New Zealander Ray Thackwell, born 1933, had a most intriguing and diverse racing career. He started out in the very competitive world of speedway solo motorcycle racing with the Hastings, NZ, team. At 17 he went to the UK to race speedway there, which he did with success for several years. He and fellow Kiwi solo speedway rider and great mate Ronnie Moore raced in a couple of events in 1956 in a Cooper Climax T39 "bobtail Cooper" sports. Thackwell had no successes in the UK, but had a win and two seconds in minor Scandinavian races.

In 1957 Ray and his mate Ronnie Moore bought a pair of Cooper T41s with Coventry Climax FWA engines (1100cc single overhead cam) which they took to South Africa and Rhodesia. These were chassis F2-1-57 and F2-2-57 respectively, and were sold to local drivers at the end of the tour. The two Kiwis competed in four International meetings, with Ray's best result being a start-to-finish outright win in a 10 lap scratch race supporting the feature race, the 1820 Settlers Handicap, while Ronnie had one major race win.

Back in Europe the pair bought two new Mark 2 F2 Coopers, T43s with more powerful FWB engines, later replaced by twin cam FPFs, which they entered as Kiwi Equipe. He raced F2 in Europe and the UK for two more years before returning to New Zealand, where he went back to Speedway. He didn't give up car racing, though; he was in a racing car for the 1959 NZ Grand Prix at Ardmore, a Cooper Climax T43, which resulted in a DNF, and he raced it in all the major North Island meetings that year, with some minor places. In 1960 he was racing a Cooper 500, with no significant results, and for 1961 and 1962 he seems to have concentrated on speedway.

TOP: Thackwell in the fabulous Porsche RSR, all but unbeatable. BOTTOM, the Series Production XU-1, with Ray in a very rare "off". (WASCC collection)

In 1963 he started car racing again, in a Lotus Cortina, then an Alfa Romeo and a 1500cc Repco Brabham. The Brabham was entered for all the 1965/6 Tasman Series races in NZ, and he raced it at Levin, Pukekohe, Wigram, Teratonga and the round-the-houses circuit Waimate (not part of the series), getting his best result at the last-named circuit. He then moved to Western Australia in time for the opening of Wanneroo Park. He raced a Mini Cooper S until 1971 when he switched to a Porsche 911.

In 1973 he went to Europe and brought back a hot Porsche Carrera, very fast and very successful, and he also shared a drive with Barry Coleman in a Torana XU-1 at Bathurst, though they failed to finish. At one stage his team included the "crossflow" Mini Cooper S and, more successful, the Porsche 911S in which he won the last two Six Hour Races with fellow Kiwi Jim Mullins co-driving. The 911S gave way to the powerful works Porsche 911 RSR which was dominant in the mid-1970s, but by 1975 he was pretty well out of racing when financial difficulties intervened.

Soon afterwards, Ray and his family moved to the UK, where he purchased a disused gold mine in South Wales. In the UK he promoted the development of his very talented son Mike Thackwell who, with the encouragement of Alan Jones, made into into Formula One in 1980 at the age of 19. Despite great talent he had very little experience (he had only been racing since 1979) and was unsuccessful in the three GP races he entered that year (for Arrows and Tyrell) , and unsuccessful again in 1984 for the RAM Team.

Through the 1980s Mike Thackwell drove for a variety of teams in F2, F3000, the World Sports Car Championship, the Japanese Protoype Championship, and the New Zealand International Championship before retiring completely from motor racing in 1988.

(With thanks to "Heironymus" of The Nostalgia Forum for South African career data, and David McKinney for NZ-European data).

* 2nd on Scratch.