Mike Hawthorn | The Scarf & Goggles Social Club | Page 2
The Scarf & Goggles Social Club
Ripping yarns from the Age of Adventure
Mike Hawthorn
7
Hawthorn went fast to ensure more time in the day for beer…
If one is preparing to follow in the wheeltracks of Britain’s first Formula One world champion, Mike Hawthorn, around his stamping grounds in Surrey then a stout constitution is required. The villages in this part of the world are thick with hostelries, which were the number one choice of entertainment for the young racer and his gang of friends known amongst themselves as ‘the Members’.
At the age of 17 Hawthorn was apprenticed to Dennis Bros. in Guildford – the renowned manufacturer of trucks, ambulances, fire engines, buses and military vehicles. It was while here that he gathered the Members around him – like-minded souls who would share Hawthorn’s passions for the ‘three Bs’: Bikes, Boozing and Birds.
The former Dennis Bros. factory site is now an anonymous business park
Although Hawthorn had inherited plenty of engineering savvy from a childhood spent in his father’s workshops, this brought precious little benefit to Dennis Bros. in exchange for his salary. More often than not Hawthorn was to be found riding his motorbike around the perimeter wall or planning his next expedition with the Members. He once took off in a brand new truck only to discover that none of the panels were actually bolted in place, causing the thing to disintegrate around his ears.
Not very much would detain Hawthorn in this neck of the woods today
Playtime was altogether more interesting to Hawthorn. It was never really agreed what his gang were Members of, but there were one or two badges of belonging. The first was that everyone addressed each other as ‘Bo’ and the second was that they all wore ties. Hawthorn took to wearing a bow tie gifted to him by a girlfriend, prompting one of the Members to ask if they should all adopt similar accessories.
“No, you bloody fool,” Hawthorn was reported to have said in Mon Ami Mate. “It’s a bow tie, not a Bo tie!”
After a week at work (and providing that there was nothing going on at Goodwood, where they would eagerly head and squeeze through the fence and enjoy a free day out), the Members would convene on a Saturday at The Bush hotel in Farnham town centre.
The Bush Hotel in Farnham was the Members’ meeting place
The Bush was a handy, central spot to be but perhaps the number of ‘ordinary’ folk about in town on a Saturday morning curtailed the Members’ hi-jinks somewhat, so they would saddle up their motorbikes and head south.
Driving out past the railway station, their aim was for Tilford. Here you will find an idyllic little village with a generous green over which presides the Barley Mow pub. The friendly locals and sparse traffic which typify the place today mean that it is all too easy to imagine the Members coercing their favourite landlord to stay open all afternoon as they sat around discussing the three Bs over yet another round.
Small wonder that the Members could spend whole days at the Barley Mow
There’s a collection of Hawthorn-related photos and cuttings outside the Gents’ loo, although there’s no mention of the fact that this was the place where his beloved boxer dog, Grogger, met his maker after bounding out to welcome a car.
A mile or so down the road from the Barley Mow is the Duke of Cambridge Hotel, which is actually across the border in Hampshire and thus offered slightly later closing time for the rambunctious regulars. Today the Duke of Cambridge has one of the best pub menus in the area and getting a table can be a problem unless you book far in advance.
Hawthorn’s second home, the Duke of Cambridge, is a gastronomic delight today
Even the doting Bishops would not always flout legal closing time, however, and Surrey had a much earlier finish to the evening than neighbouring Hampshire. So it was that the Members would wobble unsteadily onward for a nightcap. Quite often this would mean traversing the woodland lanes to get down to the Frensham Ponds Hotel, where they could usually sweet talk the staff into pretending that they were residents.
The Frensham Ponds Hotel enjoys an idyllic setting with plenty of boats to enjoy
If getting down to Frensham was a bit of an issue then the final destination for the Members would be The Bluebell in Dockenfield, today nestling near the fantastic Alice Holt adventure forest on the road back up to Hawthorn’s home in Rowledge. Organising a lock-in at this secluded spot would have been a doddle, and the snug little bar is more than welcoming to this day.
