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check on and enforce HTP eligibility where appropriate. Besides, Goodwood should have
enough clout to invite the best and reject the rest 'We make every effort to choose the best
cars,' says Kinsman, 'and we would always invite the car with a continuous history first.'
Has the MSA been asleep on the job? It's a reasonable question, although to be fair it has
had more important priorities in the aftermath of four rally spectator deaths on the 2013
Snowman rally and the 2014 Jim Clark rally. There was a real danger that an entire branch
of motor sport could be banned outright and the subsequent Scottish Government motor
sport safety review has been extensive and rigorous. Its recommendations, published in
January last year, were comprehensive and have been taken up in full by the MSA.
'Faced with significant changes in our sport,' says Rob Jones, the MSA's chief executive, 'our
focus has been on spectator safety.'
He's right and by most accounts the MSA rose magnificently to the challenge of those
recommendations, but I'd not be alone in thinking it hasn't been independent enough in the
past when faced with controversial FIA diktats, such as those for stress ECG tests for
International licence applications, or the dubious short-lifing of some components such as
seats, belts, helmets and overalls.
Nor do Parkin or Jones seem aware of some of the many complaints I heard when
researching this feature. 'It's not registering with us,' responded Jones when I put some of the
anger over HTPs to him.
Several schools of thought are out there concerning ways to discourage the cheats,
including the pragmatic acknowledgement of dodges and allowing free internals to
components such as dampers, but rigorously enforcing the external dimensions. 'lhis would
be an enormous step,' said its proposer, a former senior MSA official, 'and I'm not sure
there's anyone brave enough to do it, but Appendix K is no longer fit for purpose.'
In spite of being disillusioned with the current enforcement, Hadfield has more faith in
Appendix K. 'Look at Historic Formula Ford,' he says. 'They simply get the dampers off the
first five cars and send them off for testing. It can be done and Appendix K is a good
structure. It's like the lines on a tennis court, which allow you to go and play within it.'
There's another way of doing it, though, which encompasses both ideas and has been
repeatedly suggested by one well-known Historic race driver. His idea embraces the
enforcement of Appendix K, but also attempts to remove any benefit of cheating.
So ride height should be set by a three-inch block, for example, which means there's no
advantage in lowering the car. It's how things used to be done, but modem silencers might
make it tricky to implement. Minimum weight should be set at mid-homologation settings
and ballast mounted high in the structure, which would negate the benefits of reducing
weight. Lastly the camshaft lift should be as stated in the homologation papers, so that
cheating engines can't breathe deeply enough to benefit from their hooky specifications.
In the end, though, does any of this matter? I'd suggest it does. As we've seen with other
sports, cheating ultimately discourages competitors and eventually puts off spectators. If the
result's rigged, what's the point? And while not everyone I spoke to agreed, I believe that if
you discourage the grass roots and the little guys, you ultimately kill the sport.
Perhaps the bigger point is that Historic racing, like motor sport in general, doesn't enjoy a
guaranteed existence. It's not environmentally friendly , it's noisy and it's dangerous. It
seems only right that the administration of Historic motor sport should be trying to ensure
that the cars are usable and accepted in the long term rather than turning a blind eye to a
few duplicitous black-hats hoodwinking themselves onto the podium and, in the process,
putting the whole sport at risk.