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    Moments that made Racing History
    Moments that made Racing History
    Moments that made Racing History
    Ebook142 pages1 hour

    Moments that made Racing History

    By Rodney Walkerley

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    About this ebook

    ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION (1959) - In a few dramatic motor races down the years the issue has been decided by a single moment of time when fate hung in the balance. Here, vividly recalled by the Sports Editor of The Motor, are nine such moments selected from more than half a century of motor racing’s eventful history—never-to- be-forgotten moments as enduring as the lure of speed itself. The memorable events from which these dramatic moments are recaptured range from the fantastic Gordon- Bennett Trophy Race of 1902 to Juan Fangio's greatest drive in the German Grand Prix of 1957. They include the Race that Nobody Won at Silverstone in 1957, Nuvolari’s hair’s breadth victory in the last fleeting moments of the 1933 R.A.C. Tourist Trophy Race and other races which revive nostalgic memories of Brooklands in its heyday and the thunderous roar of the German Mercedes and Auto- Unions as they swept the board at Donington. And, its excitement undimmed by time, that epoch-marking moment in 1947 when John Cobb streaked across the Bonneville Salt Flats at Utah—the first man to travel on land at 400 miles an hour.
    Based on a series of articles published in The Motor, supplemented by additional chapters and illustrated by over 45 photographs and specially-prepared drawings, Moments that made Racing History is a book to stir the memories and capture the imaginations of those to whom it is dedicated—racing drivers and motor-racing enthusiasts the world over.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEdizioni Savine
    Release dateMar 18, 2016
    ISBN9788896365847
    Moments that made Racing History

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      Book preview

      Moments that made Racing History - Rodney Walkerley

      Walkerley

      1902 - An abandoned Panhard on the Arlberg

      On a serene summer’s morning in late July of the year 1902 a travel-stained automobile came slithering and sliding down the steep and stony descent of the Arlberg Pass among the snowcapped Alps of Austria’s Tyrol. Two men sat huddled in the open, doorless seat perched high above the chassis and the long bonnet, one clinging for his life to whatever he could find to steady himself as the vehicle swayed and skidded downwards through corner after corner, hairpin after hairpin, into the hazy valley far below; the other, black moustached beneath the goggles, struggled with the steering wheel, one foot moving incessantly from throttle pedal to a useless brake, his other pumping the clutch as he changed down to bottom gear. The brakes had long since vanished. At one side of the narrow mountain track a dizzy drop into space; at the other the rocky cliff face of the mountain.

      As they slewed sideways round yet another hairpin, there, at the side of the ledge which was the road, they saw an empty, deserted car.

      The passenger leaned across and shouted above the din of scrabbling wheels and the roar of the engine Panhard!

      Whose? yelled his companion. The other shrugged as they went past.

      The Panhard in fact belonged to the French sportsman, the Chevalier René de Knyff, and as they left the broken-down French car far behind, it meant—had they realized it, that a British car with a British driver had gone into the lead of the greatest of the International races—the Gordon-Bennett Trophy, and consternation was to reign in France at this astonishing victory.

      As they slewed sideways round yet another hairpin, there, at the side of the ledge which was the road, they saw an empty, deserted car.

      History was made on the nerve-racking plunge down the Arlberg that day, for this takes its place in the records as the equivalent of the first British Grand Prix victory—and the cousins Selwyn and Cecil Edge did not know, until an hour later at the foot of that terrible mountain road when they stopped to examine their car, that de Knyff, the race leader, was out. Then, as they gazed at what was virtually a wreck of a car, all the troubles that had piled up on them since they left Paris, all the hardship, and the dangers, and sickness of heart, vanished in a surge of joy. Now, said Edge, "all we have to do is get this car to Innsbruck, somehow. . .

      * * *

      The story of that race 57 years ago is the story of the pioneer days of motor racing and the new-fangled automobile, for the two were one, and a story typical of the exploits of those far-off days which led slowly and steadily to the development of the motorcar as we know it today, for what those men endured and overcame half a century ago quarried the knowledge which was steadily built into the motorcar as year succeeded year. They were explorers in a realm as unknown and unpredictable as faced the men who shot the first rocket at the moon; what they were doing seemed to many to be just as divorced from reality and there were those who were vehement in their denunciation of what they considered dangerous, pointless and should be stopped by law. In Great Britain it very nearly was.

