Former Formula Vee World Champion and F1 racer Tony Jeffries passes away
1967 Formula Vee World Champion Tony Jeffries, who raced the non-championship ’66 South African Grand Prix and was entered, but did not start the 1968 world championship race at Kyalami, has passed away. The South African succumbed to cancer aged 79 on 13 January.
Tony will primarily be remembered for winning the 1967 World Formula Vee Championship in Nassau in the Bahamas (above). His entry was his Transvaal Formula Vee Championship prize and he made it into the final among a field of 96 top international Vee drivers.
Jeffries led most of the way as fought off future multiple World Touring Car champion Dieter Quester, world F1 champion Jochen Rindt and Le Mans winner, F1 racer and today’s Red Bull F1 boss Dr Helmut Marko for the win driving his Pretoria-built Capital Vee (above).
Jeffries raced in the non-championship 1966 South African Grand Prix, qualifying 15th, he finished eighth in the former John Love Cooper T55 Climax. Jeffries was entered for the ’68 world championship SA Grand Prix, but was forced to withdraw when his Cooper broke its Climax engine before the race.
He was also a regular in the South African F1 championship with his Cooper T55 and T79 (above), with his best results being a couple of seconds in the 1966 Killarney van Riebeeck and Roy Hesketh Pat Fairfield Trophies and third at the ’87 Kyalami Rand Spring Trophy.
