TriumphTR5

Triumph TR5 Racing

No works team ran the TR5. Private owners rallied it in Europe in 1968–69, and in America the TR250 raced in the Sports Car Club of America's C Production class for one season, winning often in the East and the West and finishing third at the year's championship race.

About the pictureA TR5 PI at a historic rally in 2021, standing in for the TR5s and TR250s raced in 1968–69.

A dark green sports car with a hardtop and a rally number on its door, parked under bamboo among other rally cars.
Stand-in Standing in for the cars of 1968–69: a TR5 PI rallying today, its number on the door, at a historic rally on Tenerife on 19 November 2021.Mike Peel, CC BY-SA 4.0

Frédéric Reydellet, who has written the history of Triumphs in competition, puts the TR5's place in it plainly on tr5passion.com:

In fact, when the TR5 appeared on the market there was no question of a competitions programme.

Frédéric Reydellet, tr5passion.com

The racing was left to others. In Europe a few owners rallied TR5s, and what is known of them comes mostly from their own recollections. In America the importer backed the TR250 in the Sports Car Club of America's national races of 1968, through Kas Kastner's competition department in the West and Bob Tullius's Group 44 in the East, and the results below come from the importer's newsletter and the racingsportscars database.⁠1​2​3

Europe, 1968–69

Reydellet explains why there was no works team: the competition department was a pale shadow of its 1950s self, and the rules of 1966 favoured fast touring cars over GT cars. The TR5s that did compete were privately run, and two of their drivers told him about them.

Roger Barbara, a French Triumph agent at Aire-sur-la-Lys, told him that he ran his TR5 in the Portuguese Rally in 1968 and again in 1969, and both times ran out of time. In 1968 he also took it, with Amaury Duvauchel and Roger Mordacq, to the Marathon de la Route, 84 hours on the Nürburgring, and retired 18 laps from the end with a broken front hub carrier:

We were thirty-fifth and very disappointed that we had to retire: it was a great rehearsal for the following year when I came back with my TR6.

Roger Barbara, as told to Frédéric Reydellet, tr5passion.com (in its English translation)

Jean-Jacques Thuner, the Swiss driver of the works TR4s and Spitfires earlier in the decade, ran a TR5 backed by Triumph's Swiss importer, prepared in England. He told Reydellet that a light-alloy arm of its rear suspension broke at night on the Col de Rousset on the Monte Carlo Rally, that he lost the Geneva Rally by around 5 to 10 seconds, and that "in hill climbs it was unbeatable"; the car, he said, put out around 185 bhp. No results for those events have been found, and no source read settles the year of his Geneva drive: Motor Sport reported in October 1968 that that year's Geneva Rally had been postponed and would probably be cancelled. Motor Sport's rally columns of 1967 to 1969 name no TR5 entry; its reports of the 1968 and 1969 Monte Carlo rallies have not been found.

The one TR5 in a result of the time, by racingsportscars' listing, is the car entered by A. C. Smith in the Targa Florio in Sicily on 4 May 1969, No. 112, which Motor Sport listed as the "Smith/Faure with a Triumph TR 2½-litre" and which retired.⁠1​4​5​6​7

A racing driver in a white helmet numbered 7 sits in an open car and shakes an outstretched hand.
Plate I Jean-Jacques Thuner 10 years before his TR5, in an Alfa Romeo at the Schauinsland hill climb near Freiburg on 26 July 1958, photographed by Willy Pragher.Willy Pragher, CC BY 4.0

United States, 1968: the TR250

In January 1968 Kastner announced that his department had three new cars homologated for the year, the TR-250, the GT-6 and the Spitfire Mk 3, and the importer offered support payments for class wins and second places in the national races. The Sports Car Club of America's classing did not help, as Aaron Severson saw it:

The SCCA had reclassified the six-cylinder car in C Production, where it was simply outgunned.

