AUTOSPORT HISTORICS 25 JULY 2019 9reliable now than they were in my day,
but the great art of endurance racing
is looking after the car. Every gear
change, make sure it’s absolutely spot
on. That’s where I got my main kicks.”
It’s here that the Capri came into its own for long-distance
contests. It was an easy machine to drive – which meant fewer
mistakes and greater reliability – and, compared to its eventual
Ford RS500 successor, it was much kinder to its tyres.
“You drive that much better if the car is easy to drive because
it gives you confidence,” adds Spice. “You can actually put the
Capri on its rear with no fear – it’s predictable. The trick was
Most successful
Capri drivers
in the BSCCSpice revelled
in the Ford
Capri’s docile
nature and
reckons it was
‘idiot-proof’to drive a Capri not sideways, but to drive it neatly. Although if you
wanted to show off, you could put it sideways just like that and
still be in total control. We spent most of our testing making it
easier to drive. The easier it was, the lap times followed anyway.”
After yet more class wins in the BSCC during 1979, the
next season GSR signed young charger and then-one-time
champion Andy Rouse. In later years he would go on to lift
the series crown three more times, and remains the most
decorated driver in the history of the championship.
Rouse had less experience than Spice for the duration of their
time as team-mates, and it was the team boss who topped the
podium more frequently. But Spice doesn’t lament the class
system for denying him the overall title.
“Most drivers, and I include myself in this, we don’t drive for
publicity,” he says. “We drive because we enjoy it. You enjoy the
challenge, and it never worried me one little bit that we didn’t win
a title at all. I came up through the minnows. You work just as
hard driving a 1000cc Mini as you do a Chevrolet Camaro.”
After a third Spa 24 Hours win on the bounce, the beginning
of the 1980s put paid to the Capri’s formidable reign. Thanks
to the rise of the Rover Vitesse to prominence, for 1983 Spice
evolved into Group C sportscars thereafter. With the exception
of an outing in that season’s Bathurst 1000 – in which the
“piece of shit” Toyota Celica he was sharing with Bob Holden
never made the race due to an engine failure on the green-flag
lap – Spice never seriously returned to touring cars.
Nonetheless, he crafted a legacy: 18 overall wins more than
the next best Capri BSCC pilot, but Spice remains modest. He
credits the team rather than any obvious driving excellence.
“Neil Brown checked the engine out with his stethoscope
and said, ‘You should never take
it to 6500 revs’. He was usually
absolutely right, so we didn’t really
have many mechanical worries.
“I don’t know what other teams
were doing either, I haven’t a clue.
But at GSR we did a fair bit of testing
and we took it very seriously. I don’t
know why we were more successful
than average. People say it was the
driver, but I’ve always put my
success in a Capri more down to
[engineer] Dave Cook than my
driving, to be honest. That’s not
me being modest, that’s a fact.
Dave made those cars idiot-proof.”
That might be pushing it,
but clearly the notion of building
an ultra-successful team on the
foundation of engineering rigour
rubbed off on a young Rouse,
who still had another three
titles yet to wrap up. QGORDON SPICE
25 wins (overall)
Gordon Spice (1976-82)
7 wins
Vince Woodman (1976-82)
5 wins
Andy Rouse (1980-81)
Tom Walkinshaw (1974-76)
4 wins
Brian Muir (1972-79)
3 wins
Stuart Graham (1977-79)
Colin Vanderwell (1976-79)
Jeff Allam (1978-79)
2 wins
Chris Craft (1977-78)Capris will be celebrated
at the Silverstone Classic