Single-seat Racing Career
In 1958 Patsy Burt made the step up to single-seat Formula racing, and bought a Cooper T43. Although she continued to compete in circuit races, Burt won her first events in hillclimb competitions, including taking first place in the Stapleford National Hillclimb. From 1959 she decided to concentrate solely on the sprint and hillclimb events. Her smooth, precise driving style was ideally suited to these single-run events where a mistake, unlike in a multiple-lap circuit race, could not be cancelled out by better driving later in the event. In addition to the little Cooper — painted in her own shade of dark powder-blue, which came to be known by others as Burt blue, with white trim — Patsy Burt also raced a 1500 cc Porsche RS in 1961, becoming the first British competitor ever to complete a full season in the European Mountain Championship.
As well as being a successful racer herself, Patsy Burt and her manager Ron Smith also ran a well-regarded race preparation garage. Their operation, PMB Garages Ltd. (named for Burt's initials), of Great Bookham, Surrey, prepared Arthur Owen's winning Cooper T53 car for the 1962 British Hill Climb Championship, and repeated their triumph eight years later with Sir Nick Williamson's F5000 specification McLaren M10A. PMB were, naturally, also responsible for Patsy Burt's own cars during the rest of her career. The car with which Burt became synonymous, her modified Cooper T59, was built up at PMB Garages in the winter of 1962-63. Chassis number C/PMB/1/63, originally supplied as a 1 litre Formula Junior car, was adapted to accept a 2 litre Coventry Climax FPF engine by moving the driving position forward. Burt's short stature allowed the larger engine, with its concomitantly larger fuel and oil tanks, to be mounted in the usual position without having to lengthen the car's wheelbase.
Burt continued to participate, with great success, in British events throughout the early 1960s, but by 1965 both she and Smith realised that, if her success was to continue, she needed a more potent mount. Being acquainted with McLaren founder Bruce McLaren, Burt and Smith approached him with an idea for creating a single-seater from the McLaren M1A CanAm sports car's chassis. McLaren liked the idea and the resultant McLaren M3A was nicknamed the whoosh-bonk, as when the idea was first pitched to him his response was that it wouldn't be a problem and that it would be a quick process: "whoosh, bonk, and we've got a single-seater!" The M3A appeared in 1966 and was a brutally effective sprint machine, boasting a 4.4 litres (269 cu in) Oldsmobile V8 engine, modified by Traco to produce 360 bhp (268 kW), comparable with the best contemporary Formula One machines. For certain sprint events PMB Garages modified the McLaren with a pointed nose and extended windscreen, designed to reduce aerodynamic drag.
The M3A was not the only technological contribution that Burt and Smith made to the hillclimbing world. In 1967 Burt's M3A was the first car to employ a vertical metal plate mounted edge-on to the direction of travel, intended to provide a reliable surface with which to break the timing beam at the start and finish of sprint and hillclimb courses. This plate eventually became compulsory in international competition and is now known as a Burt strut, making Patsy Burt one of the few racers to have a component named after them.
Behind the wheel of her M3A Patsy Burt set eight international and 21 British national records for various events and distances, from both a standing and flying start. The M3A's first major win was in 1967 at the Shelsley Walsh Speed Hill Climb, Britain's oldest hillclimb event, where she set a ladies' course record time. In 1968 she won the Brighton Speed Trials sprint event on Brighton's historic Madeira Drive. In so doing she set a 1 km course record which stood for seven years. The high point of her career came in 1970 when she won the RAC National Sprint Championship, the first time that a woman had ever won a British national title. Keen to end her career on top of her profession, Patsy Burt retired from driving at the end of the 1970 season.
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