CARS AT SPEED - Grand Prix's Golden Age

by Daley, Robert

  A few weeks later, Behra was raised posthumously to the rank of chevalier in the Legion of Honor. Even in death, France refused to believe that he was just another driver, that his death was neither more nor less tragic than the deaths of so many others. Jean Behra the garage mechanic from Nice might be dead. But Jean Behra, hero, would live in France for as long as cars are raced.

  Chapter 9.

  Silverstone and the Stiff Upper Lip

  IN TURN, international motor racing has been dominated by French drivers in French cars; Italian drivers in Italian cars; German drivers in German cars; and, after World War II, Italian drivers in Italian cars once again. In part, these cycles could be explained. The sport happened to begin in France, and so the French won most of the great races before and just after World War I. Then Mussolini appeared and took an interest in the great Alfa Romeo teams of the early 1930s. Alfa supremacy ended when Hitler decided to push the German teams (Mercedes and Auto-Union); in the years immediately before and after Munich, they scared all other marques off the road. A long Italian reign occurred again just following World War II. It is difficult to decide why, except that the Germans were crushed for a while, and no one else had any drivers. The Italians had plenty, all of whom had raced before the war and were once more seeking employment, and there were new and old firms to build the cars: Alfa, Maserati, Lancia, Ferrari.

  Then the British suddenly tossed their chips on the table and asked to be dealt in. Everybody laughed. The older poker players went on sharing the pots among themselves as before.

  Before the war there had been no British cars, and only one British driver, a rich, spoiled, reckless youngster named Dick Seaman. Seaman's career (and Seaman) went up in flames in Belgium in the rain in 1939.

  There had been a few other sporting types who used to race big green Bentleys at Le Mans in the late 1920s. Often enough they won. But they were amateurs, unsoiled by money.

  And so when World War II ended, Britain had no cars, no drivers, and no racing heritage. It had no circuits and no interested public clamoring to watch the fast cars run. It had, worst of all, no gasoline.

  It was a situation unlikely to produce champions. But it did.

  What can one give for a starting date? 1947? 1948? 1949? Difficult to say. Motor racing began in Britain during all those years with very young drivers mostly driving very small (500cc) cars. The cars were so small they could be powered by single-cylinder motorcycle engines. Amenities, such as differentials, were left out entirely. These cars didn't have any and could not really be driven around a corner. You had to slide them around. They were ugly, cheap, used little fuel, and did not look big enough to tote a small boy up a steep hill, which is what they were designed to do. Nonetheless, they made pretty good time doing it, and all who watched were filled with fondness for the little cars and the little boys. Most of the races were hill climbs on private roads.

  There were no circuits, but plenty of abandoned airfields that were surrounded by persons sick to death of the thunder and noise of airplanes taking off. These persons soon were sick again as "road" circuits began to be set up around the perimeters of the fields at Silverstone, Goodwood, and elsewhere, and postwar "road" racing was launched in Britain. It was slapdash racing, all kinds and types of drivers and cars being permitted to compete. In 1948, at Silverstone, there even was a slap-dash Grand Prix, the first in Britain since 1938. This Grand Prix was an event run mostly for the benefit of foreign cars and foreign drivers, but the other races served to keep the old-time amateurs interested in the sport until the small boys could graduate from the small cars and take over in earnest, the old-timers to be kept around as organizers, officials, and, in some cases, manufacturers. Successful motor racing takes all kinds.

  Today, all the racing world knows the names of the small boys: Stirling Moss, Cliff Allison, Graham Hill, Bruce Halford, Tony Brooks, Archie Scott-Brown, Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins, Stuart Lewis-Evans, Ivor Bueb. Somehow these young men and dozens (perhaps hundreds) like them managed to learn their trade and stay alive until the sport of motor racing was so phenomenally healthy in Britain that even the fantastically expensive business of building winning Grand Prix cars posed no particular problem. The cars were B.R.M., Connaught, Vanwall, Cooper, Lotus, H.W.M., and Aston Martin. The Jaguar company was willing to spend the money it took to win regularly at Le Mans because almost its entire market was composed of men (and women) gone slightly silly over fast cars.

