Anniversary Celebrations

The sun shone brightly for lunchtime at Rockingham on 8 June, but it looks as though the smiles on the faces of our guests at the 50th celebrations would have lit up the paddock anyway.

Here are some members from years past and some of the cars which raced in the early days. David Cox has provided most of the captions.

To our guests, Startline sends its warmest thanks for coming to the celebrations and looks forward to seeing everybody at the Centenary in 2058.

Reading from Right to Left: Alan Putt; former secretary, current Vice President Peter Healey; former treasurer, current Vice President Julian Pratt; former secretary (on two occasions I think) Bob Mitchell; former Startline editor, former President (before Ralph Firman) Frank Tiedeman; founder and President Emeritus Suzy Livingstone; former secretary and championship coordinator (for about 20 years), she was Mrs Monoposto basically, current Vice President Brian Jordan who was on the committee for a short time in the 'seventies and was also a Mono Champion driving a Nike special The car is the Pete Anstiss Lotus 20/22 that won the FJ race. He is a former Mono scribe (previous winner of the Quill Trophy) And don't they all look young enough to be re-joining the gird! Photo :John Fox

David and Mary Cox received some comments from some of the above assembled guests:

John Fox: Just a note to say how much the Chambers brothers and myself enjoyed Sunday. I must apologise for not introducing ourselves personally - I suspect we were too busy reminiscing with "old" friends such as Jim Yardley, Suzy Livingstone, David Dudley, Peter Anstiss, Brian Jordan and Julian Pratt to name but a few!

It was great to see the Club in such good health and those people we asked what they thought was the secret, many put it down to the efforts of David and yourself, so it looks as though your leadership is well appreciated!

Alan Putt: It was a very good do and it is only a shame that we did not manage to get some of the other old members along.

Bob Mitchell Thank you so much for inviting me and my guests to the Mono Club's 50th year celebrations at the Rockingham Raceway. The opportunity to meet up with so many old friends from the distant past was an occasion not to be missed. There were so many and so little time in which to meet and chat at length with all of them even though 1 was one of the last to leave the circuit
I was pleased that so many of the older and long standing members were able to attend, especially Frank Teideman, Barry Smith and, Suzy Livingstone, Alan Putt, Julian Pratt, Peter Healy, John and Janet Adams (all the way from Ireland) to mention but a few.

In the early days of the Monoposto Formula, special components for constructing racing cars were not readily available to the impecunious club racer. We either made or modified components ourselves or made do with clapped out cast offs. These were the days before the Hewland gearbox, so I made a few sets of close ratio gears to suit the early VW split type box. I was gobsmacked when a chap (I believe his his name was Peter Jones) announced that he had bought one of these sets from me. I had quite forgotten how many that I had made. That must have been about 52 years ago when Monoposto was a Register.

We thoroughly enjoyed the day it brought back so many happy memories for us, even to see that some people pitched small tents on the strip of grass in the paddock just as we did all those years ago at Silverstone before it was paved over. I suspect the majority use campervans now days though. Many things have changed over the years of course, one wondcrs what the next 50 years will bring. Whatever, I'm sure the Monoposto Club still will be around to cater for the single seater club driver probably driving cars powered by electricity or some such.

Thank you again David and the Club for a really grand day. It made me feel proud to have been a Past-President and part of it all.

As always, the Monoposto Lensman Andrew Cliffe captured the moments (below). Captions mainly by David.