The Bluebell feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere – but is full of friendly faces
From there, Hawthorn would have gone back to the family home, Merridale, in Rowledge – usually with a Member or two in tow. It’s a challenging drive today, uphill on a single-track road with a surface which resembles Passchendaele at its worst, but if the Members were feeling any bumps in the road then probably they would feel that it had been an unsatisfactory day’s drinking.
I followed their path back to the village but at that point drew a blank. Nobody in the Post Office, the village shop or the butcher’s could recall a house being called Merridale – or ‘Merry Hell’ as Hawthorn preferred it. There was a reason for Hawthorn’s black humour – and, perhaps, the wild roving and companionship he created among the Members. It was the wrench of his parents’ separation.
Leslie Hawthorn was a racer, a drinker and a ladies’ man and as Mike reached adulthood his mother called time on family life. She moved in to a flat in Farnham and then took a job as a receptionist in London and Merridale was clearly anything but merry – often empty as Hawthorn Sr enjoyed his second bachelorhood – meaning that his son doubtless felt the need to take his mates and a dose of good cheer home with him.
It’s also perhaps worth noting that of the seven founding Members, four of them didn’t live to see their 30th birthday. Simon Hayter died first in a road accident on the A3 not far from where Mike Hawthorn himself would perish. Another road accident claimed ‘Black Mike’ Crossley while in Germany and Peter Poppe went on to fly jets in the RAF, being killed while flying a Gloster Javelin while supporting a Search & Rescue operation over the sea during the Malayan emergency.
But in the early ‘Fifties, Hawthorn was on the cusp of life as an international jet-setter … and while the Members and their haunts would remain central to his life whenever he was in England, he had many more adventures in store.
5
Taking a ride with Mike – a guide to the world of a remarkable champion
A hell-raiser in life and a uniquely tragic figure in death – there simply never was a racing driver like Mike Hawthorn. Although born in the Yorkshire mining town of Mexborough, the flaxen-haired racer moved to Surrey as a toddler and was typically known as the ‘Farnham Flyer’ in the popular British press.
Much of Hawthorn’s world remains untouched out in the leafy lanes of the Surrey and Hampshire borders, allowing the chance to visit places that would be instantly recognisable to the 1958 Formula One world champion – if not always enhanced by the passing years.
To start with here is Stephendale Road, the quiet little cul-de-sac off the main route from Farnham to Aldershot, which is where the Hawthorn family moved to in 1931. It has previously been described as Stevendale Road in Chris Nixon’s classic book Mon Ami Mate – whether he got it wrong or it’s subsequently been changed is anyone’s guess.
No blue plaques here yet – and which house was the Hawthorn residence is not clear, but the homes in Stephendale Road are little altered
Leaving Stephendale Road and heading back towards Farnham, the first obvious landmark is The Albion pub – a favourite haunt of Leslie Hawthorn, Mike’s father. The Albion was also about half way between Stephendale Road and the Tourist Trophy Garage , with which father and son are synonymous.
The garage staff became used to beer-fuelled antics going on in the Hawthorn household – Leslie and his drinking pals regularly filled the workshop with road signs and other ‘objets trouves’ from their nocturnal adventures on the way to or from The Albion.
The Albion pub on East Street: preferred watering hole of Hawthorn Sr
Despite the ribaldry, Leslie Hawthorn was clearly intent that his son would be a young Surrey gentleman, and as a result sent him to Barfield Preparatory School in the nearby village of Runfold – where predictably he was more concerned with sport and socialising than on schoolwork. Barfield remains a highly exclusive prep school to this day, where pupils enjoy the amenities of the Mike Hawthorn Sports Hall.
Barfield Prep. School where Mike was a pupil from 1938 to 1942
From 1942, Mike went off to Ardingley College, a prestigious public school at Hayward’s Heath in Sussex. His father, meanwhile, was a pilot in the Air Transport Auxiliary during World War 2 – although neither boarding school nor military duty seemed to keep father or son away from home for too long. Meanwhile as Mike grew up, he and his hand-picked gang of friends were formed as the ‘Members’ – and we’ll catch up with them in Part 2.