  And so by 1958, the day of the French, the Germans, and the Italians was finally done. The British had come. That year British cars won 8 of 10 Grand Prix races; in the two races won by Italian Ferraris, swift young Britons drove them.

  If it is accepted that the cars were built because there were so many young men to drive them, it remains only to be asked where, then, did the young men come from?

  Previously, motor racing had shown a rather high content of royalty. Included were princes from Siam, counts from Italy, marquises from France. The British sporting types were mostly Lord Somebody-or-other. The Germans almost always had a loud "von" in their names, and were thus bluebloods whether they admitted it or not. A few of them were garage mechanics, but not many. It might almost be said that motor racing was smothered in wealth and position, and could only with difficulty have become a sport of the people.

  But in postwar Britain, the day of the nobleman was over. Nobody had any money left, the Labor government was in power, and the small boys drove the small cars because there were no other cars available, and they could not have purchased them if there had been. Everybody was on equal footing. In 1948, Stirling Moss, age 18, and Lord Breadbasket, enthusiast from before the war, were both starting from scratch.

  Why were there so very many eager youngsters? I submit that Britain, embattled but indomitable, was still producing great numbers of the adventurous young men who used to go out to the colonies. Since there would never again be enough cheeky natives to subdue, one subdued instead 300 roaring horsepower at 170 miles an hour. One lived glamorously and one died, sometimes, young and far from home.

  The dying part of it was put off a long time. Then the bill was submitted, and paid, five times within a year: Peter Collins, Stuart Lewis-Evans, Archie Scott-Brown, Ivor Bueb, Mike Hawthorn.

  The cars were provided by a ball-bearing millionaire (Tony Vandervell-Vanwall); by thousands of fans who chipped in to support BRM (which was later taken over by the Owen Organization); by a small garage owner from Surbiton (John Cooper); by a factory that lacked the weight of, say, Chevrolet, but that was nonetheless substantial (Aston Martin). Wherever the cars came from, they were conceived, designed, built, and driven with vigor.

  For more than 135 years, the only track at Aintree was the one for horses. Horses roamed the lush lawns of the paddock, they galloped down the straights, they plunged headfirst over the most photographed hedges in the world—thick, tough hedges of intertwined bush and vine.

  Aintree was a place built for the noble steed and the bluebloods who venerated him. It was hallowed by the Grand National Steeplechase. Kings and queens came there to bet on their own horses. The place reeked of tradition.

  It is a measure of the astonishing popularity of motor racing in Britain that the horseless carriage ever managed to supplant the horse at Aintree, even for a day.

  That "day" came for the first time in 1954. Tradition meekly bowed its head. The complaints of the dissenters were drowned out by the roar of race cars and the jingling of money as fans poured in to watch.

  Once the break was made, motor races were held there more and more frequently—an international 200-mile race for Grand Prix cars became a fixture in the spring, and in midsummer every other year Aintree would be the scene of the British Grand Prix.

  Horse racing, even at Aintree, seemed to be failing. Three meetings a year there had been reduced to two, and even the Grand National itself no longer packed them in. But crowds by the tens of thousands pushed and jostled and shoved to get in to watch the fast
cars run.

  Nothing seemed to dampen their enthusiasm, least of all the weather, which was almost always rainy. At Aintree, which is five miles north of Liverpool, it might drizzle for a week at a time. And although part of the long grandstand opposite the pit straight was covered, most of it was not. In a cold, persistent drizzle, furthermore, one could not even see across the flat green prairie of a track to where the cars came down the back stretch toward Melling Crossing. The only advantage Aintree has, from the spectator's point of view, is that if you sit up high and have good eyesight or good glasses you can see the cars all the way round—provided it's not raining.

