Putin’s grand prix. Crisis times in motor racing

Magnificent Mércèdes. The 1914 French Grand Prix 4.5 litre.

Sochi was not the first grand prix overshadowed by conflict. The 1914 French Grand Prix took place six days after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. In 1938 Auto Union and Mercedes-Benz fled Donington as the Munich Crisis broke. German tanks rolled into Poland during practice for the Belgrade Grand Prix run on September 3rd 1939.

 Putin’s grand prix has, for the moment, damped down Ukraine’s uncivil war in which 3,600 have already died. Or maybe it has kept a lid on it until Bernie’s circus moved on.

 In July 1914 feelings in France were already running high when the home crowd cheered Peugeots and Delages against the might of Mércèdes. In a seven hour contest on a triangular course near Lyons Georges Boillot’s Peugeot was overwhelmed by Christian Lautenschlager’s Mércèdes. It was a triumph for the German team, which took the first three places.

 SCH Davis: “As the crowds made their way dustily from the course there was an atmosphere of something more than motor racing. Everyone was extraordinarily quiet. Though we knew nothing of it there had come faintly in the wind the echoing thud of guns.” The gallant Boillot became a casualty, shot down over the Western Front in 1916. Yet there was a curious bonus for Britain. One of the Mercédès, sent for exhibition in London, was somehow forgotten when the war began and came to the attention of a young Lieutenant WO Bentley RN. The former railway apprentice had the job of improving Royal Naval Air Service engines. He knew the Mercédès, designed by Paul Daimler, was derived from an aero engine with 4-valve heads, steel forged cylinders and a thin welded water jacket to reduce weight and improve cooling. Mércèdes attention to detail was exemplary. The rear axle had double pinions and crown wheels machined integrally with the half-shafts, hollowed-out to save weight. The axle was a masterpiece of precision.

Lieutenant Bentley towed the Mercédès to Rolls-Royce at Derby where they knew about aero engines. It was taken to pieces, its secrets examined and some were incorporated into Rolls-Royce’s engines. Bentley meanwhile redesigned RNAS Clerget air-cooled rotaries.

The 1938 Donington Grand Prix was planned for 1 October but on 24 September talks in Bad Godesburg between Hitler and Neville Chamberlain over the future of Europe collapsed. The Royal Navy was placed on alert, which meant that Francis Curzon 5th Earl Howe a serving officer withdrew his ERA entry. The German teams, however, were already there, nearby Castle Donington having served as a World War I prison for German officers. Karl Feuereissen, Auto Union manager and Alfred Neubauer his counterpart at Mercedes-Benz were instructed to return to Germany at once. And, mindful perhaps of what befell the 1914 Mercédès, if there was any threat of confiscation the racing cars had to be set on fire and destroyed.

As it turned out they caught the ferry at Harwich intact, only returning after Neville Chamberlain waved his famous piece of paper on September 30. The race was re-scheduled for October and German cars took the first five places.

Nuvolari was late for practice. A mechanic warms his C-type Auto Union. Its designer Dr Ferdinand Porsche (behind cockpit) looks on.

It is only 75 years and a few weeks since 31 August 1939, when practice went ahead as planned for the Belgrade Grand Prix. Herman Lang (Mercedes-Benz) was fastest; 0.4sec ahead of Manfred von Brauchitsch and Hermann Paul Müller (Auto Unions). The motor racing correspondent of the Neues Tagblatt felt compelled to cable Stuttgart saying the racing teams were following the international situation on German radio. But it was Third Reich policy to keep the event going, “In view of our friendly relations with Yugoslavia.”

The “international situation” was Germany’s invasion of Poland. Von Brauchitsch practised his Mercedes-Benz on Friday then, on race morning, he went missing. It was Sunday 3 September and Alfred Neubauer fetched him back from Belgrade airport as news came through that France and Britain had declared war. Manfred’s uncle Walther was commander in chief of the Germany army and about to be made a Generalfeldmarschall. The still a-political nephew had wanted to join his friend Rudolph Caracciola in Switzerland.

Tazio Nuvolari wore Number 4 in Belgrade.