Aaron Severson, Ate Up With Motor, 2012

Even so, the TR250 won often. In the West, Jim Dittemore's car from Kastner's shop at Gardena won its class on its first outing, at Las Vegas in February ("the TR-250 collected first place in its first race!", the newsletter wrote), and won again at Lake Garnett and, in a downpour, at Kent. In the East, Tullius's Group 44 car won time after time, as the results below show, and the newsletter adds two wins they lack, at Savannah and at Watkins Glen. The importer counted six of his wins towards the Northeast Division's title by September, enough to be sure of at least a share of it, and three more outside the division; Bob Sharp's Datsun beat him at Warren, Ohio, in July.

In March the two drivers also shared a different car at Sebring: the TR250K, which Kastner built with Peter Brock on what he called the TR4A chassis, and which retired with a broken wheel.

The season ended at Riverside in November, at the American Road Race of Champions. The importer's newsletter described Tullius running with the two leading Porsches lap after lap, and after a dispute over oil-cooler locations he was placed third behind them, the racingsportscars database listing them as Porsche 911 Ss; Dittemore retired on the 15th lap when his alternator failed. The newsletter judged that "when you consider the odds, the TR-250's third place is a real achievement".⁠8​9​10​11​12​13​14​2​3​15​16​17​18

A low blue racing car with a long tail and number 47 in a white roundel, at speed on a circuit.
The TR250K, the one-off Kastner's department built for Sebring in 1968, at speed on 8 September 2013.Lodahln, CC BY-SA 2.0

Historic racing since

The TR5 went on racing long after it was new. racingsportscars lists TR5s in Australian club races between 1975 and 1984, and on an autumn afternoon in 1990 Motor Sport drove one at Cadwell Park: a 1967 car, bought in 1984 as an abandoned rebuild and raced since, already a double champion that year. The TR250K was out again in 2019, when, Peter Brock recalled, it ran in the Kastner Cup at Buttonwillow.⁠19​6​18

Results

A yellow year marks a win.

  • 1968

    SCCA Regional, Las Vegas 1968

    24 February 1968, Las Vegas, USA. Jim Dittemore: 5th overall, 1st in C Production⁠10

  • 1968

    SCCA National, Las Vegas 1968

    25 February 1968, Las Vegas, USA. Jim Dittemore: 3rd in C Production⁠10

  • 1968

    Sebring 12 Hours 1968

    23 March 1968, Sebring, USA. No. 47, Jim Dittemore and Bob Tullius, in Triumph TR250K: retired: broken wheel, which damaged the suspension⁠20​21

