Sunday, 22nd September 1985

Brands Hatch has seen many cliff-hangers, but the Shell Gemini 1000 featured enough technical interest to satisfy the most ardent purists. The Italian Lancias were fastest in practice but faced a challenge from the German Porsches and the British Jaguars.

As viewers of this video see to perfection, it was an absorbing race in unusually bright conditions. The big hairy sports cars battled around the Kent track in the closing stages of what had been a hard fought championship.

In the end, Britain’s Derek Bell and Germany’s Hans Stuck won the race and provisionally secured for themselves the distinction of sharing the driver’s title. They pulled Porsche team-mates Jochen Mass and Jacky Ickx with them as they overcame the Italian challenge, with the Jags unfortunately not living up to their billing and both cars retiring. Over five hours intense racing are superbly captured in this skilfully edited film which portrays the sheer effort involved in navigating one of the 700bhp rocket ships past the chequered flag.