  The Aintree circuit, three miles per lap, has, to my mind, no charm at all, no atmosphere, no taut swelling in the throat due to obvious speed and obvious danger. It is not, in other words, a road circuit. It has no curbs, fire hydrants, lamp posts, trees, hills, or variety of surface. It is flat, uniformly asphalt-surfaced, and a driver can run off the road almost anywhere without hurting anything except the grass. It is so utterly devoid of the hazards and even problems of normal road driving that it reduces motor racing, as far as I am concerned, to the emotional level of a track meet. There is not even any sensation of speed, because the cars are not going past anything more substantial than the steeplechase hedges— which are inside the circuit and too low for contrast. The Aintree circuit is lapped at about 90 miles an hour, but it is speed in a vacuum, speed on a great green table. When the cars race down the backstretch along the white rails of the steeplechase course, they seem to be traveling no faster than horses.

  The circuit is roughly triangular in shape, as is the steeplechase course. Most of the way round, the two tracks run side by side; the one grass-green, the other asphalt-black, the steeplechase course defined by the very white rails and those thick, incredibly tough hedges. The presence of the horse track does not add much in the way of atmosphere to a motor race, and I am inclined to think that the ugly black road amidst all that green must detract enormously from the enjoyment at race meetings of all true admirers of horseflesh—those who trouble to look up from their racing forms, anyway.

  The British make much of the amenities of the Aintree circuit, bragging about its grandstands, its bars, its "lavatories." It is true that you can buy scotch whiskey during a race, and usually the weather is so awful you will want to. But the grandstand itself is not much. It is very long and haphazard, whole sections having been added here and there at various times over the years, much like Forbes Field in Pittsburgh or Griffiths Stadium in Washington. The result is not pleasing to the eye, and makes it difficult to move about, as some neighboring sections are unconnected except on certain levels or aisles.

  The grandstand is papered outside with notices to the effect that motor racing is dangerous, that cars do hurtle into crowds, and that the management is not responsible for any accidents that may occur. These notices are so thick you might think they were posted by some angry farmer trying to protect his property against trespassers. Britain is the only country in which you will find such warnings posted. It is also the only country where there is racing that has never seen the bloody disaster a race car can cause when gouging through people at speed. The British fans obey the bobbies (who are numerous and polite), and they keep back from the road. The British circuits are also inherently safer than those on the Continent because they are all so flat and featureless. Silverstone and Goodwood, which are former airports, are the same. One of the astonishing things about motor racing in Britain is that it could grow so prosperous on such dull circuits.

  Aintree is easy to get to from Liverpool, the trains taking only a few minutes and stopping at a station only 200 yards from the main gate. It is at Liverpool (rather than Aintree) that the inconveniences start. Liverpool is a singularly dirty, unsophisticated place. The walls of the buildings are black with soot, there is only one good hotel (the Adelphi), which is where all the drivers stay, and there are no good restaurants at all. I have never in my life been to a city whose "best" restaurants were so universally terrible, places where a tourist could count on stale bread, mashed potatoes served with an ice cream scoop, and slices of gray beef submerged under a completely alien gravy. Rather than go to a restaurant in Liverpool, one would do better to dine at his hotel. Except for the Adelphi, there is hardly a room to be had with bath or central heating (there is a gas heater in most rooms, which must be fed one-shilling pieces), but in some hotels one may come upon "home-style" cooking that is sure to be less atrocious than the restaurants, and may even be fairly palatable.

  Liverpool is a seaport with little pretense at comfort and culture, and if you go there you probably will try for the sleeper train that leaves for London Saturday night after the race. This is a good idea, but do not approach the station by a side street, as side streets near the station are dark and therefore popular with drunks for urinating. The train leaves at midnight, and in the station is the only coffee (sold in paper cups) in town at that hour. One kind word for Liverpool: It has very cozy, comfortable pubs, and the beer is good.

  As for Aintree (or Silverstone or Goodwood, for that matter), a tourist will get more than a Grand Prix to watch, and he is almost certain to be overwhelmed by British enthusiasm for motor racing. For one thing, the day probably will begin at eleven a.m. with a race for small sports cars. At noon, what the British term "saloon" cars take to the track: Austins, Sunbeams, and elegant four-door Jaguars slithering round corners and speeding down straights. Big-bore sports cars are likely to go off at one-thirty, race for an hour, then leave the circuit free for the mounting excitement of the Grand Prix race at three.