The Franco-British ultimatum on Poland expired that morning at 11o’clock, yet at 5 o'clock the flag went down to start the grand prix. More than 100,000 Belgraders, a quarter of the city's population came to watch. It was another 18 months before they heard big German V12s again, overhead, when the Luftwaffe bombed the city killing 17,000. Nuvolari won the grand prix in the Auto Union, Lang retired with broken goggles, and the Germans’ sole adversary, Bosko Milenkovic in an old Bugatti T51, finished 19 laps behind. There was a quarrel over the result. Mercedes-Benz protested that Nuvolari’s tactics were unfair; Auto Union complained von Brauchitsch had cheated.

Mercedes-Benz team manager Alfred Neubauer in the 1930s and 1950s with his drivers, left from top Rudolf Caracciola, Richard Seaman, Herman Lang and Karl Kling. Right, Stirling Moss and Juan Manuel Fangio

The Bentley after next.

Trans Continental

Entry-level Bentley sounds like post hoc ergo propter hoc – if you plan an SUV Bentley you must follow it with a small one. Paris Motor Show gossip suggests Bentley is working on it. So just as Bentleys changed when the company went bust in 1930 and Rolls-Bentleys had to change (much for the better) when the Germans took over, as Bentley approaches 100 everything will have to change again. A well-appointed 3 Litre Bentley would still do 150mph and boasting of self-evidently absurd speeds for road cars nowadays is vanity.

They still have to finish the SUV. Autocar’s Mark Tisshaw quotes Wolfgang Durheimer CEO: “A smaller car is a very powerful idea in parallel to the Continental, and is one of our areas of research. There is also room for derivatives of models we have; the Mulsanne and Continental could get brothers and sisters. An SUV opens up more ideas.”

Regular readers, and there are some, will recall from November 21 2012 Lanchester Luxury, my certitude about a market for well-equipped well-appointed luxury cars of modest power and much refinement. A small Bentley could be a plug-in hybrid with no need to compromise on price or exclusiveness. Not everybody wants to flaunt multi-cylinders and unusable top speeds. There is no need to compromise on build quality. Bentleys have always been well-made. There’s no need to compromise on style or even self-indulgent interiors.

Epitome of 1930s style. the Derby Bentley

Rolls-Royce invented the Silent Sports Car in the 1930s. It had the prestige of a Bentley without the raciness. Rolls-Royce reluctantly engaged WO Bentley when it set up Bentley Motors (1931) Ltd to keep him under control. He never got on with Royce, never forgave what he regarded as deceit when forbidden from designing a Bentley, yet he stayed three years. He eventually agreed that the Rolls-Bentley was what he would have got round to himself.

Walter Owen Bentley

WO never forgot Royce’s petulant, “I believe you’re a commercial man Mr Bentley?” WO’s response was “Well not really. Primarily I suppose I’m a technical specialist,” but what irked him more was, “You’re not an engineer then, are you?” Whereupon he reminded Royce that they had both been railway engineers: “I think you were a boy in the Great Northern Railway running sheds at Peterborough before I was a premium apprentice at Doncaster.” But “Premium” was an edgy term. It meant that Bentley’s parents had paid for him to work there, while an aunt had supported Royce’s apprenticeship until penury intervened.

WO’s engineering was not like Royce’s. Even in an age when empiricists outnumbered theorists Royce was severely practical. Both had been engaged on railway locomotives beside which cars were akin to watchmaking. WO was a motivator, a proposer and he was, furthermore 25 years younger. He had the appearance and affectations of his rich, playboy racing-driver friends and could afford to invest £2,000 for importing French DFPs before the War. Royce, ailing, hard-working since an impoverished childhood, was unkempt, coarse in his language and described himself as a mechanic.

Sir Frederick Henry Rolls (seated) with his engineer collaborator Ivan Evernden

In fact, as The Complete Bentley recounts, neither of them could be called commercial, cost-conscious or even businesslike. Bentley had been a failure running his company and Rolls-Royce used Royce’s ill-health as an excuse to prevent him meddling day-to-day. The Complete Bentley is available as an ebook.

Brabham Broke Rules: Sir John Arthur Brabham AO OBE 1926-2014

Loquacious Brabham wasn’t. Yet he seems to have talked himself into his first grand prix with an illegal car. He claimed a Cooper with a 2 litre engine was eligible, and ran in the 1955 British Grand Prix. It was the start of a 23-year career of 126 grands prix, 14 of which he won, setting 12 fastest laps and 13 pole positions. He won the world title twice in Coopers, once in his own Brabhams. 