  • 1968

    SCCA National, Virginia International Raceway 1968

    21 April 1968, Virginia International Raceway, USA. No. 44, Bob Tullius: 3rd overall, 1st in C Production⁠15​11

  • 1968

    SCCA National, Cumberland 1968

    12 May 1968, Cumberland, USA. No. 44, Bob Tullius: 1st overall, 1st in C Production⁠15​12

  • 1968

    SCCA National, Mid-America Raceway 1968

    June 1968, Wentzville, USA. Bob Tullius: 1st in C Production⁠13

  • 1968

    SCCA National, Road America 1968

    15 June 1968, Elkhart Lake, USA. No. 44, Bob Tullius: 1st in C Production⁠13​15

  • 1968

    SCCA National, Warren 1968

    July 1968, Warren, Ohio, USA. Bob Tullius: 2nd in C Production⁠14

  • 1968

    SCCA National, Lime Rock 1968

    20 July 1968, Lime Rock, USA. Bob Tullius: 1st overall, 1st in C Production⁠14

  • 1968

    SCCA National, Lake Garnett 1968

    28 July 1968, Lake Garnett, USA. No. 8, Jim Dittemore: 1st in C Production⁠14​2​15

  • 1968

    SCCA National, Kent 1968

    25 August 1968, Kent, USA. No. 8, Jim Dittemore: 1st overall, 1st in C Production⁠15​2

  • 1968

    SCCA National, Bryar 1968

    September 1968, Bryar, USA. Bob Tullius: 1st in C Production⁠2

  • 1968

    SCCA National, Phoenix 1968

    13 October 1968, Phoenix, USA. Jim Dittemore: 2nd overall⁠15

  • 1968

    American Road Race of Champions 1968

    23 November 1968, Riverside, USA. No. 44, Bob Tullius: 3rd in C Production⁠15​3

  • 1968

    American Road Race of Champions 1968

    23 November 1968, Riverside, USA. No. 8, Jim Dittemore: retired: alternator failure, lap 15⁠15​3

  • 1969

    Targa Florio 1969

    4 May 1969, Sicily, Italy. No. 112, Smith and Faure: retired⁠6​7

Sources

Sources are given as plain text; their addresses are on the sources page.

  • Primarymade at the time, by the maker or by people who were there
  • Referenceserious later work: clubs, specialists, magazines, books
  • Databaseresults and listings, entry by entry
  1. Frédéric Reydellet (racing history), tr5passion.com (group): "En bref / Summary", "Identification", "Lucas injection", "Options", "Technical spec", "Colours", "TR5 Ginevra", "Racing history", TR5 Passion, Racing history page (_r62). Reference
  2. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, September 1968, Sep 1968 (vol. 14 no. 9), p. 2; pp. 1–2, Kent, Bryar and Watkins Glen; p. 1. Primary
  3. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, December 1968, Dec 1968 (masthead "Volume 14, Number 11"), p. 3; pp. 2–3, the ARRC. Primary
  4. Motor Sport, "Rally Review", Oct 1968, p. 33, p. 33. Primary
  5. Motor Sport, Rally reviews and event reports, 1967–69 (group), Sep 1967 – Dec 1969, Sep 1967 – Dec 1969. Primary
  6. racingsportscars.com, "Triumph TR5 – All Results", Targa Florio 1969; Australian club races. Database
  7. Motor Sport, "The 53rd Targa Florio", Jun 1969, p. 36, p. 36. Primary
  8. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, January 1968, Jan 1968 (vol. 14 no. 1), p. 1, homologation. Primary
  9. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, February 1968, Feb 1968 (vol. 14 no. 2), pp. 1–2, support payments. Primary
  10. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, March 1968, Mar 1968 (vol. 14 no. 3), pp. 1–2, Las Vegas; p. 1; p. 2. Primary
  11. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, May 1968, May 1968 (vol. 14 no. 5), p. 2, Virginia and Savannah; p. 2. Primary
  12. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, June 1968, Jun 1968 (vol. 14 no. 6), p. 1, Cumberland; p. 1. Primary
  13. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, July 1968, Jul 1968 (vol. 14 no. 7), p. 2, the Mid-West; p. 2. Primary
  14. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, August 1968, Aug 1968 (vol. 14 no. 8), pp. 2–3, Warren and Lime Rock; p. 2; p. 3. Primary
  15. racingsportscars.com, "Triumph TR250 – All Results", 1968 entries; the entry and its date. Database
  16. racingsportscars.com, Race pages, 1968 (group): American Road Race of Champions, Riverside, 24 Nov 1968 (results); Sebring 12 Hours, 23 Mar 1968 (results); Cumberland, Kent, Virginia and Phoenix (summaries), ARRC, Riverside, 24 Nov 1968, C Production. Database
  17. Aaron Severson, "Grandfather's Ax: The Many Evolutions of the Triumph TR4, Part 2: TR5, TR250, and TR6", Ate Up With Motor, 7 Nov 2012, "Triumph TR5 PI and TR250", racing. Reference
  18. Peter Brock, "The Triumph That Could Have Been", Moss Motoring, 17 Jan 2020. Reference
  19. Motor Sport, "Veteran to Classic – Triumph TR", Dec 1990, p. 54, p. 54. Reference
  20. racingsportscars.com, Sebring 12 Hours 1968, results, DNF table, No. 47. Database
  21. Triumph Sports Owners Association, Triumph Sports Owners Association Newsletter, April 1968, Apr 1968 (vol. 14 no. 4), p. 1. Primary