1986 March 3000 Series Sportscar

Lot details
Registration No: UN-REG
Chassis No: 86B-03
Mot Expiry: N/A

Formed in 1969 to make racing cars and to enter F1, March's first foray into F3000, their Ralph Bellamy designed 85B, was really an F2 March 842 with two inch longer monocoque fabricated from aluminium honeycomb and carbon fibre.
Thanks to excellent weight distribution and the Ford Cosworth DFV fitting neatly into it, the 85B proved to be a popular choice for private teams, one of them winning the inaugural F3000 Championship with German Christian Danner at the wheel and the model winning seven out of twelve races. The 85J, virtually the same as the 842, was built for the Japanese Championship won by Satoru Nakajima in a Honda-powered example, while Ivan Capelli won the 1996 F3000 title in an 86B-DFV.
Offered here is an 86B sports-racer with fuel injected Ford DFV 3-litre 8-cylinder engine and Japanese-made bodywork by specialists Moon Craft. The `86B-03' chassis plate displayed indicates the rolling chassis was completed by March at their Bicester works in 1986; the B that it was intended for F3000, the 03 that this was the third such chassis produced. From another plate on the by now Andy Brown designed tub, we see the carbon and Kevlar composite monocoque was made by Advanced Composite Technology of Derbyshire.
Owner Kenji Takahashi drove the blue and white painted racer with the desirable long stroke DFV engine in the 1987 Fuji Grand-All Japan Championship. Again in this category, Fumio Mutoh was ninth in the car in the 3 June 1989 Grand Champion race at Fuji in what is reckoned to have been 86B-03's final race.