Videos: Famous Five – RAC Tourist Trophy Races

And for the past three years, Britain’s home round of the series has been held for the prestigious and historic Royal Automobile Tourist Trophy. It’s an accolade that’s been awarded since 1905, which makes it our oldest-surviving event.

Since that inaugural TT, won by John Napier aboard an Arrol-Johnson on the Isle of Man, several venues have held the event and for a variety of disciplines. Touring cars, GTs and prototypes have battled for a piece of TT history at Ards, Donington Park, Dundrod, Goodwood, Oulton Park and Silverstone.

This weekend’s WEC curtain raiser is sure to be a classic, with Porsche bidding for its first international sportscar race win at the Northamptonshire venue since Jacky Ickx and Jochen Mass took their factory Rothmans Porsche 962C to victory in the 1000km World Sportscar Championship qualifier.

Which other TTs, we wondered, have stood out, thanks to a memorable or unusual outcome, a great entry or a superb battle?

September 13, 1958 – Goodwood

British racing heroes Stirling Moss and Tony Brooks, who’d won the British Grand Prix at Aintree together for Vanwall the year before, anchored the winning Aston Martin DBR1 in Goodwood’s first TT, the final round of the World Sportscar Championship. Although Ferrari had already won the title, thanks to success in four of the first five rounds, Aston scooped the end-of-season bragging rights with the Roy Salvadori/Jack Brabham and Carroll Shelby/Stuart Lewis-Evans DBR1s making it an Aston 1-2-3.  

August 19, 1961 – Goodwood

Once more aboard Rob Walker’s Ferrari 250 GT SWB, Stirling Moss took his seventh and final TT win (to add to two for Jaguar and one for Mercedes at Dundrod, and three at Goodwood for Aston Martin and Ferrari) after a fantastic scrap with the Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato of Roy Salvadori and the Ferrari of Mike Parkes. Parkes had qualified his Maranello Concessionaires 250 GT SWB on pole but Moss had eked out a one-lap advantage by the end of the three-hour race. Salvadori had been in the mix but fell to third, holding off the sister car of future F1 legend Jim Clark.    

September 22, 1974 – Silverstone

Motorcycle racer and Isle of Man TT winner Stuart Graham, son of legendary 500cc World Champion Les Graham, got bitten by the four-wheeled bug after spectating at a touring car race at Oulton Park in the early 1970s. Having helped British veteran Les Leston with his Chevrolet Camaro he got to act as stand-in on a couple of occasions – and immediate success led to Graham buying and preparing his own Camaro. With sponsorship from Fabergé’s Brut 33 brand, he became a star of the BTCC and won a lot of races, including the standalone TT, run to Group 1 rules for the first time in 1974. His mechanical sympathy meant he nursed the big V8 through just one pitstop to win, solo, to become only the second man, after Charlie Dodson, to win a TT on two and four wheels. 

September 4, 1988 – Silverstone

The 10^th and penultimate round of the 1988 European Touring Car Championship is regarded as one of the finest Group A races in the category’s history. The kudos of the RAC TT and flat-out sweeps of Silverstone attracted a field of pros from around the world, including Australian folk heroes Dick Johnson and John Bowe. Their Ford Sierra RS500 was the fastest thing in the field, against a trio of Sierras run by Eggenberger, the team that had won six of the first nine rounds that year, and dominant British Touring Car Championship star Andy Rouse, paired with French ace Alain Ferté. It’s a stonking, 105-lap battle, with plenty of drama thrown in, and a popular first-time winner in the ETCC…

May 15, 2005 – Silverstone

The RAC TT had been through muddled times during the 1990s, running only five times – at Donington Park – during the decade, in supertouring and FIA sports-racing guise. After a hiatus between 2000 and 2004, the race was revived within the popular and well-supported FIA GT championship. And that 2005 event, back at the race’s spiritual home of Silverstone, resulted in an historic win for Aston Martin, the British firm’s first victory in the series and its first TT win since the glory days at Goodwood in 1959. On the driving strength that day were Peter Kox and Pedro Lamy, who guided their Prodrive-run DBR9 to victory ahead of the sister car of David Brabham and Darren Turner.