Lotus and Williams win TGP Thrillers

Steve Hrrchins’ sensational last-gasp victory over Martin Stretton at the Czech Republic’s Autodrom Most on 11 June finally broke the Tyrrell P34 pilot’s stranglehold on the FIA Thoroughbred Grand Prix series.

Hitchins usurped the sister JPS 91 car of poleman Joaquin Folch early on, then hounded Stretton’s sixwheeler mercilessly in sweltering conditions. Stretton clung on with his front tyres shot, but slid wide at the hairpin on the very last lap, and Hitchins pounced instantly tp beat the 1995 champion to the flag by 10 metres in what he described as “the race of my life.”

Folch and Richard Eyre’s Williams FW08 ran in a train with them for most of the race, which thrilled 35,000 Formula One-starved fans.

Eyre struck gold for the first time in Spain, when the series moved to Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya on 2 July. He staved off a late challenge from Duncan Dayton’s FWO7C and John Wilson’s FWO8C in the first Williams clean sweep in TGP’s sixyear history. Front-row qualifiers Christian Glasel (Brabham BT49D) and local man Folch were both relegated to the back of the grid by dramas on the grid. Klaus Fiedler took Class B honours in his ex-Didier Pironi Tyrrell 008. MP