A RACING driver seeing something like this, on the right, closing at more than 200mph in their rear-view mirror would be a startled racing driver indeed.

Spare a thought, then, for two drivers whose names are lost to history but who experienced something similar one early morning in 1973.

They weren’t driving racing cars, though; they were driving lorries.

And they were on the M4 outside Swindon.

We were alerted to the remarkable story by Tim Finney, who runs Eastbrook Farm and the Royal Oak in Bishopstone with Helen Browning, and is fan of historic motor racing.

Mr Finney spotted an interview with 72-year-old British former racing driver Chris Craft in the latest issue of enthusiasts’ magazine Motor Sport. The driver’s credits range from daring saloon car victories to a brief foray into Formula One.

Our picture, reproduced with the kind permission of prestige car specialists Maxted-Page, shows a Lola T292 in which Mr Craft won the 1973 European 2-Litre Sportscar Championship of Makes. It gives an idea of what the class looked like in those days, and of what came screaming along the M4 that long-ago morning.

Mr Craft had driven a De Cadenet car, sponsored by Duckhams, in that year’s Le Mans 24-hour race, but modified it after deciding it wasn’t fast enough.

But where might such a machine’s maximum speed be tested?

Mr Craft told Motor Sport the M4 was chosen, and the team waited until dawn because the racing car’s headlights had yet to be fitted. The car was ferried to Junction 16 in a van which dropped it off and drove the 13 miles to Junction 17.

The racing driver recalled: “Then off I went. I pulled 7200rpm, which I knew was 213mph, so that was all right.

“I peeled off at Junction 17, the van was waiting at the roundabout, and we stuffed the car in quick and went to London.

“Unfortunately at full chat I’d had to go between two lorries, one was pulling out to pass the other and I couldn’t lift off.”

Mr Craft said he was reported to the police but heard nothing more about the matter.

1973 was the year when the M4 celebrated its second birthday.

On Wednesday, December 22, 1971 the Adver reported: “At precisely 11.20 today a piece of rain soaked blue ribbon was cut and the 140-mile London-South Wales motorway was officially opened.”

The ribbon was cut by Michael Heseltine, then a Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Heath government’s Department of the Environment, and the occasion prompted a bout of public excitement that seems both strange and innocent by modern standards.

There are well over 30 milion cars on British roads today, but in 1971 the figure was nearer 19 million, and motorways were generally clear rather than clogged.

The following day, under a headline that blared “THE 90-MINUTE TRIP TO TOWN”, Adver reporter Keith Lever wrote: “At nine o’clock this morning I was in Swindon. At 10.30am precisely I was in the offices of the Automobile Association in London.

“From my chauffeur driven departure from the A345-M4 interchange it had taken exactly one hour and 27 minutes to reach Leicester Square.

“That in a nutshell is what the M4 now means to Swindon.”

The optimistic mood lasted for as long as it took the public to realise that hammering along in an old family car at 70mph for sustained periods might not be a good idea.

A week after the shiny new motorway opened, our headline was “M4 PUNISHES OLD CROCKS”, and a police officer told us: “Cars have literally been crumbling all over the place – they simply have not been able to stand up to the motorway pace.”