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Mardi Gras Motorsport was formed in 1987 to build
& maintain a Ford Fiesta for participation in the Ford Credit Fiesta
Championship. From
1988 onwards the team principles, Dick Richards, Martin Sharpe and Paul Hetherington
continued the teams winning trend, winning at least one championship every year
to date.
Our early association with Honda started in 1988
with the Honda CRX "one make" championship. In 1990 we were the first team
in Europe to race the Honda Civic EF9 "Vtec" model, winning 21 races and
the Group N championship for two years in succession.
In 1992 we ran a two car team in the Group N category using the Civic
EG6 model. Our success was recognised by Honda UK in 1993 when we
collaborated with them to run a Works Team of 6 Group N Honda Civics.
The results were:-
The winning driver James Thompson subsequently went on to
drive factory cars in the British Touring Car Championship for Vauxhall
and Honda.
In 1994 we ran a team of three "Team Castrol" Honda's with the following success:
The Championship winning driver on this occasion
was Simon
Harrison who went on to drive for the 1995 Works Peugeot
Touring Car Team.
It was during the 1993/4 season
that we had very successful results with "Team Castrol" Honda's in the annual
24 hour race at Snetterton.
In 1995 we took part in a national Saloon 2000
Championship for cars to basic Group A specification with a Civic EG6, we
also ran
Stephen
Day
in the Rover Turbo championship to 4th in the title with 1 win.
1996 - Jason takes the Renault Spiders by Storm 37 wins in total! this was going to be extremely difficult record to beat! 1997 - A varied Year During this year the Team also entered Richard Dean &
Stephen Day in the all new
Vauxhall Vectra SRi
championship, netting 2nd & 5th in the title race with
Richard Dean Winning 3
times.
In 1997 we ran Kirsten Kolby in the second half of the
season of Renault Spiders with some very promising results.
Tomy Rustad the 1997
European Renault Spider Champion joined us for the last round of the
British series, The records show
Tomy Rustad won with fastest lap.
1998 - British Touring Car Championship Beckons 1998 was
the first year that the Team was to become involved in the British Touring
Car Championship. We used a Honda Accord Super Touring car for the
Norwegian driver
Roger Moen
with
sponsorship from ViMenn Magazine, Auto Borsen, and Hasco Motor AS.
The team was also responsible for the race
programme of 3 Renault Spiders driven by Italian
Tobia
Masini, Kent boy Simon Hill and former Hill Climb Champion,
Guernsey resident Andy Priaulx . Best results were a second place at
Brands Hatch.
In July 1998 the Team took our Honda Integra R to
the 24 hour race at Spa Franchorchamps in Belgium. The all British driver
line up comprised
James Kaye, Stephen Day and Simon
Harrison . The car was entered as one of the official Honda
Belgian Team. For 12 hours the car was in a leading position before brake
problems dropped it to 8th. |
The Team taking its title from an
amalgamation of the names of the founding members,
MARtin, DIck and GRAham. This was considered appropriate as Mardi
Gras (Shrove Tuesday) is indeed a Fiesta. The Team was an immediate
success winning seven races and the Championship in its first year.
The "Team Castrol" Honda's were built from Japanese
specification road cars in our own workshops. They were stripped to
bare shells, fully seam welded, roll cages installed and then rebuilt to
Group N regulations. We designed and manufactured the specialised parts on
the cars, building our own engines and gearboxes. The Team drivers were
chosen from young racing drivers under the age of 25.
In
the 1994 24 hour race we were pleased to include in our Team, 2 racing
drivers from Honda Japan. Mr. Kuroki and Mr. Arakawa drove their car to
3rd place overall. We also met Kunio Sakuraya who travelled from Japan to
support the drivers. Two weeks later the Team took part in the 24 hour
race at Spa Franchorchamps, on this occasion working with Honda Belgium.
Driving our Civic were a Swiss hillclimb champion, 1 Belgian driver and a
Japanese lady driver Kumi Sato. The car finished 2nd in Class, 13th
overall.
In July 1997 we were commissioned by
Honda Motor Europe to prepare a Honda lntegra R Model to Group N Race
specification to use in an attempt to break lap records for this category
of car at various racing circuits in Europe. The idea being to create
media interest to coincide with the European launch of this model. Eight lap records were broken in seven countries between the
six drivers, Marco Werner,
James Kaye, Altfred Heger, Gabrielli
Tarquini, James Thompson
and Thierry
Thassin.
Roger took part
in the schedule of races up until June. Best result was second place in
the Autosport Cup for Independents. The withdrawal of a major sponsor
curtailed Roger's season so after Croft the services of our Team were
taken up by
Mark Lemmer
who was racing a Vauxhall Vectra ST Car in the same category. Best results
were two first places.