Jack Brabham in a later Brabham-Ford Cosworth

I watched him at that 1955 British Grand Prix at Aintree. It was a curiously cobbled-up Cooper sports car in which contemporary reports showed scant interest. Designed for a 4-cylinder 1100cc Coventry-Climax engine in the back, Brabham squeezed a 6-cylinder BMW/Bristol engine in, by adding 2in to the wheelbase. It had a back-to-front Citroën final drive and a gearbox with only three ratios. The engine was behind the driver largely because that was where it had been since Coopers were 500cc cars with motorcycle engines. Charles and John Cooper were empirical engineers with little notion of polar moments of inertia that inspired Ferdinand Porsche. He put the Auto Union engines aft but by the 1950s they were discredited as too difficult to drive. Jack Brabham was to change all that. 

The Coopers didn’t have an expensive racing engine. The nearest was a 1971cc Bristol designed by BMW in the 1930s for a sports car, so they claimed they had bored-out the six cylinders to 69mm, increasing the capacity to 2154cc. Regulations obliged it to be at least 2 litres, so they claimed an unlikely 2200cc to look nearer 2500cc. A smart scrutineer would soon have found out, but Dean Delamont of the RAC wanted to get Brabham and Cooper into the contest, so turned a blind eye.

Motor Sport maintained the fiction even in its race report.

He did speak sometimes. Jack Brabham (left) in deep conversation with John Surtees.

 Grand prix cars were traditionally open-wheeled single seaters but Brabham’s contender had an enclosed body; there was nothing in the regulations to prevent it. Mercedes-Benz tried one in 1954 but the drivers didn’t like it. Fangio kept hitting trackside markers at Silverstone. Brabham’s Cooper had the driver in the middle all right, yet it still looked like a sports car without headlights or number plates. With something like 150bhp it had barely half the power of the 2.5 litre fuel-injected desmodromic-valve Mercedes. On race morning the clutch failed so Brabham had to start from the back of the grid. He was 20sec a lap slower than Stirling Moss in the Mercedes-Benz W196, the eventual winner, and was overtaken inside six laps. 

It was too much. The Bristol engine overheated and the car was out before half of the 90 laps.

Jack Brabham remained taciturn then, as well as in his triumph years at Cooper. He was one of the first to adjust his cars’ suspension for different tracks then, at the height of his success in 1962, left Cooper to build cars of his own. Engineered together with Ron Tauranac, almost as succinct as Brabham, they did well in Formula 2 with Honda engines, but success in grands prix were elusive. Jim Clark won the 1965 title with an astonishing six victories. When the rules changed in 1966 pragmatic Brabham went for a low-cost option, an Australian Repco engine adapted from an American Buick V8. The Brabhams looked too small, too light and under-powered but just as critics were dismissing his 1959 and 1960 titles as lucky flukes, Brabham won a third championship. 

He was still laconic. Amiable enough and polite to journalists like me, you could never call him effusive, such as Colin Chapman could be when he wanted you to believe something. He didn’t become uncommunicative during practice, like Graham Hill. He was never wary or suspicious, answered questions when asked, but he had a way of looking at something in the distance when the conversation was over.

Autographed memento: Brabham and family

It was not until we turned up at The Savoy on 30 November 1970 for La Quenelle de Sole au Vin Blanc Mersault Charmes and Faisan Perigourdine for his farewell dinner that he became verbose. The speakers were brilliant gifted Walter Hayes, head of Public Affairs at Ford, Graham Hill witty, engaging and wry. “Chatty Jack” could only be an anti-climax. Yet perhaps because it was so unexpected he thrilled the audience with an after-dinner speech that was funny, revealing and went on at length. We heard more from Sir John Arthur Brabham AO OBE in 40 minutes than we had in all 23 years.

Veterans to Brighton

Down Constitution Hill

Like Henley Regatta or Remembrance Sunday, the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run is enshrined in the British psyche. It is not a race, but see below, and the Veteran Car Club gets cross if you call the cars old crocks. Yet any idea that it celebrates the abolition of the so-called Red Flag Act is pure fiction. Locomotives on Highways Acts of Parliament from 1861 did mandate a man with a red flag to walk ahead, but an amendment of 1878 made it largely optional. It was left to local authorities to apply the rule and not many did.

