Tony Trimmer and Melchester Racing

During the early 1970’s Brian Morris’s enthusiastic involvement with saloon car racing sparked a life-long passion in motorsport.

Throughout this period, he helped raise cash for drivers as part of a vision of helping the underdog. This led to the support of several drivers at club level who took on and very often beat the champions of the day. The drivers in saloon car racing in that period and there to be beaten were the incomparable Gerry Marshall, Dave Brodie, John Bloomfield and many others.

This exposure led to a long period of cooperation with John Webb, the Managing Director of MCD, owner of several UK race circuits and very much the forerunner to Bernie Ecclestone in deal-making of that era. John had a vision of why motorsport existed, and it simply was – entertainment. With Webb’s encouragement Brian expanded his interest into Formula 5000 in the mid 70’s and arranged for hire of a Lola for Tony Trimmer to take on the field in some of the season’s races both in the UK and abroad.

Through a business associate Brian met a member of the Saudi Royal Family who was also enthused by motorsport. The trackside atmosphere captivated the Prince and within weeks Brian had been asked to form a team with Saudi backing to conclude that season. This was on condition of anonymity.

And so, the foundations of Melchester Racing were laid, and the team maintained its association with Tony Trimmer as its driver. Finishing fourth in the Formula Atlantic championship in 1976, having contested less than half the events was just rewards. Reliability added to Tony’s speed and skill was the key and this was to be the hallmark for successive seasons.

In the following year, the Saudi Prince was persuaded to put up a more substantial budget to contest the Shellsport Group 8 Championship, which was a mixture of Formula 5000 and one-year-old Grand Prix cars. A brand-new Surtees TS19 was acquired having been built specially by the factory and whilst money was always an issue whilst we hunted for commercial sponsorship (against much larger budgets of the competition such as Guy Edwards), preparation and organisation led by Chief Mechanic Alan Charles, were our strongpoint and the Championship was won for both Driver and Entrant.

1978 saw the acquisition of a McLaren M23 from BS Fabrications, who had campaigned the car in Grand Prix’s for Brett Lunger. This was to contest what was now the Aurora British Formula 1 Championship. With funds limiting the campaign to just 8 of the 12 rounds on MCD circuits, Melchester again won both the Driver’s and Entrant’s championships, despite very serious competition. Again, Alan’s preparation meant reliability and Tony’s innate speed were the factors in a sweeping victory. It was especially sweet as the later McLaren M26 was such a failure at GP level in the hands of John Watson.

The winter of 1978 was a period of much turmoil in motorsport with a substantial lobby to outlaw ground effect cars for the domestic series that had been so effective at international level. Melchester was affected greatly by this situation as they were contracted to run Desire Wilson on behalf of MCD and therefore obliged to run the conventional Tyrrell 008’s. The second car was initially for American pay driver, Gordon Smiley and subsequently Neil Betteridge following the lack of funds from the USA.

The bid to ban ground effects subsequently failed and the Tyrrell’s were therefore not competitive, with the latest equipment sported by other teams. They did, however, bring the cars home regularly in the top group and remained the leading ‘conventional’ team.

Not winning caused the Saudi Prince to lose interest in motorsport and Brian continued to manage his expanding interests in horse racing and breeding for the next five years. Without his base funding we were not able to reinvest in Championship winning cars to go forward or attract the level of sponsorship funding to be competitive. The series went into decline by 1980 and we disbanded the team.

source via FB Melchester Racing

about Tony Trimmer

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about Desiré Wilson