55 Year Old F1 Car, Bought at Historics, to Compete at Monaco this Weekend.

The one and only South African F1 car, bought by John Carpenter last August at Historics auctions, is to compete in the Historic Monaco Grand Prix this weekend May 13th/14th.

(You may remember this event featured in Quentin Willson's Classic Car Show last year where Jodie Kidd cast Quentin aside to strike up a friendship with one of the drivers.)

The Assegai was built in South African engineer and racing driver Tony Kotzé, who sadly passed away three weeks ago. It was due to contest the 1962 Rand Grand Prix in Kyalami but did not qualify. 

Named after a zulu spear, the Assegai follows the lines of a Lotus 18 but with a distinctive sharknose slightly reminiscent of 1961 Ferrari F1 cars. It is powered by a 1.5 litre, 4-cylinder Alfa Romeo engine with five-speed gearbox. 

After occasional track appearances and changes of ownership, the car was purchased at classic car auction specialists, Historics at Brooklands, in August 2015 by former F1 team member and now Oxfordshire classic car collector and enthusiast, John Carpenter.

Together with long-time friend, historic racing car preparation guru and racing driver Iain Rowley and his Nuffield-based company, Delta Motorsport, John embarked on a painstaking journey to return the car to exactly the same mechanical specification as it appeared at Kyalami, in order to fulfil the very stringent regulations of the Monaco GP organisers. Iain will be driving the car on the immortal 3.34km Monaco road circuit. 

Historics at Brooklands next major auction of 130 varied classic motor cars is at Brooklands Museum near Weybridge, Surrey on Saturday June 11^th.  All consignments and information are at www.historics.co.uk