This edited article about motor racing first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 566 published on 18 November 1972.

Leslie Pennal was a pioneering mechanic of the early racing days who helped make the first Bentley engine and car, by Graham Coton

Blueprints were spread out upon a wooden bench in a small London workshop where a baby that was to startle the motoring world was slowly taking shape. A block and tackle hung from the roof, a lathe and other tools lined the walls, and poring over the plans or toiling at the squealing tools were a small group of men. They were the craftsmen who were making the first engine designed by W. O. Bentley, an idealist whose name was always to be remembered with pride.

The year was 1919, and Bentley had planned to make a car that would not only be fast and good, but the best in its class.

That he did so is shown by the fact that although his firm only existed from 1913 to 1931, when it was absorbed by Rolls-Royce, Bentley’s name has become synonymous with quality cars.

It is hard to realise that only about 3,000 Bentley cars were made, but they won world supremacy on the racing tracks and on the roads.

To ensure that his cars were always built to his high standards, Bentley assembled a group of the very best craftsmen he could find. One of these was Leslie Pennal, who joined the firm as a boy of seventeen, and helped to make the very first Bentley car.

When Bentley decided to race his cars to get publicity and attract customers, he chose Pennal as his riding mechanic. In this capacity, Pennal serviced Bentley’s car at the tracks and accompanied him during the races to repair any breakdowns.

This was his job until after the 1927 Le Mans race, when Bentley’s customers became of the first importance. Pennal then became a travelling mechanic, ready to go anywhere to service a customer’s car.

By this time, he had seen enough of high speed racing to know what performances could be expected of the Bentley cars. He also knew something about the men who drove them. At least he thought he did, until he went to Portugal to make some adjustments to a car owned by Count Antonio da Costa Cabral.

The Count decided to take his newly tuned-up car on a proving run through the mountains, accompanied by Pennal and two of his friends.

After zipping through towns and scattering ox-carts, startled people and laughing policemen, and zooming around trams, they drove on until they reached the narrow mountain roads.

As if this was not enough of a test, the Count became really excited when he spotted a little Bugatti car driven by a friend of his kicking up the dust on a lane below them.

It was like a red rag to a bull. No Bugatti could outrace a Bentley in the Count’s estimation.

This edited article about motor racing first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 565 published on 11 November 1972.

Jim Clark wins America's Big Race by James E McConnell

Jim Clark’s hands were red and raw and his arms ached with agony.

One thought haunted this Scottish racing motorist as he strained to keep his lead in the American Grand Prix in 1962. Would his gearbox hold out under the abnormal strain of clutchless gear changes at over a hundred miles an hour?

Seconds before, while he was battling to keep his slim lead over Graham Hill’s B.R.M., Clark’s clutch had given way under the terrific hammering it was taking.

The relentless Hill was almost on top of him now. With the end of the race in sight, ominous sounds came from the exhausted gearbox of Clark’s Lotus.

Sensing that defeat was about to overtake him on the brink of victory, Clark willed the engine to stay in one piece. The gearbox did hold out, and Jim Clark won the race just 8.8 seconds ahead of his rival.

Of such stuff are champions made. Clark was to glitter in many more races, and in all he was to win a total of twenty-five Grand Prix events, to become world champion and the fastest motor racing star of his time.

It was a meteoric career that began on a Berwickshire farm when Clark, at the age of nine, decided to ride over the fields in his father’s Austin Seven. An angry father kept Clark out of the driver’s seat until he passed the driving test at the age of seventeen and got a Sunbeam Talbot.

This edited article about motor racing first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 564 published on 4 November 1972.

Stirling Moss by Wilf Hardy

What makes a top racing driver? Stirling Moss, who was one of Britain’s greatest racing motorists and won almost everything except the world title in more than fourteen years on the track, believes that the vital ingredient is the will to win.

As a man who always drove for victory, he should know. With his tally of 194 wins out of 290 placings in 307 races, he proved his point. But in spite of this, some of his best races saw him finish well down the field, perhaps because the car was not set up properly or something had gone wrong with the engine. And one saw him terribly injured in a car that had become a total wreck.

