Team Gunston
Team Gunston ( 1962-1967: John Love Racing) was a resident in Southern Rhodesia or Rhodesia Motorsport team, who competed in the 1960s and 1970s in the South African Formula 1 Championship and three times at the Grand Prix of South Africa, a formula 1 race with world Championship status, participated. Gunston was one of the most successful team of the South African racing series.
History
Based in Bulawayo team was founded in summer 1962 by the Rhodesian racer John Love. Love was in 1960 and 1961, competed in Europe, among other things for the team of Ken Tyrrell in Formula Junior and had the season 1961 finished third overall. In 1962 he returned to Rhodesia. From its revenue at Tyrrell he had purchased a used Cooper T55, with the future he took part in Formula 1 race in southern Africa. Until 1967 Love brought the team under his own name at the start. With the start of the 1968 season he signed a sponsorship agreement with the Rhodesian Gunston Cigarette Company, of which the name in future he took over for his team.
South African Formula 1 Championship
John Loves team took since 1962 regularly at the South African Formula 1 championship in part, a series of races on circular courses in Southern Africa, which was held by Formula 1 rules and was overwhelmingly denied by regional pilots.
Gunston initially put a Cooper T55, Cooper T79 and later one from 1968, a Lotus 49. In the Lotus it was the chassis 49 R3, which had been used in the Formula 1 1967 season from the factory drivers Graham Hill in five World Cup races and 1968 at a run before Gunston took it over.
In the second half of the 1960s, Love was the most successful rider of the South African Formula 1 series. From 1964 to 1969, he won the championship six times in a row. His home race, the Grand Prix of Rhodesia, he also won six times.
1970 ended the dominance Gunstons and John Loves. The supported Gunstons competing brand Lucky Strike South Africans Dave Charlton, of a younger Lotus 49 and later a Lotus 72 began in 1969, dominated in the early 1970s, the South African series. Team Gunston then moved up the race car. The choice fell on a newly established March 701 (Chassis No 701/ 10), who scored at the start of the Formula 1 World Championship in 1970 some success with Jackie Stewart and Chris Amon. The car, however, turned out to ride as hard and was unreliable, so Gunston could not compete with Charlton's Lucky Strike Scribante team. A temporary change to a Surtees TS9 also did not yield any results. From 1972 Gunston drove his hand a Lotus 72, but could not stop Charlton triumph.
Team Gunston continued its involvement in regional motor sport in the South African Formula Atlantic Championship, which replaced the local Formula 1 championship since 1976. Driver of the team were Ray Klomfass, Trevor van Rooyen and Basil van Rooyen. In individual races such as the edge of Spring Trophy, which was held at Kyalami on October 6, 1979 John Love came to again.
Formula 1 World Championship
In addition to participation in the South African race, the team Gunston reported regularly since 1962 to the Grand Prix of South Africa, had the world championship status. Driver was usually John Love, besides occasionally occurred at other pilots of South African origin for the team.
The most successful race team Gunston was the Grand Prix of South Africa 1967. Occurred here with John Love and a Cooper T79, which was powered by a 2.7 -liter four- cylinder engine from Coventry Climax. In this case, it was the car that Bruce McLaren was used in the 1966 Tasman Series. The competing works teams possessed by this time mainly on 3.0-liter engines that fully exploited the engine capacity limit of the applicable regulations from 1966. Despite the poor performance of his vehicle to Love qualified for the fifth place. He took it in front of Graham Hill in the Lotus factory and before Jochen Rindt in the works Cooper into the race. In the race, Love was from round 60 to the first position; He led the race 13 laps. Seven laps to go had to love the guide to Pedro Rodríguez leave, who drove a factory Cooper T79. Rodríguez won the race, Love was second.