In the end the Act that prompted the Emancipation Run on Saturday 14th November 1896 raised the speed limit to a dizzy 14mph. It didn’t last. Parliament reduced it to 12mph before the Act came into force, but a red flag was symbolically destroyed by Lord Winchilsea at the start. It went from the Metropole Hotel in Northumberland Avenue to the Metropole Hotel in Brighton and some 58 vehicles were entered but around 25 dropped out beforehand. There is no consensus on how many made it to the finish, or even how they got there.

This year’s London to Brighton will drive past Buckingham Palace. Over 400 veteran cars made before 1905 will leave Hyde Park as dawn breaks at 06.56 on 2 November, and for only the second time since 1962 they will make their way under Wellington Arch, down the gentle slope of Constitution Hill, round the Victoria Memorial (above) then along The Mall’s red asphalt before turning into Horse Guards Road. Then they turn left into Parliament Square, past Big Ben and over Westminster Bridge. It was a route used in the early years of the run, and again in 1996 to mark its centenary.

Westminster Bridge

Despite nervous safety campaigners the organisers of that first Emancipation Run had achieved their ends, although they cautioned,  “Owners and drivers (to) remember that motor cars are on trial in England and that any rashness or carelessness might injure the industry in this country.” It was three months too late, alas, for Mrs Bridget O’Driscoll of Old Town, Croydon who has the melancholy distinction of being the first fatal road accident victim of a motor car. A Roger-Benz driven by Arthur Edsell cracked her skull on the terrace of the Crystal Palace. Apparently Edsell’s vision was obscured by a car in front and Mrs O’Driscoll, in a state of panic according to the inquest, stood still in the path of the approaching vehicle.

My 1992 drive to Brighton on, rather than in, an 1893 Benz Ideal, showed that even 12 mph could be scary. Uphill could be painfully slow but downhill alarmingly fast. Skinny tyres, direct steering and brakes shaky in the dry but downright dangerous when wet, could have upset a tall, light vehicle’s equilibrium. There was every likelihood that even a small accident could be turned into a big one.

1992 Number Two daughter Joanna in the big Mercedes. It was a cold November.

This year 433 entries – up from 389 in 2013 – have been received by the Royal Automobile Club for the Bonhams London to Brighton Veteran Car Run. Tradition dictates that it takes place, come rain or shine, on the first Sunday of November and motorists being what they are some competitive element was bound to intrude. The 2014 Run will have a Regularity Time Trial. Drivers will try to match a nominated ‘bogey’ time for a 13-mile section between Crawley and Burgess Hill. Let’s hope no Mrs O’Driscolls stand in the way.

LEDs on Lexus

 If you see a Christmas tree moving, it could be a Lexus NX300h. Lexus is bigging on Light Emitting Diodes. Two-lead semiconductors (no more than basic pn-junction diodes really) will release photons of electroluminescence in headlights, daytime running lights, fog lights and rear lamp clusters. They will be in door-handle courtesy lights, up to 90 of them twinkling on the new £29,495-£42,995 crossover exploiting as Lexus puts it, on the brilliance, rapid-action and low-energy benefits of LED technology.

Operate turn flashers on Luxury, F Sport or Premiers, and LEDs will shine your way round the corner. Premiers have a windscreen camera that dips the headlights for oncoming traffic. You are welcomed on approaching an NX 300h (provided you haven’t forgotten the key) with LEDs illuminating door handles and shining on the ground. Lexus doesn’t want you stepping in puddles apparently. At the same time the Remote Touch Interface touch pad will light up in the cabin (where fitted – it’s an option) and footwell LEDs will help you find the pedals. There are LEDs in the rear dome light and map lights, with touch-controlled switches in the headlining.

In short LEDs will be everywhere yet Lexus has every reason to be pleased with itself. It is over 30 years since it was invented against a political imperative. Japan was obliged to limit the number of cars it was exporting to the United States and Europe. The indigenous manufacturers felt so threatened by high-quality Toyotas and Nissans with long warranty times and good radios that their governments had to talk the Japanese round. They pled for voluntary export restraint and the Japanese equivalent of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders gave in. So, thought Toyota, if we are compelled to export fewer cars let’s make them expensive. Big cars at three times the price don’t cost three times as much to make. Premium prices provided more profit. In1986 Honda agreed, launched the Acura, an export version of the Legend and the following year Nissan joined in with the Infiniti. Mazda thought about it, then abandoned its own premium brand, the Amati.

