Ford Galaxie heads Aintree cavalcade as circuit marks two anniversaries
Seven decades after opening — and six after its first race — the Aintree grand prix circuit once again rumbled to the sound of racing cars
Forget Red Rum, Aldaniti and Mr Frisk – the home of the Grand National echoed to the sound of engines
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Racing cars returned to lap the full Aintree grand prix circuit in May as enthusiasts marked the 70th anniversary of its opening and the 60th of its final race.
A cavalcade gathered at the venue near Liverpool, which hosted five British Grands Prix between 1955 and ’62. It was headed by the Willment Ford Galaxie in which Jack Sears won the last race on the full circuit on May 16, 1964, driven this time by Wigan historics ace Andy Middlehurst whose father Philip competed in that race and who in the 1980s raced himself on the Aintree club circuit in Formula Ford.
Period contrast was provided by a Mini raced by Anita Taylor, who was also on the grid at the final race, and an ex-Duncan Hamilton Jaguar C-type to mark the 1953 Le Mans winner’s victory at Aintree’s inaugural meeting in 1954, where, for the first and only time, cars raced at the Grand National venue in an anticlockwise direction.
Organiser the Aintree Circuit Club has ambitions to mark another anniversary next year, 70 years on from Stirling Moss beating Juan Manuel Fangio by a nose to win the British Grand Prix, by recreating the 1955 grid or gathering all the cars Moss raced at Aintree. But any such event would require the laying of asphalt at the first turn, Waterway, which currently has a potholed rough stone surface.