This was at Britain’s Goodwood circuit on the Easter Monday of 1962, when a crash at 120 miles an hour brought an end to his spectacular career on the track. Moss’s injuries were severe, but he recovered from them with the help of the surgeon’s skill. However, the effects of the crash were such that he was forced to transfer his interests from racing to business, in which he has become very successful.

Was it a mistake in his driving which nearly cost Moss his life on this occasion? He cannot remember. “I make mistakes,” he says, “but not when my life is at stake.”

It was certainly no mistake of Moss’s which cost him the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa in 1960. During a practice lap at 140 miles an hour in a Lotus, he swooped into a dip, soared up a bump, and then lost a wheel. As the car spun into a bank, Moss saw his missing wheel rolling off into the distance.

Two broken legs, a fractured nose and three vertebrae crushed in his back put Moss out of racing, but only for five weeks. A few days after his release from hospital he was driving a sports model Lotus at Silverstone, and soon after that he was in Sweden driving in a race which had the tension of a sprint start.

It took courage to face danger again after such a severe shake-up. However, Moss dismisses this attribute which he says is well down the list in a racing driver’s make-up.

“The margin between courage and stupidity is so close, that I cannot decide the difference,” he says. “When I was racing, I occasionally did things which were apparently brave, but only because they were a little stupid. Only occasionally did I do something which was a little brave, and this is because what I did was premeditated.” By this, he means that he had analysed his actions and calculated the risks beforehand.

Clearly, Moss was a serious driver, determined to stay alive. This is how he was seen by a man who changed his car’s tyres in the pits, David McDonald whom the drivers called “Dunlop Mac.” But Mac saw another side to his character which softens the image of Moss as a calculated risk-taker. Moss was superstitious.

He would not drive an all-green car, although this is the British colour in international racing. To satisfy him, a dab of some other colour had to be painted on the car. And when he entered for a race, he had been known to ask for the number seven.

Perhaps he recognised that to be an outstanding driver in a perfect car was not enough. You needed one other element – good luck.

This edited article about motor racing first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 563 published on 28 October 1972.

Mike Hawthorn by James E McConnell

Black oil smudges showed up sharply on the stark, white face of Mike Hawthorn. As this young, British racing driver drove into the pits after three hours of the Le Mans 24 hours race in 1955, he shouted to pit manager Lofty England, “Take me out of the race. I’m finished.”

While the mechanics were feeding in more fuel from gravity tanks, changing the tyres, checking the oil and cleaning the windscreen, Lofty did not have to ask the reason for Mike’s hysteria. He could see. A Mercedes had shot into the crowd in front of the pits and killed eighty spectators. And Mike felt to some degree responsible.

“Do one more lap, and then we’ll discuss it again,” pleaded Lofty with the emotionally upset young man.

Mike could still hear the screams of the spectators, the roars of other cars and the shouts of ambulance men and doctors as he drove away from the horror. But after one lap, he was back again, hysterical, swearing that he would never race again. How could he ever forget the disaster which had followed a simple action he had made.

At the start, the race had gone well. Hawthorn was sharing the lead with a Mercedes-Benz driven by Juan Fangio at speeds at times close to 180 m.p.h. Being due to come into the pits for fuel, he overtook two Mercedes and an Austin-Healey, put up his hand to show his intention, applied the brake and started to turn right into the pits.

The Austin-Healey swerved to the left to avoid hitting Hawthorn’s Jaguar. A Mercedes-Benz driven by Pierre Levegh also swerved, but instead of missing the Austin-Healey it ran up its sloping tail and took off into the air.

It should have hit the safety bank, but landed on it instead and burst into pieces among the densely packed crowd.

Levegh was killed outright, but Lance Macklin in the Austin-Healey survived by a miracle.

This edited article about motor racing first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 562 published on 21 October 1972.

Tazio Nuvolari driving an Alfa Romeo by Graham Coton

Tazio Nuvolari was a wiry little wizard who always drove to win. Once his engine blew up, once his petrol tank burst into flames, and once he leapt from his car at 100 m.p.h. – and each time he survived

Pappa Nuvolari puffed away at his cigar imperturbably, as if it was an everyday occurrence to have an aeroplane on the roof of his house.