6
The Tourist Trophy Garage in Farnham, Surrey is an icon in the British motor racing fraternity. It is here that Yorkshireman, engineer and keen motorcycle racer Leslie Hawthorn arrived with wife Winifred and two-year-old son Mike in tow in 1931 set up shop with former Isle of Man TT winner ‘Paddy’ Johnstone in what had been a World War 1 army hut on the Aldershot road.
It was Farnham’s proximity to Brooklands which brought the Hawthorns southward. Leslie was a keen racer with an even keener business brain, and the garage gained a strong reputation for preparing racing motorbikes, selling cars and carrying out tuning and repairs.
A replica of the original TT Garage features at the Goodwood Revival
As the business grew, so too did the premises – spilling out from the original wooden hut into a much grander complex at an old hop kiln next to the Duke of Cambridge pub, featuring a glass-fronted showroom and significant workshop space. Soon after World War 2 Leslie’s son Mike began to take an interest in competition; first on motorbikes and then at the wheel of a pre-war 1100cc Riley Ulster Imp and, later, a 1500cc Riley Sprite which father and son worked hard on at the back of the premises.
In 1952 young Mike’s career went stratospheric, courtesy of a brand new Cooper-Bristol Formula 2 car that Leslie tuned to run on his own special brew of nitro-methane enhanced fuel. With it Mike won the Lavant Cup at Goodwood to start a brilliant season which ultimately earned him a seat at Scuderia Ferrari for 1953 and the beginning of his path to legend.
As his career progressed, the T.T. Garage remained very much a part of Mike’s day-to-day life – and all the more so after Leslie Hawthorn died in a road traffic accident when returning home from a day’s racing at Goodwood in 1954. Winifred Hawthorn took over the management of the garage with aplomb but Mike was ever-present and it was through his relationship with Maranello that they became the first British importer of Ferrari road cars, giving the 250 GT PF Coupe its debut at the 1958 London Motor Show.
Mike Hawthorn at the T.T. Garage in 1958 with his ill-fated Jaguar 3.4
Having won the 1958 Formula One world championship and announced his retirement from motor racing, Mike intended to settle down to the business of running the T.T. Garage himself n 1959. This plan, together with those for his forthcoming marriage to the model Jean Howarth and his new competitive outlet air racing in his Percival Vega Gull, was however cut short in by his fatal accident at the wheel of his beloved Jaguar 3.4 on the Guildford by-pass on January 22 1959.
For many years I had believed that the T.T. Garage had long-since been demolished to make way for a business park – but in fact it is still there on East Street – albeit with sports goods and electrical equipment now behind the showroom glass and a more modern frontage bolted on to the original brickwork. Of course the somewhat rickety roofline of the adjacent building pictured in 1958 gives the game away – now part of the Majestic wines empire, of which doubtless Mike would approve!
The whole area is now a miniature business park, although in the old workshops there is still a specialist vehicle preparation company keeping something of the spirit of the old place alive.
After 55 years the old T.T. Garage hasn’t quite disappeared yet
Next door to the garage was the Duke of Cambridge hotel, a regular watering hole for Leslie Hawthorn and later where his son would enjoy a regular meal and a pint or three – usually without handing over any cash for the privilege. Charlie Bishop and his wife Marjorie were landlord and landlady throughout Mike’s life in Farnham and doted on him despite the fortune he owed them on the tab.
Next door to the T.T. Garage was the Duke of Cambridge, now a little careworn
It was from the Duke of Cambridge that Hawthorn set off on his fateful journey towards London in January 1959. Today there is little sign of the old life of this building, which has been used as a shop in recent years and has just changed hands once again. Life goes on but the landmarks remain if you care to look for them…
1
Hawthorn enjoyed bumping in to people on the Stratocruiser’s staircase
It seems that Ian Fleming wasn’t the only British star of the 1950s who appreciated the finer things on offer from the tubby, propeller-driven Boeing 377 Stratocruiser in comparison with faster, more modern jet airliners.
In his biography Challenge Me the Race, the 1958 Formula One world champion was no less fulsome in his praise of the old bird than 007’s creator, saying:
“The fat old Stratocruiser is still my favourite aircraft for long distances. Its spiral staircase and bar on the lower deck give the passengers the opportunity to walk about and chat and get a change of scene which passes the time more agreeably than sitting glued to ones seat for hours on end in the slim modern projectiles.”
