This edited article about motor racing originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 704 published on 12 July 1975.

There were many casualties in the Paris to Madrid road race of 1903, by Graham Coton

As His car crossed the finishing line at Bordeaux at the end of the first stage of the 1903 Paris to Madrid road race, racing driver Louis Renault slumped unconscious over the steering wheel, shocked by a massacre he had just driven through.

Fernand, his brother, dragged him white-faced from the cockpit, and heard Louis blurt out a disjointed account of the carnage he had witnessed.

He told of the chaos that reigned on the road behind him after the fast cars had crashed on 16th century humpbacked bridges or broke their axles on bumps in the road that were all right for a dog cart but calamitous for a car.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Sheila van Damm originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 702 published on 28 June 1975.

A motor rally in Monte Carlo with the Alps in the distance

The car went like a bomb. Sheila van Damm’s foot was pressed hard on the accelerator and her eyes were glued to the ribbon of road ahead.

She was testing a new production car over a measured kilometre in Belgium, having been asked to do this following her success as a rally driver.

Suddenly, she felt her crash helmet come loose. The canvas side had split and the wind was getting under her visor and lifting the helmet off her head. It was being held by the strap under her chin, which had slipped down her throat and was strangling her.

“I gritted my teeth,” she said. “And held my breath – what was left of it – and kept my foot down until the board marking the end of the timing area flashed past.”

She stopped and friends rushed up to her. Another helmet was banged on her head and off she went again to make another run over the measured kilometre.

Her average speed over the two complete runs was 120.135 mph and her top speed was 120.459 mph. Sheila had broken the Belgian national record for a car of the two to three litre class, and earned the title of fastest in Europe in a production sports car.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Kay Petre originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 701 published on 21 June 1975.

Kay Petre was the probably the only woman to drive an Auto-Union car (model no 6, as illustrated above), which she did in South Africa. Picture by Wilf Hardy

The quiet, still figure of a young woman lay upon a bed in a London hospital. Her eyes were closed and her face looked pale against the white sheets.

A nurse opened the door and looked at the woman cautiously. Beside her stood Bernd Rosemeyer, a German racing motorist who had just won the British Grand Prix at Donington Park, Leicestershire.

“She’s still unconscious,” said the nurse. “You won’t be able to talk to her.”

Rosemeyer looked disappointed. He was carrying a bouquet of flowers and the laurel wreath he had just been given for his racing victory.

With a smile towards the girl in the bed, Rosemeyer put his wreath and the flowers on a table and quietly left the room. It was his tribute from one racing driver to another, for the girl who lay unconscious was Kay Petre, a pre-war racing enthusiast, who had crashed while practising at the Brooklands track in Surrey.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Le Mans originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 700 published on 14 June 1975.

The Mercedes crash at Le Mans in 1955 which Fangio managed to escape, by Graham Coton

Combine all the high-speed thrills of a motor-car race lasting for 24 hours with all the fun of the fairground and you have a first class public attraction.

That was the experience of the French motor-racing authorities who had the inspiration to initiate the Le Mans 24-hour race on a public roads course just outside the town in South West France in 1923. It attracts hundreds of thousands of people every year, and attendances of well over half-a-million have been recorded.

Yet, it can be the most boring and complicated race in the world to watch. Over fifty cars of all shapes and sizes may start on the 13.5 kilometre (about 9 mile) course, and it takes the fastest less than five minutes to complete one lap.

After only four or five laps, the slower cars are already being overtaken by the faster ones and long before the first of the twenty-four hours has gone by it has become impossible to sort out the racing order without reference to the complicated and huge electronic scoreboard above the pits.

The vast majority of the many thousands who spend a day and a night at the track only know what is going on from the excited commentaries over the public address system and their transistor radios.

But many of them never see the race anyway. For them, Le Mans is more the Mecca for an annual carnival than a sporting event.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Warwickshire originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 698 published on 31 May 1975.

A picture history of Kenilworth Castle, one of the great historic buildings of Warwickshire, by C L Doughty

“Up school! Up school!” “Come on, Headmaster’s House!”

Supporters of both teams stood in groups round the football pitch, loudly urging their schoolfellows on to one last effort. The match was nearly over, the players muddy and tired. And still there was no score.