“I want to see if he makes it,” Pappa said, as he watched his son, Tazio, climb into the cockpit of the Bleriot aeroplane he had constructed from bits and pieces bought from a factory.

Tazio had seen the dismantled Blériot in Milan and bought it for £20. After it had been shipped to his home, he put it together with the help of a friend.

But Tazio struck trouble when he tried to fly the machine, for this was 1912, when both flying – and Tazio, who was twenty – were young. No matter what he did to it, the machine would not leave the ground.

Undaunted, Tazio fixed up a hoist and hauled the plane on to the flat roof of his house.

Once he had moored the plane with a rope, Tazio climbed into the cockpit and revved up the engine. When he thought it was turning fast enough, he signalled to his friend to cut the rope.

Tazio tensed at the controls, gazing skywards in eager anticipation of a swoop into the clouds. Instead, the engine coughed a few times a trifle wheezily and plopped on to a haystack just below the house.

Almost immediately, the petrol caught fire and the haystack became a mass of flames.

Pappa Nuvolari went on puffing at his cigar. He was used to his son’s crazy antics. Soon, out of the flames came Tazio, unhurt and unworried.

As a flyer, he was a non-starter. But as Italy’s king of speed on motor cycles and racing cars, he became a daring risk-taker, seemingly incapable of experiencing fear.

“It was my father who taught me never to be afraid,” said Nuvolari. “When I was five, I was badly kicked by our horse. Three or four days later, father threw a silver coin between the horse’s legs and told me to pick it up and keep it for myself. I got it all right, and the horse didn’t move. This was my very first lesson, never to fear danger. And, to tell you the truth, I have never known the meaning of fear.”

Men who raced against him on the world’s tracks knew how true this was. In all his races, he finished second only seventeen times and third only ten times. As a rule, he won – or smashed up the car in the attempt.

This edited article about Louis Renault first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 561 published on 14 October 1972.

the Paris to Madrid race of 1903, which had cost Louis his brother's life by Graham Coton

Louis Renault hadn’t a hope. Accusing fingers were pointing at this wealthy French motor car manufacturer.

He was a collaborationist, they said. He made tanks and aeroplane engines for the Nazis, they cried. He had grown fat and rich in the Second World War while most of occupied France starved under German rule, they screamed.

Louis Renault must die.

It was a hate campaign against war profiteers, among whom Louis Renault was classed. His punishment had begun when his great sprawling factory had crumbled under the bombs of the R.A.F. because they were working for the German army.

But he had rebuilt it with the rugged tenacity that had brought him through a life of shattering disasters.

He had made the name of Renault famous throughout the world with a succession of fine cars for the family motorist and fast models for the racing track. He had perfected devices like a special gearbox that earned him royalties for many years from all the other motor manufacturers. Renault had given the car to the people.

And now he was going to pay the price. His arrest was inevitable. The sentence of the court beyond doubt.

Renault had worked for the Germans. Renault would pay the penalty.

As he looked back over his life in the anxious days before the police called to arrest him, he must have wondered what had changed him from the shy, stuttering youth whose main joy was in tinkering with machinery, to the single-minded autocratic employer whose sole interest was in keeping his vast factory in production, whether it was making cars for the French people or tanks for the Germans.

Renault was in love with his factory. And he had to keep its heart throbbing, whatever the cost.

Part of that cost had been paid during the frightful bloodbath of the Paris to Madrid race of 1903, which had seared a burning scar in his memory and cost him the brother, who was his co-director.

Renault had entered cars driven by himself, his brother, Marcel, and another driver named Oury.

The race turned out to be a deadly fiasco. It was stopped at Bordeaux after an unbelievable series of accidents in which fast cars crashed on 16th century hump-backed bridges or broke their axles on bumps in the road that were all right for a dog cart but calamitous for a car.

Less than half the cars which started the race reached Bordeaux. The rest were charred and shattered ruins, death traps for their drivers and mechanics.

