History

The Historic FF1600 Championship is for cars built and raced before 1972. These are cars from the glorious early years of Formula Ford racing and they offer close, exciting and affordable single-seater racing. Historic Formula Ford is perfect for newcomers as well as experienced racers. Formula Ford was born in 1967 by matching the inexpensive F3 chassis with commonly available engine (Cortina GT), gearbox (Volkswagen Beetle) and chassis components. The result was an inexpensive racing car which was sold for under £1000.

The early history of Formula Ford was centred in Great Britain. The first race took place at the Brands Hatch circuit in on July 2nd 1967 with a grid of 17 cars. Many of the cars were linked with either the Jim Russell Racing School or the Motor Racing Stables run by Geoffrey Clark. Soon the popular Formula spread globally with racing in Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, and South Africa.

Historic Formula Ford cars do not have wings so the cars rely purely on mechanical grip and no car is disadvantaged because of aerodynamics. The car is light (420kg) and the 1600cc engines can propel an Historic Formula Ford car to 60 miles per hour in around five seconds with top speeds in excess of 130mph. Formula Ford is considered by many as one of the best single seater formula that launched the career of many F1 drivers, including Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell, Johnny Herbert, Damon Hill, David Coulthard, Mark Webber and many more.