Monday 18 June 2012

Tales From The Cockpit - The Richmond Trophy, Goodwood 2011



Front row of The Richmond Trophy Grid, Goodwood Revival 2011. Image courtesy of goodwood.co.uk

  The HWM team were frequent visitors to the Goodwood circuit in the 1950s and as we are the fortunate owners of one of the three remaining single seaters we have been invited to race at the Revival meeting a number of times.  To race at the Revival is a real privilege but it can also be extremely nerve-racking.  You are frequently up against seasoned racers such as Gary Pearson, Rick Hall, Nick Wigley etc who probably cover more racing miles at the Revival than I have over the last 5 years. In the early days of the meeting our HWM used to qualify for the Goodwood Trophy for Formula 1, 2 and libre cars from 1948 to 1955.  The dates for the grids have been slightly adjusted so now we are in the Richmond Trophy for pre 1961 Grand Prix cars.  This results in the speed differential between some of the cars being extreme and as the HWM is one of the oldest cars on the grid it's unlikely we'll be dicing for the lead with BRM P25s and Ferrari Dinos.  The Revival is a unique event in the racing calendar and the anticipation before it is intense, the atmosphere and crowds can easily fool us amateur drivers in to thinking we are real racing drivers for three days!

Goodwood circuit with its fast sweeping corners
 The circuit itself is wonderful to race on and so very different to the modern British club circuits.  The fast sweeping corners tempt ever greater speeds but with run off areas at a minimum it can be unforgiving.  Saying that, nothing can beat the exhilaration of accelerating up the start / finish straight with the grandstands full and the noise from the stub exhausts bouncing off the period pit buildings.

HWM exiting chicane (image courtesy of sportscardigest.com)

The current gearing on the HWM means you can always gain a few places at the start. After our formation lap there seemed to be some confusion on the grid as Rick Hall had stalled his Ferrari Dino on the front row. Willi Balz stalled his 250F as well and then a Gordini cut his engine just in front of me.  Eventually the 3 minute board was shown and just as I was taking it out of gear the union jack was unfurled and dropped.  I hastily grabbed 1st gear, gave it four thousand revs and dropped the clutch.  The HWM snaked its rear tyres from the line and I was conscious of passing a couple of cars as well as the stalled ones further up the grid.  The mistake is to try and rush the change of the Moss gearbox but thankfully I hooked up third and was swiftly through Madgewick and into top and up to 6000 rpm, I felt the engine could have pulled more but that was my red line for the day.

HWM in a  Maserati 250F sandwich with the Vanwall and Jolley's Lister Monza just looming behind (image courtesy of Shannon and Fee)

I fell into a great dice with Niamh McGuire in her Cooper Bristol, we were evenly matched in the corners but the HWM had the legs on the straight.  We picked off some slower cars but I was painfully aware of my lack of track time and race technique.  As the brakes warmed they were beginning to grab so this forced me to keep my foot away from the centre pedal as much as possible.  Along the Lavant straight we were quickly gaining on David Clewley in the Cooper Alta.  He kept left and gave us plenty of room but disaster struck, I didn't see him but Hubert Fabri was on a hard charge coming up to lap us. He had decided to go on the other side of David and clipped the Cooper Alta's front wheel.  This threw the Aston into a spin and he thumped the bank hard and span back on to the circuit.  The race was immediately red flagged.  I was relieved to be honest as I was rapidly dropping back due to the grabbing brakes.  On the slow lap behind the safety car we passed Fabri's damaged Aston which was a sharp reminder of the potential danger of racing these cars but thankfully Hubert was fine after a hospital check up.

David Clewley in the Cooper Alta. Image courtesy of Jane Sanders)

The race came to a disappointing end behind the safety car with Gary Pearson taking the winner's laurels in the BRM P25.  We were far from finishing on the podium but the high one feels after racing at the Revival certainly lasts for weeks if not months.  I always come away promising myself to get more track time in and may be a day's tuition from one of the 'hotshoe' drivers but some how work, family and paying a mortgage get in the way.  I hope I'll have another opportunity to race at the Revival but even if I don't I feel very lucky to have experienced driving the HWM at such a prestigious event.





