Triumph Racing
A week or two ago, in the "Death of LBC's" thread I made some remarks
about how Triumph's racing program fared under British Leyland.
There are a few things which I may have overstated (and wish to correct...)
About the rallying orientation of Triumph:
1. In addition to rallying, the Triumph competitions department did
participate in a handful of 24hrs at LeMans races. The cars raced
were the TR2, TR3S, TRS (same chassis as TR3S), and (as part of
British Leyland) Spitfires.
2. Broadspeed of Southam raced Dolomite Sprints in the British Saloon
Car Championship on behalf of British Leyland in the mid to late 70's
3. Unipart also sponsored an F3 car with the Dolomite Sprint engine
(in a March Chassis) from 1976 through 1979.
Other than these cars, Triumphs were only run in rallies in Europe.
Triumph provided support to Kas Kastner to race triumphs in the U.S..
These cars usually raced in SCCA class D and lower. Kastner raced
Spitfires, GT6's, TR4A's, TR6's and built a modified TR250, the TR250K
or K-Car, which was run in the 12hrs at Sebring as a factory entry.
About homologation...
4. Triumph actually seems to have done a little bit of hand-waving to get
the TR7-V8 homologated. The factory where the TR8 was going to be built
went on strike Nov 77 - Apr 78, while the homologation deadline was 1
April 1978. Apparently the appropriate production sheets were signed and
FIA did not inspect very carefully.
5. Triumph also managed to homologate the TR7 with the 16-valve head and
an overdrive 4-speed gearbox from the Sprint, although neither of these
ever appeared in a production. I guess this means that Mike Jeffrey's
TR7 Sprint is a homologated, raceable car :-). (These cars were not
actually ready to race for 7 months after homologation and didn't
complete a raced until 10 months after they were homologated.)
All of this comes from the book: "The Works Triumphs: 50 years in
motorsports" by Graham Robson, 1993, publ. G.T.Foulis/Haynes. Apart from
his career as a automotive journalist, Robson was also the head of the
Triumph Competitions Department from February 1962 to February 1965.
Greg "Why let facts intrude on a good rant?" Fieldson
Dept. of Chemical Engineering krikor@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu
The Johns Hopkins University or fieldson@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu
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