1973-4 CHEVRON B24/28

	1973-4 CHEVRON B24/28
Formula 5000 V8

Chevron B24/28 undergoing restoration 2012

Tom in the marshalling grid for Race 3 at SMP/HSRCA Historics 30th June

History

Purchased by us January 2012 from Aaron Lewis, the Team VDS Chevron chassis no 07 was made famous by the late Peter Gethin and Teddy Pillette at the 1973/4 Australian Gold Star and the Tasman series and was then returned to England and very successfully driven by Vern Schuppan, Barry Singleton and Tony Dean.

All Chevron details are available on http://www.oldracingcars.com/f5000/cars.php

Other owners included Australian's the late Bill Marshall and George Parlby neither who ever raced it and in 2004 Aaron Lewis obtained it from the USA where George had sent it to be sold and returned it here and raced it successfully including a second place at the AGP in good company.

Now undergoing complete freshen up in our workshop hopefully ready to debut at Eastern Creek late June Historic meeting to be driven by ex Formula Ford and Formula 3 - 2009-10 National F3 Champion Tom Tweedie. .

Brief Specification

Chevrolet based 5 litre V8 fuel injected with Vertex magneto ignition around 600 bhp

Hewland DG300 5 x speed gearbox with limited slip differential

Monocoque aluminium chassis & fibreglass body

Disc brakes F&R

Independent 4 wheel suspension with unequal wishbones

13" front wheels and 18" rears

Top speed depending on gearing 180+ mph (over 290 kph)

1973 Chevron B24/28 F500 history

More photos available shortly when restoration is completed.

It must be noted that a nameless well known part time amateur photographer claiming to be a historic car enthusiast emailed us a threatening message recently regarding using an old previous owner photo of the car in 2010 on this site claiming we are contravening his copyright and providing a lengthy and tasteless discourse on the penalties associated etc.

As result we have removed his photo of the car until new shots from elsewhere replace it with Tom driving in 2013.

This entire site is only provided for historic car information mainly for enthusiasts and is not intentionally a commercial enterprise other than the odd car or item we might have for sale from time to time to prop up our finances and you could have knocked us over with a feather when we recieved the demand ... amaizing that people go to such lengths to be nasty without anything to be gained except a bad reputation.

IBC Motorsport - Team Tom

UPDATE 30 July 2013 ... "a winner first time out!"

Eastern Creek (Sydney Motorsport Park) weekend June 28 - 30 HSRCA Historic race meeting and the Chevron's first race meeting after a major rebuild and brand new motor ... Tom WON the main race and was virtually 2 x seconds off the F5000 lap record on a damp track and had no competition ... see www.tomtweedie.com and his next outings are at Muscle Car Masters (August 31) and the V8 Supercar Round also with a lot of F5000's at Sandown Park Sept 13 - 15 so this weekend was an excellent shakedown and apart from a few adjustments everything went very well.

Photo courtesy of Peter Schell - HSRCA

UPDATE - Muscle Car Masters Aug 31 - Sept 1st at Eastern Creek (SMP) Grand Prix circuit

Huge race meeting predominantly for Touring Cars but F5000 were also asked to attend by invitation including FOUR of the best cars from New Zealand F5000 brigade so the racing was intense.

Tom qualified 4 seconds under the existing lap record for pole position (1 m 25.7secs) and won all THREE races including setting a new LAP RECORD in race two. The Chevron ran faultlessly although we spent some time on Friday's untimed "free" practice sessions adjusting an playing with the suspension settings to get a good balance. Next meeting Sandown (V8 round) Sept 13 - 15.

Watch the following YouTube footage at Sandown Park ... Davison gets the jump on Tom then misses the turn at Dandenong corner … Tom went on to win and also broke the lap record by four seconds with a broken rev counter drive!

Lap 1 race 3 - turn 2 (Tom/Smith/Higgins/Sala)

FASTEST RACE CAR ever to lap Sandown Park's current configeration and two new lap records .... weekend 13-15 September F5000 support races to V8 Supercars Sandown 500 enduro

Sydneysider Tom Tweedie won both races 1 and 2 convincingly on Saturday after a small engine problem hampered his qualifying leaving him in 3rd grid position after only one flying lap.