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Friday 15 June 2012

The HWM


I will hold my hand up now and say I am very lucky. Having a father who was a strident chairman of The Historic Grand Prix Cars Association (but due to heart problems was unable to retain his race licence) I was allowed to take over the driving duties of our HWM Grand Prix car. It was the number 1 works car in 1952 and was driven predominantly by Lance Macklin but was also piloted by Peter Collins towards the end of the 1953 season.  The car's moment of glory came in 1952 at the Daily Express International Trophy at Silverstone when Lance brought it home first in front of Tony Rolt in another HWM and Baron de Graffenried in a Maserati 4clt. It was a good day for the small HWM equipe.

Lance Macklin winner of the 1952 International Trophy in chassis 107, Silverstone. Note the 'LM' insignia on side of cockpit.
 George Abacassis and John Heath, the founders of HWM, worked their cars hard throughout 1952 and '53. They survived on the 'start' money offered by European race organisers so the more Grand Epreuves they entered the greater their income.  This resulted in a relentless charge across Europe from one weekend to the next often with mechanic Alf Francis at the wheel of the AEC transporter.  Some weekends they would even split the team so they could attend two Grand Epreuves simultaneously. Pau, Marseille, Silverstone, Bremgarten, Montlhery, Nordschleife... the list was endless resulting in our chassis (107) notching up over thirty Grand Epreuves starts between 1952 - '53. When British racing green was conspicuously absent in Europe it was this rather disparate band of men (the polish immigrant mechanic Francis, the boy wonder Moss, the suave well-to-do gent Macklin) surviving on a shoestring that kept British racing hopes alive.

John Heath with an HWM (Hersham & Walton Motors) mechanic
                        

George Abecassis
                                                         

HWM team cars lined up at Silverstone
                                                  
When the 1953 European season was over George Abecassis saw the Tasman series in Australia and New Zealand as another potential money earner.  Tony Gaze, who was a semi works driver was packed off to his native Australia with our car.  Abecassis and Heath knew the HWM would be up against some serious machinery in the Tasman series but they had a rather special plan - they took the twin blown engine from Joe Kelly's 1951 Grand Prix Alta, enlarged it to two litres but still retained the twin superchargers and put that engine into the HWM.   This obviously upped the car's potential enormously creating a bhp output in the region of 250.

HWM chassis 107's 2 litre engine with twin blowers (only just visible) mounted at the front of the engine.
                 
 Tony was instructed to sell the car in Australia and thus avoid the 'purchase tax' imposed in the UK, which he did to John Horton but not before putting in some impressive race results such as 2nd in the Lady Wigram Trophy and third in the New Zealand Grand Prix  beating Ken Wharton in the V16 BRM.  The HWM was campaigned competitively down under until the early 1960s.
By 1954 HWM was finding far more success putting Jaguar engines into their sports car chassis than with their Grand Prix cars so production stopped on the single seaters.  There are therefore not many true single seater HWMs left.  Not counting the earlier one & a half seater cars such as Simon Taylor's Stovebolt Special I believe there are only 3 cars in existence.  Mike Harting's 1951 car, Adrien Van der Kroft's ex Kirk Ryland's car and our car chassis 107.

HWM's 1952 works number 1 car chassis 107
When one considers the problems which George Abecassis and John Heath faced trying to build a team of Grand Prix cars in post war Britain and then to campaign them across Europe, when firms such as BRM with their corporate backing were becoming a national embarrassment, one can only admire their dedication and commitment.  They really are the unsung heroes of early British motor racing.





Images courtesy of:
grandprixinsider.wordpress.com
4shared.com
Simon Lewis Transport