  Nor do the British stars confine themselves to the one important race. Almost all of them race at least twice, and some race three times. For with those men who once were small boys in small cars, motor racing is a religion or a drug. They love it fanatically and can't get enough of it.

  And, if you are lucky, perhaps something will happen that will amuse you, and impress you a little despite yourself. I am thinking of an incident during the 200-mile race at Aintree in April 1959.

  There were 24 entries and, as the starter dropped the flag, 23 of them roared away in pursuit of whatever it was they were racing for. The 24th sort of dribbled forward a few feet then stopped. The driver, John Campbell Jones, jumped out and frantically pushed his stalled machine into the pits. There men worked over it with increasing agitation as the pack roared by again and again.

  Every quarter hour or so, the public-address man would take note of the progress in Campbell Jones' pits.

  "Campbell Jones thinks they have located the trouble," he would say.

  Or: "Campbell Jones thinks they'll have it repaired in another few minutes."

  Or, less hopefully, now, an hour later: "Campbell Jones still hoping to have a go."

  Finally, Campbell Jones jumped into the cockpit and was furiously push-started by his mechanics. Away he roared, and a great noisy cheer rose from the crowd. When it had subsided, the announcer cried with restrained British enthusiasm:

  "Splendid effort. Jolly good show."

  John Campbell Jones, a mere 117 miles behind (in a 200-inile race) had rejoined the chase.

  The 1959 British Grand Prix at Aintree drew 24 entries, 23 of the cars being British, and 17 of the drivers. Probably this is a high-water mark in the British flood, for American drivers are coining on very strongly (meaning that American cars cannot be too far behind) and British drivers are beginning to be killed off rather briskly.

  It is more difficult to assign a definite low-water mark. Before World War II, there were only four Grand Prix races in Britain: in 1926 and 1927 and in 1937 and 1938.

  The first two were held at the great banked saucer that was Brooklands. For 20 years this track had been the scene of lesser races and record attempts. Now the 1926 Grand Prix attracted only nine cars, seven of them sent over by French factories, the other two pieced together in the garages of their enthusiastic (and British) owners.

  Th
ose were the days of picturesque race drivers, race cars, and race reporting, when the most difficult thing to tell was whether a car was actually on fire or only looked as if it were. The exhausts of the big blue Talbots threw out a long yellow flame that seemed to engulf cars following too closely. The Delages ran so hot that sometimes flames would shoot up through the firewall and lick at the dashboard. A sort of wading pool was kept filled with water in front of the Delage pits; when the red-hot pedals had singed through the shoes of the drivers they would screech to a stop at the pits, leap out of their cockpits, and do a dance of agony in the wading pond. It was said that after the race, some of the Delage drivers had feet roasted brown as a roasted chicken from the terrific heat of their engines.

  One of the Delages was driven by Robert Benoist, who, despite the heat of the race and his car, was described in the contemporary press as "smiling satirically" from the cockpit of his "wickedly low" racer. Up and up went Benoist's lap speed until it reached the then fantastic average of 82.6 miles an hour. French martial music poured out over the loudspeakers and Benoist, hearing it, ignored the fire licking back from his engine and stomped even harder on the accelerator. When he finally came into the pits the flames had seared his flesh in many places and he hopped out in agony, his place immediately taken by a Basque named Dubonnet who wore an elegant blue suit and a beret.

  The Talbots kept burning out spark plugs and once, when a driver came in for new ones, his whole engine went up in flames. They got the fire out, then set to with the crank to start the engine again. The mechanic cranked till he dropped from exhaustion, without starting the car. Then the driver, DeHane Segrave, cranked it a hundred times more. The mechanic tried again while Segrave gulped down water. Finally the engine roared into life. It lasted one more lap, then quit for good.

  The race took over four hours, and only three cars made it to the finish line, two Delages and one Bugatti, the winning Delage driven by Robert Senechal, his grim bearded face half hidden by a huge leather crash helmet, and Louis Wagner, a Parisian left over from the Paris-Madrid race of 1903.