MARCH was formed in 1969. The name being an anagram of the founding partners, Max Mosley, Alan Rees, Graham Coaker and Robin Herd. The team, based in Bicester near Oxford., built a Formula 3 car (model number 693) that was raced by Ronnie Peterson. The naming convention adopted by MARCH identified the year of the car with the first two digits and the third identifying the racing class. The 1969 Formula 3 car was 693.
My lifelong passion for motor racing started in North Branford, Connecticut when I was ten. It was the early sixties, when auto racing meant hot rods, drag racing, and the Indianapolis 500. Our neighbour’s teenage son, Freddie, was converting a 1934 Ford Pickup Truck into a hot rod, complete with chopped and channeled body and flat head V8 engine. I spent countless hours in the car while Freddie worked, reading his collection of Hot Rod Magazines, inadvertently expanding my rural Connecticut world.
Early in the sixties, Ford Motor Company became involved in motor racing at multiple levels. Ford partnered with Lotus and invaded the Indianapolis Speedway. The company’s activities were well covered in Hot Rod magazine, and I spent Memorial Day listening to the Indy 500 on the radio. As Ford’s activities expanded into sports prototype racing, my world expanded too, and I soon became aware of places like Sebring, Nurbürgring, and Le Mans.