Spectators were knocked down like ninepins as the out-of-control cars ran amok among the crowds lining the route. A soldier died trying to shield a child. Onlookers crowding round a blazing car were killed when a following one smashed into it.

The terrible tragedy put an end to town-to-town races, apart from those on properly controlled road circuits cleared of stray crowds, and it nearly put an end to Louis Renault.

This edited article about motor racing first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 560 published on 7 October 1972.

Birkin the Bentley Boy by Graham Coton

Some people said he was ruthless. Others said that he was fearless, tough on his car and unshakably determined. But his ambition was to win a Grand Prix motor race.

His name was Tim Birkin, the Stirling Moss or Jim Clark of the hard motor racing days in the ‘twenties and ‘thirties, when drivers were often their own mechanics and pit staff.

When Tim Birkin roared up for a pit stop, in the days before fuel was piped in from a hose, the pit manager would pass him the cans of petrol.

After he had filled up, Birkin’s petrol cans went flying into the pit like cannon balls. Nobody threw them back at him, although the pit manager said he often felt like doing so.

Everybody had a healthy respect for Birkin. He was the finest driver in the pre-war Bentley team, and he knew how to take risks and survive.

And there were plenty of risks waiting for him in the 1930 Grand Prix at Pau in France when 25 cars lined up in the September sun.

Amid the sleek racers of those days, Birkin turned up in a 4 ½ litre, four-seater Bentley, stripped of wings, lights and other unnecessary additions.

The other drivers laughed. And when Birkin’s ungracious car moved off slowly, the onlookers chuckled, too. Birkin never heard them. He knew he would soon be up with the leaders.

This edited article about motor racing first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 559 published on 30 September 1972.

With screaming tyres and the smell of scorched rubber, the racing car leapt ahead to 168 miles an hour. Navigator Denis Jenkinson looked at the rev counter – and swallowed. The engine was whining at 7,000 revolutions per minute.

Stirling Moss, at the wheel, had his eyes fixed on the grey tarmac ribbon before them. Automatically, his hand felt for the overdrive gear lever and clicked it to engage. The virtual sixth gear shot the car ahead at the speed of a bullet.

The two men felt the higher G-forces pin them to the back of their seats. Moss turned to Jenkinson. On his face was a grin that said, “Some acceleration, eh?”

Jenkinson returned the smile, confident that Moss would give all his rivals a hard fight in the 1957 Mille Miglia, a heart-pounding race over a thousand miles of tortuous roads in Northern Italy.

Out of about three hundred cars, those sponsored by two big Italian manufacturers, were expected to grab the honours. Moss was the red hot favourite for Maserati. If he flopped, there was always a chance that others from the same stable might score, but it was a slim one.

Ferrari’s hopes were pinned on a 52-year-old driver named P. Taruffi. He had led at various stages in the Mille Miglia in the past. But to win? At his age? You had to be an optimist to think that this was possible.

Moss slowed his 25 cwt., two-seater, 4.5 litre racer for a couple of sharp, right-handed bends, and then went into an 80 m.p.h. left hand bend at a nerve-tingling speed of about 130 m.p.h.

Too fast. Moss changed down and jabbed at the brake pedal with his foot. But it wasn’t there.

A sharp corner, a high speed car, no brakes. What could he do? Moss made a violent grab at the gear lever to change down again.

Jenkinson thought the car had jumped out of gear. Moss knew differently and coolly slid the car into the inside of the corner.

As the car slowed down, Jenkinson thought, “Go on, then. Accelerate.” Moss did not. Jenkinson looked sideways at Moss to see what was the trouble, and saw him pointing at the floor.

Looking down, Jenkinson swallowed hard. There were only two pedals on the cross-shaft – an accelerator and a clutch pedal. The brake pedal was lying on the floor among the pipes and rods.

This edited article about traffic control first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 530 published on 11 March 1972.

