The Royal Automobile Club Woodcote Trophy race at Dijon saw a stunning grid of exceptional quality tackling very damp conditions – particularly at the start of this fiercely contested one-hour battle.
The race was finally won by Ben Shuckburgh and Sam Hancock in their Jaguar D-type; an outstanding result for Shuckburgh, who only took up racing cars a year ago. Nor was this Sam Hancock’s only triumph of the race. He was also co-driving Stefan Ziegler’s D-type, which started from the back of the grid after Ziegler was not able to make practice. In it, Hancock set fastest lap of the race, while the Ziegler/Hancock pairing worked their way up the very full and competitive field to finish 16th overall and third in class.
Back at the front, the first few cars over the line represented a varied selection of the very best genuine, pre-1956 sports-racers. In second place behind the Shuckburgh/Hancock D-type came the Maserati A6 GCS of Lukas Huni and Gary Pearson, followed by the Ferrari 750 Monza of Andrew and Richard Frankel (the overall winners of the 2009 Woodcote Trophy). In fourth, came the D-type of Tony Pickering and Spencer Marsh, while Hubert Fabri and Gregor Fisken took a very fine fifth place in their Aston Martin DB3/S, having spent a good chunk of the first half of the race circulating closely with the Frankel brothers’ Ferrari.
Other class winners were Will Arif in his Jaguar C-type; and Chris Guest – racing his Cooper T21 for the very first time.
