Race Report: Brands Hatch, 15 September 1974

It was 12 cars in the latest round of the Forward Trust Championship, it was supposed to be 13 but Mike Tyrrell broke a camshaft in his March in qualifying and was out of the race. Brian Henton arrived to find his car had been handed over to a Brazilian rent-a-driver for the next three races but at the last minute an ex-Buzz Buzaglo 723 updated to 733 spec and fitted with a 1.9 Neil Brown engine was prepared for Superhen.

It was pouring with rain as the cars came out and the track was very slippery as would be seen by the number of spins in the race. Tony Rouff made a great start from the second row and led for the first two and a half laps until spinning out of contention at Bottom Bend. After that it was Henton for the rest of the race and he came home an easy winner by 26 seconds from team mate Jose Chateaubriand who was driving Henton’s usual car. Chateaubriand drove very well in the tricky conditions moving up from seventh on the first lap. Alex Ribeiro started third and moved up to second when Rouff fell back but a spin and a damaged nose cone saw him out of the race. José Espirito Santo moved up to take Ribeiro’s place but he spun down to fourth. Of the rest Danny Sullivan was plagued with a misfire whilst finishing fifth, Nicholas von Preussen spun to the rear of the field on lap 1 and Patrick Neve spun with a flat tyre in his Brabham BT41.

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