Back when Formula One was full of gung-ho heroes, glamorous latin hotshoes and gritty British grafters, whose lives were played out in gossip columns and style magazines, drivers were quite happy to race for the sake of racing.

These days, no top-line driver would be allowed to even consider racing when they didn't need to. Teams and their sponsors invest far too much money in their charges to risk injury or worse in other formulae or events, but back in the Seventies it was very different.

Tom Pryce was quite happy to drive other cars, and frequently drove his Shadow team boss Alan Rees mad, with requests to go off and help Formula 2 teams test. So it was no surprise to find him competing with his usual wholesale enthusiasm in the annual non-championship Race Of Champions in spring 1975.

1975 was the start of Tom's first full season in Formula One, and he was very much a rookie in the sport. But the venue for this race was Brands Hatch, almost his second home - he'd been racing there since the very first days of his tentative steps into lower formulae five years earlier. If anyone under-estimated him and his skill with a Formula One car, they were to be put right with his qualifying performance.

Tom walloped his car on pole, against some of the very top available drivers. Jody Scheckter, John Watson, Ronnie Peterson, Jacky Ickx, Emerson Fittipaldi, Jochen Mass and Jean-Pierre Jarier were among those far better known stars going wheel-to-wheel with the quiet Welshman.

Race day found Brands Hatch slippery, and the weather cold, damp and even slightly snowy. Difficult conditions for anyone to guess, and before the start many drivers switched tyres from wet to dry or vice versa. The indecision delayed the start, and when things did get under way, Tom Pryce bogged down, allowing Ickx, Scheckter and Jarier to come through.

But it didn't take long for Pryce to gather his car back up and begin the task of overhauling his rivals with his characteristic style of driving. He hounded Ronnie Peterson's Lotus for a while, before forcing himself ahead, just behind Jacky Ickx's leading Lotus. As the report in Autosport described it, '...the familiar Elf Tyrell of Jody Scheckter was well clear of the closest pursuers and seemingly progressing onward at a vast rate to a second successive Formula 1 victory. Then the low snout of Tom Pryce's black UOP Shadow finally forced its way past Jack Ickx's stubborn JPS Lotus. The race was on.'

By lap 13 Pryce was 8.2 seconds behind Scheckter. Two laps later it was down to 6.9 seconds. He continued to close on the Tyrell, taking chunks out of the lead lap after lap. By lap 20 and half distance, the gap was 3.7 seconds.

Lapping backmarkers gave Tom the opportunity to close right up, sitting behind the Tyrell's gearbox. But just when he was about to mount a challenge, fortune played its part, and Scheckter's engine let go. Pryce was through and leading.

While Watson, Peterson and Ickx squabbled for the rest of the top positions, Pryce sailed on to take the chequered flag, his Shadow perfect, and in the hands of a driver who was suddenly realised to be a master of his craft.