Toyota had to think of a name and Saatchi and Saatchi, appointed to handle marketing, took on image consultants Lippincott and Margulies, which sifted through 219 prospects like Vectre, Verone, Chaparel, Calibre as image consultants do. Alexis became favourite, never mind it was a girl’s name and its association with Alexis Carrington of the soap opera Dynasty seemed to help. The A was dropped and the i replaced with a u. It sounded vaguely de luxe; Toyota denied that it meant “Luxury Exports to the US”. Just before the first cars were sold a database firm, LexisNexis, took out an injunction against it but an appeal court judged than nobody was going to confuse a car with a computer service and Lexus it was. Following an interminable billion dollar advertising campaign the superbly smooth and brilliantly innovative LS400 made its TV debut with champagne glasses stacked on the bonnet with the engine running. All that remained was to invent a logo not too much like Mercedes-Benz or BMW and they were off.

Lexus is now a world-wide premium brand but it still has to remember it lives in a political world. In August it had to reduce its spare parts prices in China by about one-third. China’s National Development and Reform Commission, which regulates trade, complained about exorbitant prices of after-market servicing and spares. What goes round comes round. Ninety LEDs notwithstanding. All Lexuses need now is a fairy on the top.

Goodwood Jaguar

D-type MWS 302 (chassis No XKD502) was never quite as distinguished as its almost identical twin XKD501, registered by Ecurie Ecosse in Edinburgh as MWS 301. A new production D-type in May 1955, 301 was crashed in practice at the Nürburgring by Jimmy Stewart. Trapped underneath after the new disc brakes failed him Jackie’s brother, who had crashed heavily in an Aston Martin at Le Mans the previous year, resolved to give up racing. Irishman Desmond Titterington, driving 302 also suffered braking problems but 301 went on to glory, coming second at the Goodwood 9 hours race in August. Wilkie Wilkinson Ecosse’s chief mechanic rolled it at Snetterton in 1956 but it was rebuilt by the works and won Le Mans, with Ron Flockhart and Ninian Sanderson. Here is 302 at Goodwood last weekend.

There was no Le Mans luck for 302. Titterington took the Ulster Trophy with it and Sanderson won at Aintree, then Ecosse disposed of it to Maurice Charles in Cardiff who fitted E-type independent rear suspension. Like most racing cars 302 was taken to pieces, rebuilt several times then restored by Lynx before being sold to a Japanese collector in the 1980s. 

When I drove it to Le Mans in about 1966 it was a bit down at heel. The Automobile Club de l’Ouest wanted to parade past winners of the 24 hours’ race, so 302’s owner and I drove it there; that’s me (below) taking a precise line through Mulsanne corner. The long nose was ill-fitting, a later addition that it didn’t have new and it even had a sort of luggage compartment along with a fin. A D-Type had a lightweight central section but the front tubular sub-frame was not integral and made from steel, not aluminium. The engine was dry-sump with no proper flywheel and made do with a crankshaft damper and the massive triple-plate clutch. With 285bhp on three Weber carburettors, a 2.79:1 axle, and 6000rpm (only 250rpm above peak power) it would do 183mph (294.5kph) but 302’s independent rear suspension made it squirm a bit. It rode quite well on the road. It was certainly less precise than a D-type should have been. Proper rear suspension was restored, a more exact body made and it returned to Europe in the 1990s. It now owned by French enthusiast and collector Robert Sarrailh.

 I was able to compare the slightly erratic 302 with TKF 9, the Border Reivers’ D-type of Jim Clark, on a memorable day’s driving at Oulton Park. For an Autocar feature published on 20 June 1968 I did a back-to-back test with a C-type, D-type and E-type, and thought the D “perhaps less well suited to tight slow corners than long fast ones - a car for a fast circuit.” I did not enjoy it as much as the less supple but a racier and maybe stiffer C-type. Basic price of a D-type in 1955 was £2,585, purchase tax brought it to £3,878 17s 6d. In 1968 I ventured that, “… today 13 years after it left Browns Lane, it is still one of the fastest production cars ever. A good D is such a collector's item that when one comes on the market, upwards of £5,000 is likely to change hands.” That would be £80,000 now. So D-types, at the £2.2million paid for one in 2008, were sound investments.