However he made up for it in both races and lowered the lap record to 1m 06.3 in race 1 and dropped it a further half second to 1m 5.7 in race two ... faster than any car whether modern or historic has ever lapped this circuit ever ... quite an achievement for a 40 year old car with it's 25 year old driver and good for F5000 which are still the fastest racing cars in Australia after all these years.

Race 3 the Chevron B24 was just beaten away from the rolling start by Kiwi Andrew Higgins (Lola T400), but burst through to lead half-way round the opening lap and was never challenged and won by over 10 seconds.

Next meeting Sandown Park Historic weekend 8-11 November.

Kiwi Higgins (Lola T400) briefly leads Tom (Chevron) into turn 2 on lap one in race 3 on Sunday

SANDOWN PARK VHRR Historic meeting 8 -11 Nov 2013

Weekend started with intermittant rain but cleared by Saturday ... Chevron again on pole position and was leading both races 1 and 2 when accidents further back in the field by other drivers caused both races to be red flagged.

Race 3 on Sunday afternoon however was run in sunny conditions and Tom in the Chevron won by a considerable margin thus ending the messy weekend on a good note and his next run will be at the March Phillip Island historics.

The Chevron now leads the 2013/14 Australian Formula 5000 Championship by and even larger margin and in it's 9 x starts in this championship has not been beaten with 9 x outright wins!

Tom enjoying himself - a little sideways adds to the fun!

PHILIP ISLAND HISTORIC race meeting - March 7-9 2014

A class field of F5000 cars mixed in with some other fast and interesting cars including John Bowe in a very fast F1 Cosworth engined 1973 March Formula 1 DFV engined car which stole pole position (just) from Tom who was second then F5000's of Davison, Greer, Sala and the rest … a great field which also included Ian Ross in the ex Alan Jones F1 Beatrice Lola turbo plus Les Wrights Beneton F1 turbo both being most conspicious in their original livery as raced in the day … and the weather for a change was great!

Tom won both races on Saturday by a considerable margin and also gained an outright lap record only to be advised late Saturday afternoon by the Clerk of Course he and John Bowe (who came second) had been recorded over the "very sensitive'' EPA noise meters limit of 95 decibels probably due to low cloud cover as neither had ever been noted for excessive noise before so both had to pack up for the remainder of the weekend as they were not permitted to race anymore and became spectators on Sunday.

It is understood however noise meter exemptions have been obtained for more ''important'' race meetings such as Moto GP and the good news is the penguins still are alive and healthy as they live over 5 x kms away … and we have also been notified the Clerk of Course from this race meeting has since resigned from his duties.

Tom leads John Bowe lap 1 on Saturday (1973 March F1) race 1 at Phillip Island 2014

HISTORIC SANDOWN PARK November 8-10 2014

Seven of NEW ZEALANDS best F5000 cars arrived at Sandown on Friday morning including Clark Proctor (March) and Steve Ross (McRae) both who are front running Kiwi cars and were mixed with Tom and Australia's best F5000 cars for a showdown of driver skills, horsepower, speed and wonderful noise and the only front running Oz car missing was Richard Davison who had engine drama's at the last minute the day before the meeting.

It all began in qualifying when Tom won pole position by over 2 x seconds and only just over a second slower than his own Sandown outright lap record followed by Proctor, Zazryn, Sala who was to lose his engine in R1 plus Ross next and further back than expected and the rest.

Race 1 was won by Tom by over 4 x seconds although all were seemingly nursing their warm engines thanks to extremely hot weather and was not helped by following a safety car for a couple of laps while they cleared up Lewis after he had collided with the NZ's Greer Lola … noted however was Ross who had overshot turn 1 from the start had dropped to 7th place did a demon drive back to 2nd outright in the last lap so it was all hotting up for R2.

Race 2. Lap 1 Zazryn overshot the back straight and belted the tyre wall badly damaging the car but he was OK so most of the race was again under safety car until the last two laps where Ross won the restart and cleverly kept Tom behind him to the flag winning by a tiny margin of 0.02 of a second but it was obvious his advantage came not only from good driving but he had more horsepower than Tom's car which also is not shabby in a straight line and Proctor 3rd who also enjoys lots of NZ ''neddies'' was right up Tom's tailpipes …. good racing!

