Snetterton, March 30th
The Snetterton Motor Racing Club opened the 1963 Formula One season with a 50-lap event on their airfield circuit, and attracted a small entry of factory cars and some private owners. B.R.M. fielded two cars, with Graham Hill and Ginther as drivers, both being 1962 cars fitted with new engines, these having a new crankshaft layout, new firing order and tuned-length groups of exhaust pipes on each side of the V8 engine running into short tail pipes. Lucas fuel injection is retained and maximum speed is 11,200 r.p.m. Team Lotus had only one car running, this being a 1962 car with old-type V8 Coventry-Climax engine and Jimmy Clark was the driver. Cooper also fielded a lone entry, entering a 1962 V8 car for McLaren. The British Racing Partnership, now operating under their own name, were the same set-up as last year’s U.D.T.-Laystall team, with Innes Ireland and the Texan driver Jim Hall on a pair of Lotus 24 cars fitted with B.R.M. V8 engines. Ireland had Lucas fuel-injection on his car, with short exhaust pipes under the back axle, and Hall had last year’s layout of Weber carburetters and upswept stub exhausts. This was Hall’s first outing with the B.R.P. in Formula One.
Hall’s Lotus 24 was powered by a B.R.M. V8