Of course, being Hawthorn, the possibility that some of his fellow passengers might be attractive young women would doubtless add more spice to the journey. Meanwhile here’s a BOAC promo film with James Robertson Justice pretending to fly one of these beautifully-appointed leviathans…
7
The website of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota is not the first place one would think of looking at when seeking out members of the rip-roaring Grand Prix racing community of the 1950s.
And yet here is a profile of a trustee of the church who is in charge of Sunday Services; who rounds up ushers and greeters for duty every Sunday morning and hosts a monthly discussion group about movies. Not very F1, perhaps, but the photograph of a twinkly-eyed lady with an elfin haircut gives the game away… this is indeed the widow of that great British racer, Peter Collins.
Peter Collins and his wife Louise entertain ‘Fon’ de Portago (l) and ‘Taffy’ von Trips (r)
The story of Peter Collins is too rarely retold. This dashing young man with the carefree approach to life cut a swathe through the racing scene in the 1950s alongside such contemporaries as Sir Stirling Moss, Tony Brooks and Roy Salvadori – although he is best remembered for his symbiotic partnership with Mike Hawthorn in which each christened the other ‘mon ami mate’.
Born in Kidderminster in 1931, Collins’ father owned a garage and a haulage company, and to no great surprise young Peter developed an affinity for mechanical things very early on. As a teenager he thrived in the rough and tumble of 500cc racing on abandoned airfields alongside the likes of Moss and a certain Bernard Ecclestone.
The rakish young Collins gets ready for action
At a party hosted by the great pre-war lady racer Kay Petre in 1951, Collins managed to inveigle himself with the Aston Martin sports car team boss, John Wyer, and earned a test drive. On the appointed day at Silverstone not only was Aston present but also the HWM Formula 2 team – and by the time the teams were packing up to go home, Collins had a contract with both!
Throughout the first half of the 1950s Collins was a stalwart performer for the Aston Martin team in endurance racing and rallies.  He also kept trying to break into Formula One with the British teams BRM and Vanwall but without great success, while first Hawthorn then Moss took the Grand Prix world by storm.
Finally Collins got his big chance when Moss requested that his old 500cc sparring partner be drafted in by Mercedes-Benz to partner him in the 1955 Targa Florio. They won the race and Collins found himself signing a contract for 1956 with none other than Enzo Ferrari.
Formula One drivers were expected to compete elsewhere, which meant that Collins’ first landmark result with the Scuderia came not at a grand prix but with second place on the Mille Miglia. Nevertheless this was swiftly followed by victories in both the Belgian and French Grands Prix, and these early days earned him the unstinting admiration of the ‘Old Man’, devastated by the untimely death of his son, Dino, and who turned to Collins for solace, treating him as a member of the family.
Ferrari holds court with Collins (r), Musso (l) and Castelotti
Meanwhile those mid-season victories ensured that the championship boiled down to a two-way fight between Collins and his three-time world champion team-mate Juan Manuel Fangio. At the final round, the Italian Grand Prix, Fangio’s car suffered a steering failure and left Collins with a clear run to the title – only for the young Englishman to voluntarily pull in and give his car to the older man, whose second place finish sealed his fourth title.
“It’s too early for me to become world champion – I’m too young,” Collins said afterwards. “I want to go on enjoying life and racing, but if I become world champion now I would have all the obligations that go with it. And Fangio deserves it anyway!”
This was astonishing behaviour, even by the more sportsmanlike days of the 1950s. As even Fangio admitted later, if the position had been reversed, nothing on Earth would have persuaded him to get out of that car.
Yet Collins was happy and after the clamour of his first season at Ferrari came the enjoyment of some leisure time. Each winter the drivers kept themselves busy – and earning money – with off-season appearances in the Americas and at the Nassau Speed Week. They also pursued their other great interest in life – women. It was in January 1957 that Stirling Moss told Collins about a beautiful girl he knew in Miami who loved grand prix racing – an actress called Louise King – and gave his old pal her number if he was at a loose end while in the States.