Race 3. Sunday afternoon Tom won the start and was never headed winning by over 15 seconds with Proctor and Ross in a brilliant duel for second the former coming 2nd by a whisker and Alfie Costanzo (star of F5000 in the late 1970's) in Hamilton's McLaren with a brilliant 4th.

TASMAN HISTORIC EASTERN CREEK (SMP)
28 - 30 Nov 2014

Apart from a tiny hiccup on lap 1 Saturday morning qualifying when a bottom front suspension arm caused problems resulting in Tom not doing any qualifying laps or racing on Saturday so as result he was relegated to start from the back of the grid once the problem was repaired for Sunday's first race.

Race 1 - Sat DNS

Race 2 - Sunday … Tom started back of grid after two DNS's (did not start) in a field of 15 x F5000's including SIX cars from New Zealand who were at Sandown three weeks ago the fastest being NZ Champion Ross and runner up Proctor both of whom are excellent and seasoned experienced drivers and are in Australia to try and beat Tom amongst other things.

When the starters lights went out Tom erupted from last place and was already more than half way up the field before the end of lap 1 and continued passing cars sometimes two at a time until he reached a very hard trying Proctor who was leading on lap 5. They sparred for about half a lap until Tom squeezed past on turn 3 when Proctor jumped on the power a little too early and creating wheelspin and from thereon Tom just disappeared in the lead winning by 12 seconds in the 9 lap race. Proctor (March) was 2nd, Ross (McRae) 3rd followed by Melbourne's Zazryn who had repaired his Lola T332 from his big Sandown shunt three weeks beforehand and the rest of the mixed Kiwi/Oz field also with a couple of retirements for various reasons.

Race 3 - Tom was on pole position with Proctor next, Ross, Zazryn and the rest and he easily got to turn one first but the track was damp from earlier rain and all but Tom seemed to be making heavy going in the slippery conditions loosing time and having an occasional spin but Tom forged on at ''full noise'' seemingly not bothered by the conditions which worsened in the middle of the race with another light downpour. Soon the track dried in most places and Tom won from Proctor by an immense 1 min 17 seconds over 10 x laps and Zazryn who had spun was 3rd followed by Kiwi Greer then Ross who had also had a spin. Tom picked up the Kevin Bartlett Trophy but the rain had returned and the race meeting came to a wet close not long after… in the end another great weekend for Tom and Johno Masala our great mechanic of many years. Also a special mention to Wayne Smith engine builder whose brilliant engine has now completed 8 x meetings without even changing a spark plug but will now be checked just in case … all good!

RETRO SPEEDFEST SYDNEY MOTORSPORT PARK (Eastern Creek)
5 -7 June 2015

Not the greatest that weekend that Tom expected … the Chevron had engine missfire issues on Friday with ignition electrics and didn’t practice at all and the magneto was rebuilt so he lost track setup time etc and went cold turkey into qualifying Saturday morning which was not ideal.

Qualifying Tom was a second off the pace in 3rd on the grid behind a F1 March and Lola T332 both driven by ''professional drivers'' Alex Davison and John Bowe. Tom however won race 1 after a brilliant dice with Davison and was 2nd in races 2 and 3 but the misfire persisted. He also had a cracked wheel centre after R2 so we fitted up the tyres onto our wet wheels which reduced the rear track a little due to different offsets and changed the cars handling … so Johno adjusted rear bar etc best possible to compensate but overall he lost about 2 tenths of a second per lap and finished 2 x secs just behind the Davison T332 in 2nd place … OK but not satisfying as he should have won all 3 races if all things were 100% but they weren’t!

The engine is now being rebuilt after 9 x race meetings (at approx 1500 kms) which is a brilliant testament to Wayne Smith (engine builder in Sydney) and apart from this little hiccup has been excellent and Toms next race meeting is Sandown Park (Melbourne) Nov 6 - 8th and everything will be 100% again.