember Peter Duncan, Anneka Rice, Jeremy Beadle, Linda Lusardi and others. Beadle was particularly good fun and spent ages mucking about with us kids teaching us practical jokes and feeding us tons of Yorkies…!
I have great memories of the event myself and sadly this was the one and only Truck GP my father did. It’s a shame because he clearly blew the doors off everyone else including Steve Parrish and Richard Walker, both of whom went on to have successful careers as professional truck racers. My uncle went on to work on the 1985 event at Silverstone. In just six weeks prior to the 1985 event, he also found time to design and develop the “Multipart Skytrain” wheelie truck which took the world record for the longest wheelie by a truck. I have home video of the truck driving round the circuit doing a wheelie with sparks coming off the magnesium skid blocks at the back. The video was shot by my dad who was following behind the wheelie truck in the Leyland T45 cabriolet that was built as a promo tool by Crayford.
My father was then the works drivier for TVR and went on to race in (and win) the TVR Tuscan Challenge Championship and 1998 develop the TVR Speed Twelve…
PS: Andyblue - IIRC that’s Willie Green’s Silkolene ERF and in the shot behind is Steve Parrish in the Mitchell Cotts Mercedes. It was 28 years ago and I was just 7 years old at the time, but I can remember so many details like it was yesterday…
