| The premier motoring magazine of the
time, Autocar covered the July 6th first day of racing
with an eight page illustrated section and carried five
pages of reader's letters, most of which were
congratulatory but with predictably one or two gripes
about teething troubles which included a spectators car
bursting into flames as it tried to climb the exit hill
leaving the circuit! It can not be said that the first
day's racing was an outstanding success but on the other
hand nobody had run a motor race track in Britain before
and there was a lot to learn. Later meetings would prove
to be in marked contrast. Charles Jarrott, founder of the Automobile Association and a London car importer who handled Oldsmobile and de Dietrich cars, complained that some competitors had been feeding pure oxygen into their carburettors from cylinders carried on the cars, and likened the practice to horse doping. He would have been astounded by the methanol/acetone mixtures later used by Mercedes and the high-tech jungle juice petrol additives of Formula One in the nineties, not to mention the street dragster nitro injection systems of El Camino Real! A year to the day after Selwyn Edge's record breaking run Alliot Verdon-Roe became the first Englishman to fly an English aircraft which he had built in a large shed situated over the track from the Brooklands clubhouse. This shed has been re-created and can be seen today complete with an authentic reproduction of that first aeroplane. Verdon-Roe's venture was to grow into AVRO, a major force in aircraft manufacture at Brooklands. Subsequently Vickers, Sopwith and Bleriot all set up production there, eventually serving the needs of first world war flying. After the war the flying village grew up at Brooklands, flying schools were started and the world's first flight booking office opened in 1911 sold an increasing number of tickets to various destinations. The flight booking office was in fact a small shed which was saved from certain destruction in the seventies and has now been preserved. Many of the wealthy young car drivers who raced at Brooklands also took up flying and their exploits have happily been preserved on thousands of photographs which still exist in the archives. At the end of the first war Brooklands opened for racing in May 1920 and as motoring grew in popularity so the track became the venue for car manufacturers to test, announce and show off their new models. Car testing became standardised so that like could be compared with like and today's road test, which we all take for granted, was born. Racing was fast, furious and well attended until the advent of the second world war in 1939 which was sadly to bring the end of Brooklands as a race venue. The History of Brooklands is spiced with many famous names of both cars and drivers. Competitors came from far and near to race at Brooklands. Many of those men and women who were household names in the twenties and thirties are now forgotten by all but a few aficionados. Men and women like Prince BIRA of Siam, Count Louis Zborowski who built the Chitty Chitty Bang Bangs and the Anglo-Americans Henry Seagrave and Whitney Straight. The man considered to be the greatest and most rounded driver of his time, Tim Birkin who pioneered the supercharged Bentleys and tragically died of blood poisoning after burning his arm on a hot exhaust pipe was happily extensively photographed. Billy Cotton the BBC band leader, Vernon Balls the Amilcar exponent, Percy Maclure, Wilkie Wilkinson, Freddy Dixon, Cyril Paul, Luis Fontes, George Harvey Noble, Sammy Davis, Bertie Moir, TASO Mathieson, Oliver Bertram, Earl Howe, Ken Evans, Raymond Mays, Alfred Moss, father of Stirling Moss and many many more. The record breakers; Percy Lambert, Ernest Eldridge, Parry Thomas, Kennelm Lee Guinness of KLG Spark Plugs, Sir Malcolm Campbell, George Eyston, John Cobb, Kay Don, Eric Fernihough the man who lapped Brooklands on a motorbike at 158 mph and the ladies, Elsie Wisdom, Kay Petre, Gwenda Hawkes, Alice Bruce, Doreen Evans and Dorothy Stanley-Turner who attributed her driving skills entirely to a lucky elephant mascot given to her by a well wisher. |
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