The Legend of the Formula Ford Festival

Fifty Years of Motor Racing Action

Ben Evans

• Publisher: Pitch Publishing
• eBook ISBN:
  9781801503372
• Year: 2022

For more than 50 years the Formula Ford Festival has been the proving ground for ambitious racing drivers looking to make their mark. The Brands Hatch meeting was where the likes of Johnny Herbert, Damon Hill and Jenson Button first made their names, while both Michael Schumacher and Nigel Mansell never made it out of their heats. Now a club meeting, in its heyday the Festival was one of the UK's biggest motor sport events, drawing tens of thousands of spectators, and enjoying more than a decade of prime coverage on the BBC's Grandstand. From humble beginnings at a cold Snetterton, the move to Brands Hatch, the peak of the 1980s followed by a gentle decline, this book tells the story of the Festival. Drawing on exclusive contributions from some of the event's legends and prestigious alumni, it covers all the on-track action together with off-track intrigue and controversies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Author’s note
• Introduction
• The origins of Formula Ford
• Early days at Snetterton
• Early Brands Hatch years
• Glory days
• Stars are made here
• The Kent era ends on a high
• Enter the Zetecs
• Final years as the World Cup of motorsport
• Decline and fall of the Zetecs
• The ‘other’ Festivals
• Rebirth with Duratecs
• Return to club roots
• Afterword
• Photos