As close off the track as on it: Collins leads Moss at Silverstone, 1956
In fact Collins had met Louise at Monaco the previous year. Evidently this fact slipped his mind as he stood waiting for his ‘blind date’ at the Coconut Grove Playhouse bar and got talking to a bright young thing – who turned out to be the very girl he was waiting for all along. Not only did Collins get away with this gaffe, it was the start of something special.
As you can doubtless tell, Louise was no ordinary girl. The 24-year-old beauty was starring in the Broadway production of The Seven Year Itch alongside Tom Ewell, the star of the movie adaptation alongside Marilyn Monroe. The independent daughter of a distinguished diplomat, not only did the young divorcee willingly spurn Hollywood’s advances, but she was also an Austin-Healey driving member of the Sports Car Club of America with a passion for motor racing. It’s hardly surprising that Collins was besotted.
Collins and Louise relax by the pool between races
Two days after their first date, Louise lay next to Collins beside his hotel pool in Miami. It was at this moment that, whispering so that his friend, the American driver Masten Gregory, didn’t overhear, that Collins proposed – and Louise accepted. They were married the following Monday, to widespread disbelief.
Although Louise’s father was quickly won over by Collins’s natural charm, his own parents were appalled by the prospect of their beloved son marrying an actress, never mind that she was already once divorced and, as the last straw, an American.
His friends in the motor racing set however were astonished that Collins, a legendary swordsman, was seemingly going to turn down the pleasures of the many available – and occasionally unavailable – women with whom he had previously wiled away the hours. There was, by general consensus, more chance of Moss joining a monastery or Hawthorn going teetotal.
Few in the paddock believed Collins could adapt to domestic bliss
It was also widely expected that Enzo Ferrari would take this turn of events worst of all. He had lavished Collins with a paternal care in an era when drivers took lives in their hands on every lap and it was assumed that Ferrari would feel that a man with priorities off the track was never going to give him 100% commitment – but in fact the reverse was true.
The newlyweds were made welcome by Ferrari and his wife, Laura, who insisted on accompanying the glamorous new girl on every shopping trip and lunch date despite her complete lack of English and Louise’s equal lack of Italian. Initially they took a room in the old farmhouse above the Cavallino restaurant, but that summer they were gifted the use of an old villa on the factory grounds which had lain empty since the war.
For 1957 Fangio chose to rejoin his friends at Maserati and, when Eugenio Castelotti was killed in pre-season testing, Collins was the established star. He was teamed with the returning Mike Hawthorn, Italian driver Luigi Musso and Spanish nobleman Alfonso de Portago but it was to be a dismal season.
A publicity picture taken before the start of the fateful 1957 Mille Miglia
The greatest pall hung after the death of ‘Fon’ de Portago, together with his co-driver Ed Nelson and 10 spectators, in a crash on the Mille Miglia. The race continued, of course, with Collins leading for much of it until the transmission failed 130 miles from the finish. Recalling that night in Chris Nixon’s seminal book Mon Ami Mate, Louise said of Portago’s loss:
“…it was almost as though they expected it and although he was a very popular guy no-one could get upset about it. That night a group of us went out to to a restaurant and after dinner we danced the night away. We didn’t set out to go dancing. It was just a regular part of the evening at that restaurant and it provided a sense of release for us after the race.”
Death was an ever-present part of life as a racing driver, and therefore of life as a racing driver’s wife. The Collinses and the rest of the sport moved on, and in Formula One the most memorable grand prix of the season came in Germany, when Hawthorn and Collins, lapping together, managed to get beaten by Fangio, who put in the drive of his life to regain a 40 second deficit.
“I motioned Peter to come alongside and pointed behind us with thumb down to indicate that Fangio seemed to be in trouble,” Hawthorn later recounted in his book, Challenge Me The Race.
“He nodded, put his thumb up, then pointed to me with one finger and then back to himself with two. He wanted me to win and was prepared to come second himself, which I thought was a very sporting gesture…”
Fangio has passed Collins and tracks Hawthorn, 1957 German GP
It was also a plan doomed to failure, brought about by Fangio’s last and most celebrated victory. Yet increasingly Collins’s attention was not on his sport. He was planning to build an ‘American-style’ home in England, to invest in the new Austin-Healey factory in Nassau and to opening a Ferrari dealership with his father. He also wanted children, and his aims for family life began to preoccupy him as the 1958 season loomed.
