Photo: Dave McMillan -DART 83M-001 at Montreal 1983
Murray McLaren writes….
The Canadian Grand Prix over the weekend brought back memories of campaigning a DART in a Formula Atlantic race as part of the 1983 F1 Grand Prix weekend.
I have been to the "Isle Notre Dame or Circuit Gilles Villeneuve" on the island in the middle of the Saint Lawrence River at Montreal many times as we used to do an Atlantic race there before the GP, in fact we got third there in 1983 with Dave McMillan in the 'unloved' DART 83M-001 behind Roberto Moreno & Michael Andretti.
That was the only decent finish we ever had with the DART, designed and built by Kiwi Alan Burrows (from right here in Christchurch, NZ) but the cars were built in England. We nearly got second in the Detroit GP Atlantic race but a water hose blew off and Dave spun in his own water so we didn’t finish. Josele Garza won in Alan McCall’s RT4.
The DART was virtually a 7/8 copy of a Williams FW07. However the problem was that the aluminum honeycomb construction used was no good and started to delaminate with every twist and turn until the car became virtually undriveable back here in NZ after the North American series.
I think only three of these cars were built, Dave (McMillan got the first one, American Mark Moore tested our car at Willow Springs then got one and Brett Riley drove the other here in NZ in 1984 series.
I only recently found out that Paul Radisich drove one in the 1984 Australian Grand Prix; probably the one John Crawford rebuilt and also drove down here. I believe all those cars are now somewhere on the East Coast of USA but I don't know anyone who has ever seen them race so they are likely to be in storage or a museum.
They didn't last very long against the Ralt RT4' which dominated the Atlantic series both here and in the States. The most commonly used 1600cc BDA was not powerful enough for the size of the car. The DART really needed a two litre motor or 2400cc as it was too big and pushed too much air.
However the cars didn't last and faded away becoming part of history! We had to go back to the old faithful Ralt RT4 at Wigram (Christchurch) to be competitive as the DART was getting slower and slower while the tub was falling apart (delaminating).
I moved onto Swift Cars USA and also remember when we nearly won at Montreal with Steve Shelton in the Swift DB4 in 1988. Steve had pole, led the race until it was red flagged for a big crash. When it came time to restart to finish the race, the fuel pump (inside the tank) failed and the car wouldn't restart!
Shelton was distraught as he didn't win the race which he led for so long in front of all the F1 teams.
I had some great times in Montreal including seeing Gilles Villeneuve win there in his Ferrari.
