Been there, done that. Ray Mallock had won the Formula Atlantic championship in Britain in 1979 when the category was reintroduced to the country after a two-year hiatus. He’d then competed in the Aurora British Formula 1 Championship in 1980 at the wheel of Surtees – before a huge shunt at Thruxton caused by a car failure – and Wolf machinery. But for 1981, there was good reason to return to Atlantic to attempt to win a second crown.
“There was this thing that Bernie Ecclestone [then the owner of the Brabham F1 team and head of the FOCA teams group] was supporting,” recalls Mallock. “The prize for that was an F1 test drive…”