After the disappointing Lancia-derived 801 of 1957, the new Ferrari 246 Dino held plenty of promise. Yet in the opening rounds of 1958 Collins was off the pace next to Hawthorn and Musso. When, in April, he and Louise left Maranello to live instead on their yacht Mipooka, moored in Monaco, Enzo Ferrari was cut to the core by what he perceived to be treachery.
Louise at home aboard their yacht, the Mipooka, to Ferrari’s chagrin
At Le Mans for the 24 Hours, Collins shared a new Testarossa with Hawthorn, who joked that racing for so long was no fun and that they should break the car in time to be back in England for Sunday lunch. When the clutch overheated, Collins was forced to retire and Hawthorn’s prophecy came true – while the team was able to drive the ‘broken’ car back to the pits once the clutch had cooled sufficiently.
All this was fuel on the fires of intrigue at Maranello, and an enraged Enzo Ferrari turned to Musso as the stick with which to beat the ungrateful young Englishman.
Collins at speed in the 1958 British GP – his last victory
Both Collins and Musso retired from the Belgian Grand Prix but in France it seemed that Musso was thoroughly wound-up to win at any cost. Ferrari initially forbade Collins from driving in the main race but later relented. Nevertheless Reims was a circuit on which the lionhearted Hawthorn thrived and he claimed victory for the Scuderia while the tragic Musso crashed fatally while trying to keep up.
The British Grand Prix saw the return of the old Peter Collins. Perhaps inspired by Ferrari’s attempt to drop him from in France, he was simply unbeatable despite the presence of both Hawthorn and the Vanwall of Stirling Moss… with much talk of the 1959 season, it seemed that Collins was now firmly back in the saddle at Ferrari.
To the victor, the spoils: Hawthorn and Collins celebrate Silverstone success
The next stop was the Nürburgring one week later for the German Grand Prix. Initially Moss led but his Vanwall’s magneto broke, leaving Hawthorn and Collins out in front from a charging Tony Brooks in the second Vanwall, who duly caught and passed them.
Determined not to be caught napping twice at the ‘Ring, the two Ferraris fought back but at Pflanzgarten Collins ran wide, hit the earth bank and was catapulted from his car as it somersaulted through the air. He was thrown head-first into a tree and did not survive the journey to hospital.
Louise’s 18-month fairytale ended as abruptly as it started. The Collins family lost no time in getting her to sign over any claim to her late husband’s estate and, in the depths of mourning, her friend Peter Ustinov scooped her up and put her on tour with him in Romanoff and Juliet as a distraction while ‘mon ami mate’ Hawthorn raced on to claim the world championship.
Louise still delights that, in Marilyn’s arms, Tom Ewell’s eyes are on her!
By 1959 she was back in America and back in the spotlight, becoming a regular on TV staples What’s My Line and the Today show. Eventually she stepped away from showbiz, finding new avenues as a real estate broker in New York City and Connecticut before retiring to Florida almost 20 years ago.
It seems unfair that so rich and varied a life as that of Louise King can be so defined on this blog by 18 months spent as the wife of a racing driver. And yet perhaps not. For her part, Louise remains staunchly proud of the life she shared with Peter Collins, the man she still describes as ‘the great love of my life’.
This summer will mark the 55th anniversary of that fateful German Grand Prix, and doubtless there will be many heartfelt prayers said in a certain church in a corner of Florida. And we should raise a glass to the brief, bright lives of the two ‘mon ami mates’ and the ongoing good health of their ‘mon ami matess’, Louise King.
The former Mrs. Collins, today a pillar of the church in Sarasota
4
Today, the good folk of the motor racing fraternity get a little green about the gills when the grey tendrils of politics are seen to encroach upon the virgin purity of their vocation. Mind you, trying to keep up with Damon Hill’s many back-flips over whether or not he believes a particular race should happen on political grounds would make anyone a touch queasy…
The fact remains, however, that in the days of Scarf & Goggles motor sport was quite simply an extension of foreign policy for most participating nations – be they hosts or participants. After all, once internal combustion had proven itself to be far superior to electricity, steam and any other form of motivation in the great races of the 1890s, there had to be a point to competition.
