F5000 Anniversary

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A select group of Formula 5000 race cars will attend the WeatherTech International Challenge with Brian Redman event at the iconic Road America racetrack on July 12-16 to relive and celebrate the 55th anniversary of the birth of a phenomenal race series.  

The inaugural F5000 race at Road America took place on July 27, 1968.  It was won by Jerry Hansen in a Lola T140 followed by three other Lola T140s.  In a combined grid with Formula B cars, other marques included McLaren, Lotus, Le Grand, McKee, Brabham and Chevron.  Notable drivers included John Gunn, Steve Durst, David Pabst, Jerry Entin, Lou Sells, and Dick Smothers.

The 2023 contingent of F5000 cars will include Lolas, March, Matich, McLaren, McRae and McKee, competing on this thrilling 4-mile racetrack, one of the drivers’ favourites, with long straights, elevation changes, sweeping turns, a kink, and a carousel.

Further celebrations will take place in August when a group of over 25 F5000 cars heads to Laguna Seca for the Monterey Motorsports Pre-Reunion and Reunion, nearly a dozen of them coming from Australia, the UK and New Zealand to make the celebration of 55 years of Formula 5000 a truly international event.

These stories are all from the pages of Historic Motor Racing News.  Some have been abbreviated for this web site.  If you'd like to receive the full version, please visit our subscription page where you will find postal subscriptions available.  A full subscription also entitles you to access the current issue online (available soon), so you can take it with you and read it anywhere, and we are working on providing full access to our archives of back issues exclusively for our subscribers.