Abba Kogan - Tyrrell 023: Real enthusiast

Abba Kogan is a well known person in the world of historic racing cars. He is the proud owner of a number of amazing cars, which he not only uses to race in himself. He is also happy to lend one of his cars to someone else to race in it. “I can drive in only one car at a time and it would be a shame not to use the other cars,” said Kogan, who was born in China and raised in Japan. He also lived in Brazil for several years and has Brazilian nationality, too.



“Cars are my biggest love and have always been so,” explained the enthusiastic Kogan. “I was a little bit distracted for a while because of difficult, but necessary stuff such as study and work, but I’ve always been a huge car enthusiast.” Kogan managed to collect some beautiful cars throughout the years. “Bugattis, Matras, Delahayes, all kinds of cars,” he said. “I have a lot of cars from the twenties and the thirties. One day, one of my friends told me: ‘You have a lot of historic racing cars, why don’t you start racing in those?’ I responded: ‘I simply can’t.’ But I decided to attend a three-day course in Canada, where I lived back then, in order to learn the basics of racing and I eventually got a license. That was in 1992. I then travelled to New Zealand in order to participate in some historical races, while it was winter back home.”

“I raced without really understanding the real meaning of racing in my first two years on the track,” admitted Kogan. “I brought some cars with me to events and was driving around in those cars because I thought that was what the people wanted. However, I then got the chance to drive alongside Barry Leach for a couple of laps and he showed me some things that I thought were impossible until then. That’s when I really got the hang of it. I had set my sights on taking part in the historic Grand Prix of Monaco in 1997 and I indeed managed to start there, in a Brabham. It was my first time in Monaco and my first time in a car like that, but I still finished second. And I still enjoy racing a lot. I recently purchased a Ferrari-F1-teambus to stay in at the circuits. It’s very comfortable and I’m quite satisfied with my purchase.”

Kogan was driving the Tyrrell 023 in the BOSS GP-series. “It’s not like I have a special relationship with Tyrrell or so. It was just one of the cars that were available. I bought the car from Marijn van Kalmthout about a year ago. He sold it because the car wasn’t really comfortable for him. I also had to make some adjustments to the car to make sure I could sit a little bit lower in it. I wouldn’t have been able to drive it either without the adjustments.” The originality of the car isn’t too important for Kogan. “Cars evolve. New Formula 1 cars are also adjusted from race to race, so I don’t see the problem of making some changes to a car. The most important thing for me is that the car is ready to race.”