The scene was Rugby School, Warwickshire’s famous public school. On the football field that day in 1823 one boy was to make sporting history. His name was William Webb Ellis.

A dozen boys crowded round the ball. A deft flick of the foot, and the ball sailed towards Ellis. “Come on Ellis, now’s your chance!” roared the boys on the side-lines. A straight kick, and the match would be won.

But William Ellis did not kick the ball. At the side of the pitch, spectators gasped in astonishment as he gathered the ball in his hands, and ran, twisting and weaving, towards the goal.

Astonishment turned quickly to anger. “Foul! Foul! Drop the ball, Ellis! Shame!” yelled the watching boys, as Ellis, the ball tucked firmly under his arm, crossed the goal line and triumphantly touched down the ball there.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Pat Moss originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 698 published on 31 May 1975.

Britain’s toughest motor rally by Graham Coton

Pat Moss swiftly drove her rally car towards the brow of a hill in Sweden. As she neared the top, she jammed her foot on the accelerator to get the most out of the car’s power, which gave her about 80 mph.

Until then, it had been Pat’s natural reaction to slacken off her speed on reaching a hill’s summit. But a little while previously, she had been told by a more experienced driver that she was losing time by doing this.

“Take the hills at full speed,” he had suggested. When Pat followed this advice, she did not know that just out of sight beyond the brow was a sharp corner.

In all innocence, Pat ploughed on. Because she was unable to turn in time, she and her car shot off the road and landed among uneven terrain scattered with large rocks. Although her car’s wheels were splayed out, Pat found that it was still inn running order and she continued with the rally.

Adventure like this is what Pat must have been seeking when she took up rally driving. She did it so successfully that she won numerous titles and trophies and rose to become European Ladies’ Champion.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about the Monaco Grand Prix originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 695 published on 10 May 1975.

Alberto Ascari driving a Maserati

The big Grand Prix car hurtles out of the tunnel, its engine snarling into an ear-drum splitting roar, its tyres whining and screeching on the promenade road, drowning the shouts and screams of the crowds packed above.

The driver, helmeted, goggled and masked so that only the tip of his nose is visible, is almost prone in the cockpit. Temporarily blinded by the glare of the brilliant sunshine after the gloom of the tunnel, he plunges his foot hard on the accelerator pedal.

He knows he has only a few seconds in which to urge his machine into a top speed of around 240 km/hour on this part of the Monaco Grand Prix course before he must slow down to take the tricky chicane – or artificial bend – ahead on to the road which skirts the lovely harbour of Monte Carlo.

Suddenly, as the straw bales marking the bend race towards him, something goes wrong. Perhaps the car ahead makes a mistake, forcing him to take emergency action; perhaps something on his own car suddenly snaps under the tremendous strain; perhaps he is a fraction of a second early or late to lift his foot off the accelerator, apply the brake or change gear; perhaps, too late, he realises that he has misjudged the lines of a corner he may have taken correctly scores of times already during the race.

If he has time to make a choice of taking a way out, it is a terrible one. On his right is a sheer cliff-face, on his left and ahead the sparkling blue deep Mediterranean.

In a split second, the big straw bales are flung into the air and sent rolling like a set of dice. The driver wrestles frantically with the wheel, to keep the car on the road, but to no avail. Engine racing and screaming as if in pain, the machine takes off like a red rocket over the edge of the harbour and plunges behind an enormous curtain of spray and steam into the water . . .

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Graham Hill originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 691 published on 12 April 1975.

Graham Hill escaped the massive pileup at the start of the 1966 Indianapolis 500 which he won, by Graham Coton

In an old time silent comedy film, it would have doubled up the audience with helpless laughter. But it was real . . . and it was dangerous. Ace racing driver Graham Hill leapt from his car in the Monte Carlo Grand Prix when flames began leaping from beneath his car’s 25 gallon fuel tank.

Realising that if he did not put the flames out, he would not have a car for the forthcoming Dutch Grand Prix, Hill rushed back to the car. Pulling out its tiny fire extinguisher, he directed its uselessly small jet at the flames.

While he was doing this, a Frenchman ran up with a big fire extinguisher. “Saved,” thought Hill. But he did not anticipate the silent comedy film touch that was to follow.