Traffic light cleaner

The history of traffic lights is one which involves explosions and violent death, but this begins to seem less surprising when we realize what a problem the control of traffic had become in London and other large cities after 1850. Most of the streets were paved with stone and, amidst the noise of carriage wheels, the shouts of street vendors and the cries of humans and horses, the scene was one of constant confusion.

Nowadays we regard travelling in a horse-drawn coach as a rather grand and dignified pastime. Not so then in London, however, for with hansom cabs, private carriages and horse omnibuses jostling with each other for right of way, there were often miniature battles. Carriages became overturned and wheels broken; horses bolted and passengers and cabbies exchanged insults until peace was finally restored. Nor did the new steam buses improve the situation. They had been breaking the law (which only allowed them to travel at 4 miles per hour) for years, and once this restriction was finally lifted they were free to indulge in races with their horse-drawn competitors.

The passengers in these early omnibuses were often supplied with books and newspapers to while away the journey, but if a race started they were more likely to be clinging to the seat in terror as their bus rocketed down Oxford Street. The drivers and conductors were well-known for their wit, exchanging repartee with their rivals as they passed, but many a passenger must have sighed with relief as his journey’s end approached.

Into all this confusion some form of control was obviously needed, particularly as the number of people using the City grew larger each year. Police were only partly successful and in any case manning each junction every day was clearly impossible. John Knight provided what seemed to be the perfect answer to the problem.

He was a railway signalling engineer by trade and he worked at a time when the British railway was at its peak. The great London termini handled thousands of trains a day, and Knight and his colleagues designed the sophisticated signal systems which made the railways such a safe and efficient means of travel.

This edited article about Formula 1 racing first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 517 published on 11 December 1971.

The Monaco Grand Prix

Every race is the thrill of a lifetime for the thousands upon thousands of fans who follow motor racing. With their eyes glued to the tarmac shimmering in the hot sun of some famous resort, they follow the tough single-seater cars scooting around hairpin bends and tearing up straight stretches at terrific speeds.

This is Grand Prix racing – the superstar of all motor racing – with fleet Formula 1 cars and skilful drivers competing on the most testing circuits ever devised.

But the greatest excitement is sparked off by the contest to find the toughest, fastest, most daring and most skilful driver of them all – the World Driver’s Championship.

In this test of human endurance and mechanical perfection on the most gruelling circuits of the world, only the hardiest survive and only the fleetest wizard on wheels can win.

For this is a competition to find the fastest Grand Prix driver. Every Grand Prix win is a step nearer to the championship crown. At the end of the season, the points gained in the Grand Prix events which qualify are added up – and a new champion is born.

So, let’s have a brief look at the history of motor racing. Then we will find out exactly what a Formula 1 car is, and follow by meeting some of the star drivers.

Motor racing first became an organised sport at the beginning of this century when a wealthy American newspaper owner, Gordon Bennett, persuaded the Automobile Club of France to hold an annual race.

After this came the Grand Prix races, the first in 1906 being won by a Renault driven by a man named Szisz. Before many years, it became clear that the Grand Prix races were such thrilling spectacles, that other countries promoted these races on their own circuits. But it was not until 1950 that the Grand Prix Drivers’ World Championship really began, when the first world champion was Guiseppe Farina in an Alfa Romeo.

His modern counterparts race to fame on single-seaters built for speed . . . the Formula 1 cars which compete in Grand Prix races held throughout the world. Although the formula restricts their size and the power of the engine, there are on controls on the ingenuity of the designers and the skill of the drivers to whip ahead on the most testing circuits ever contrived.

What, basically, is a Formula 1 car? The rules say that it must have a piston engine (not a jet). If there is no supercharger, the cylinders must not have a greater capacity than 3,000 cubic centimetres. With the supercharger, the capacity must keep within the limit of 1,500 cubic centimetres.

This is done to make sure that the races are fair, that the cars are evenly matched and that the skill of the designers and the driver is given full rein.

There are other restrictions, too, on the weight, which is kept within 530 kilograms, and on the width and length of the body.

The result is a small, light, very high-powered car planned for races of between 200 and 300 miles. These Grand Prix events are held at approximately fortnightly intervals throughout the season, apart from a break of slightly over a month around August.