DK Engineering Debut Two Special Race cars at the 2011 Goodwood Revival

Seven cars were provided by DK Engineering for this year's revival meeting; the freshly restored 857S was entered into the Freddie March Memorial Trophy alongside another DK entry a Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta. Also in Saturdays racing was the 1961 E-type, the 16th car built and the sixth of seven 1961 race cars. The racing line-up was completed by the Ferrari 250 LM which raced in the Whitsun trophy also on Saturday. In addition to the race cars the 860 Monza, driven in period by Phil Hill, Mike Hawthorn and of course Fangio was driven in the "Tribute to Fangio" parade on all three days. A Ferrari 288 GTO and BMW 328 were also shown by DK in the Earls Court Motor show area.

There is no doubt however that despite such a large number of cars on display it was the 857S which attracted the most attention. The car was originally built in 1955 as a Ferrari Works car but due to an accident in Ireland in September 1955 the car was repaired by Scaglietti with a unique tailfin and delivered to John Edgar as a new car. The car has excellent race history and was driven by many great drivers in period including Caroll Shelby. DK Engineering purchased the car in November and immediately commenced the restoration which was completed shortly before the revival. In qualifying on Friday James Cottingham drove superbly well and as a result the car took a clear pole position with a blistering 1.33.6 lap time, some three seconds quicker than the Maserati in second place. At the start of the race on Saturday James found himself in second place behind the Cooper-Jaguar T33 driven by Nick Wigley however it was not long before the red Ferrari once again returned to the front of the field. In the following laps James stretched his lead before the Cooper-Jaguar blew it's engine. This left the Ferrari ahead of Tony Wood in the RGS-Jaguar Atalanta. The gap between the two cars at the front remained fairly consistent until with two laps to go the Ferrari began to slow, approaching the chicane for the penultimate time it was clear Tony Wood was now very close. In the cockpit of the car James had noticed that the oil pressure was low and conscious of the rarity of the motor in front of him he made the decision to pull into the pits and surrender the lead of the race.

In the earlier Whitsun Trophy Jeremy Cottingham drove the 250 LM very well to finish as the fastest Ferrari. James suffered more bad luck in the Fordwater trophy as despite making up places from the offset, after the driver change a vibration caused the second driver, David Franklin to pull into the pits. Although initially disappointing the pace of the car was extremely positive especially given that it was the only roadster in the race and many of the other cars were purpose built race cars.

Images provided by and Tim Scott @ Fluid Images and James Mann

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