      The story of that weary pair coming down a mountain to all intents and purposes out of control on their way to an historic triumph begins some years before that hot and dusty summer’s day.

      One of the few men of influence who had the vision to see the changes in the manner of our living that the automobile was to bring about within a life-time, and something of the enormous industry which was to be built up until vast horizons opened out for the whole civilized world, was an American, James Gordon-Bennett, founder and owner of the New York Herald. This enthusiast had helped to finance the Paris-Bordeaux race and was eager that other nations should challenge the then complete supremacy of the French motor industry, first in the field and unhampered by Governmental hostility. It was as early as 1889 that Gordon-Bennett lobbied the automobile clubs of other countries to discover their attitude to his idea of a truly international competition for a trophy he would present for the purpose.

      S. F. Edge.

      As the Automobile Club of France was the ruling body of the sport by reason of its enthusiasm, its priority in foundation and the reputation of its committee, Gordon-Bennett asked them to draw up regulations suitable for this new kind of event, with the provisos that he should approve of the rules and that the first race should be held on French soil in the late spring of 1900, when it would not interfere with the other great races of the season. It is on record that he desired the contest to be called the International Trophy, but it was always known by his own name, then and now.

      The basic regulation for this new competition was that every component of the cars entered should be the product of factories in that country—a rule which, inevitably at that stage of development, gave the French factories an advantage (for instance, there was no British ignition coil which could rival those manufactured in France). Other rules were that the national teams could be of up to three cars, not necessarily of the same make, and that the course should be at least 500 km. or 312 miles. Another was that the country which won the Trophy should stage the next year’s race in their own territory or, if the law forbade this, then in France. For the race of 1900 challenges went in from Germany, Belgium and the United States, which nations sent one car each against a trio of Panhards for France. There was no British challenge at all. The course was to be from Paris to Lyons. Just as the competitors assembled in Paris the French Government, alarmed by certain public agitation about the rising speeds and increasing dangers of motor racing on public roads, repeatedly demurred. Permission was at last grudgingly given and the drivers were notified that the start would be next day, before the Government changed its mind.

      The German driver, Eugen, refused to start at such notice and the Belgian, Jenatzy (The Red Devil) at first objected, then agreed, pointing out that his racing car was not ready and he would have to use a standard production model. After that he lost his way —a thing which may seem curious to us today who drive that route down N6 but was an easier thing at a time when a main road and a secondary road looked much alike.

      It may be gathered that this first event of the famous series was a fiasco. It was. Organization hardly existed, the French manufacturers paid no attention, and the public was but mildly interested. The Frenchman Charron, with a 20 h.p. Panhard, won with little opposition at 38.6 m.p.h. for the 354 miles.

      The Gordon-Bennett Trophy.

      In the following year the British manufacturer Montague Napier, then head of D. Napier and Sons, engineers, of Lambeth, with some misgiving, decided to send one car, chiefly at the prompting of S. F. Edge, who was a well-known enthusiast, an executive of the Dunlop Rubber Company, a racing cyclist, a rider of motorized tricycles and at this time one of the early racing drivers. Montague Napier, a friend of cycling days with the famous Bath Road Club, was scion of a century-old engineering firm who, among other feats of general engineering, had built the weighbridge at Portland Prison.

      It must go on record that at this time the most successful car was generally acknowledged to be the Panhard, built in France, and the early Napier cars were based on that design, with his own modifications. Napier was an engineer of great vision who rarely drove his own cars but preferred to be a passenger while he carefully watched what was happening to the whirling machinery that was the automobile of the period. One of his first advances was a four-speed gearbox with gears in constant mesh, operated by a series of fibre clutches. At Edge’s instigation, he produced a steering wheel instead of the conventional tiller, and he designed a system of three inlet valves per cylinder, worked, of course, by the suction of the piston.

      Impressed with Napier’s agile and scientific mind, Edge, with a Mr. Du Cros, formed the Motor Vehicle Company, in London’s Regent Street, a step then regarded as so optimistic as to verge on the imbecile; they were to handle Napier cars, the Gladiator and the Clement-Panhard. (Edge was himself a Panhard fanatic.) All this was in 1899, when there was a very

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