With Hill’s costly racing car enveloped in flames, the Frenchman stopped and began studiously to read the instructions on the fire extinguisher.

Hill rushed at him, snatched the extinguisher from the bemused man and put out the fire himself.

Incidents like this have enlivened Hill’s career on the Grand Prix Circuits. He rode in 175 of these races between 1958 and 1975 and in a nine year period he competed in 90 consecutive Grand Prix. All of this takes terrific stamina. Yet this apparently fearless man knows what it means to be afraid.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Oxfordshire originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 689 published on 29 March 1975.

A picture history of Oxford by C L Doughty

Everyone loves their own county the best, and in Oxfordshire it is easy to see why. At either end of it rise rolling lines of hills – Chiltern ridges capped with woods to the south-east, the lovely Cotswolds to the north-west.

Between the two lies the central plain, chequered by fields, and criss-crossed by streams.

Oxfordshire is the enchanted county. Its villages lie hidden down narrow winding lanes, groups of stone-built or brick-and-timber cottages with musical-sounding names – Nettlebed and Little Rollright, Sibford Gower, Broughton Poggs.

Early last year, the county’s boundaries were extended so that it now includes part of what was formerly Berkshire, and has added greatly to its total population. Abingdon, which is now in Oxfordshire, is an ancient market town with the remains of a 7th century abbey.

It is six miles from the city of Oxford which lies on the central plain. It has been a seat of learning since the twelfth century, and the colleges, with their towers and domes and “dreaming spires,” started a century later.

Read the rest of this article »

This edited article about Henry Segrave originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 689 published on 29 March 1975.

Henry Segrave winning the 1926 Grand Prix in Tours by Graham Coton

“Bring in exhibit number one.” The voice of the coroner’s officer sounded polite and reverent. Everybody in the little court room, packed with reporters from the world’s newspapers, instinctively turned their eyes to a door at the side of the court.

Through it walked a man carrying a vital clue to the cause of a tragedy that had shocked the world when it had occurred a fortnight earlier on Lake Windermere in Westmorland. For it was then that Henry Segrave had been fatally injured when his boat, Miss England II, had leapt into the air and overturned, dragging Segrave and his two crew members into the lake.

It was Friday, 13th June, 1930 when, in warm, sunny weather, Segrave had shot through the water at 98.76 mph to gain the world water speed record.

Segrave and one of his crew died, but the other, Michael Wilcocks, survived to describe the disaster. “The bows were rising up,” he said. Then everything had gone yellow as the waters of the lake had engulfed him.

Five minutes after the boat had disappeared under the surface, an engineer took from the lake a waterlogged branch about a metre long. It seemed to have laid in the direct path of Miss England II.

And it was this which was placed before the coroner at the enquiry into the death of Segrave. As the witnesses told their story, the hearers lived again the last moments of the man who succeeded in becoming the fastest man on land and water.

One expert picked up exhibit number one, the tree branch, and pointed to three marks upon it. These coincided with the three layers of mahogany of which part of the boat had been made. With the aid of a model of Miss England II, the expert demonstrated how he thought the accident had occurred. It seemed quite clear that the branch had smashed a hole in the side of the boat, causing the boat to overturn at nearly a hundred miles an hour.

The coroner’s verdict was that Segrave had died from an accident for which nobody was to blame.

It was a sad end to a racing career that had begun in 1920 on the Brooklands racing track in Surrey when Segrave won several races in a 4.5 litre Opel. He was then 24 and at the start of a career which really blossomed when he joined the Sunbeam-Talbot-Darracq racing team. He had the right blend of dare-devilry and technical knowledge to bring him victories.

In 1923, he won the French Grand Prix and, later in the year, he won the Boulogne Grand Prix as well. During 1926 he set up a new speed record in his V-12 four-litre Sunbeam for a kilometre of 152.33 mph.

After a rival had raised the record to 170.624, Segrave determined to be the first man to travel at more than 200 miles an hour. He asked Sunbeam’s chief designer, Louis Coatalen, to design him a car that would reach this speed. The record stood at 174.88 when Segrave arrived at Daytona Beach, Florida, U.S.A. on 29th March, 1927 with this car, a twin-engined Sunbeam with a power of 870 hp.

Read the rest of this article »