Royal Automobile Club receives award for Woodcote Trophy

A brace of Jaguar D-Types lead the historic field in the award winning Woodcote Trophy

At the 2012 International Historic Motoring Awards in London on Thursday 29 November, the Royal Automobile Club won the Race Series of the Year award for its Royal Automobile Club Woodcote Trophy series.

Launched in 2006 in conjunction with Motor Racing Legends, the Woodcote Trophy is now one of the most respected historic race series in the world, with fierce competition simply to get a place on the grid! The Woodcote Trophy is a series of six classes for genuine postwar sports-racers built up to and including December 1955, each class defined by engine capacity, and whether the car runs on disc or drum brakes. Each vehicle has two drivers that battle it out on track for at least one-hour.

In 2012, the series was sponsored by EFG Private Bank and three events took place at UK circuits with a trip to the Spa Six Hours meeting in Belgium in September. The 2012 overall winner of the Woodcote Trophy will be announced on 23 January 2013 at the Royal Automobile Club, Pall Mall, London.

Accepting the award, Ben Cussons, Chairman of the Motoring Committee, Royal Automobile Club, said: "The Royal Automobile Club is delighted to receive the Race Series of the Year award at the IHMA. Woodcote Park, the Club's country club had already given its name to the famous corners at Goodwood and Silverstone and the Woodcote Trophy completes a Woodcote motor sport hat trick.

"It continues the Club's history over more than a century of creating innovative and challenging motoring and motor sport events. From the groundbreaking 1,000 Mile Trial of 1900 and the Tourist Trophy of 1905, through the first postwar Grand Prix to the launch of the Woodcote Trophy in 2006, the Club continues to define its raison d'etre as supporting motor sport and motoring."

Nominations for the award were assessed by an international panel of expert judges, including Jay Leno, Derek Bell, car designers Ian Callum and Peter Stevens, Horst Brüning of the FIVA, Dr Franz-Josef Paefgen (responsible for global coordination of Volkswagen Group's Classic activities), motoring journalists Robert Coucher and Tony Dron, Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance Chief Judge Ed Gilbertson, Bruce Meyer (founding Chairman of the Petersen Automotive Museum), and Lady Susie Moss, wife of the legendary Sir Stirling Moss.