That point was granted by James Gordon Bennett Jr, the millionaire owner of the New York Herald. In 1899 Gordon Bennett inaugurated a trophy to be raced for annually by the automobile clubs of the various countries. Manufacturers would build cars that would be painted in the uniform colour of their nation: blue for France, white for Germany, red for Italy and green for Great Britain.
Racing for Britain: Napier shows off its green fleet of Gordon Bennett entries
The early 1900s were a time of fierce nationalism, sabre-rattling and military expansion which ultimately ended in World War 1. The whole of Europe was in a state of fervour, and motor racing provided a white hot crucible in which the technology of the arms race and the national status of the military powers could be trumpeted. Gordon Bennett was on to a winner from the outset.
The Gordon Bennett races were succeeded in 1906 by Grand Prix racing, but the nationalistic fervour which surrounded these races was no different – nor indeed were the racing colours. While the 1914 Grand Prix contest between the vast, organised might of Mercedes and the quixotic local hero Georges Boillot’s Peugeot was certainly spectacular in itself, it was undoubtedly given piquancy to the hundreds of thousands of French fans in the wake of the assassination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand and the mustering of arms that would soon be locked in battle.
Boillot (5) and the Peugeot team carry French hopes into battle in 1914
After World War 1 motor racing had a short break from political life but it bounced back with a vengeance with the rise to power of Benito Mussolini. Il Duce wanted more than just the trains to run on time, he wanted to rebuild the Roman empire and to do that would mean making the whole of the Mediterranean aware that their neighbours could take on and beat the world in matters of might and technology.
Mussolini’s patronage of, and benefits from, the great racing programme at Alfa Romeo were a match made in heaven, in his view. The scarlet cars from Portello would howl their way to victory in Grand Prix and sports car races across the whole of Europe, only to be greeted by a beatifically smiling Duce upon their return home.
Mussolini in the hotseat to greet Tazio Nuvolari (centre) and the Alfa team
While Italy triumphed, a certain Austrian politician was busy making all sorts of promises about funding racing cars if he was to get into power in Germany. Adolf Hitler was wooed by the motor manufacturers and wooed them back in return, forming a triumvirate with Deutsche Bank that effectively created the mechanical power of the regime and sold it to the masses via motor racing.
Millions of Reichmarks were poured in to the racing funds of Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union by Hitler’s chancellery through the era of the ‘silver arrows’. The formidable German technology on show not only chewed up and spat out the competition across Europe, Africa and North America but also bred technology that was soon to be put to work in the latest weapons of war.
Ernst von Delius prepares for the 1937 Vanderbilt Cup in New York
But it wasn’t only Grand Prix racing. Motorcycle racing and sports cars were equally important to the NSKK (Nationalsozialistische Kraftfahrkorps, responsible for all automotive matters in the Reich) as the means to show German supremacy.
As for the races themselves, Germany and Italy turned their major race meetings into idealogical pageants, with flags a-flutter and uniformed stormtroops aplenty… the crowds at the Nürburgring were also treated to such pre-race entertainment as a display by the prototype Stuka dive-bomber.
BMW ace Huschke von Hanstein made his sponsorship clear
Both the German and Italian teams also had to be selective in their driver line-ups. For the German teams in particular, hiring non-German drivers was only ever done in line with national priorities . Occasionally the teams were then ‘requested’ by NSKK officials to deploy team orders, such as when Auto Union was required to allow Hans Stuck to surrender certain victory in the 1935 Tripoli Grand Prix to his Italian team-mate Achille Varzi.
You might be forgiven for thinking that, in the wake of World War 2, such political engineering would be consigned to history – but such was not the case. The cars retained their national racing colours, and when Tony Vandervell set out to create his world championship-winning Vanwall team in the mid-1950s, he did so with the sole objective of beating ‘those bloody red cars’.
Flying the flag: Hawthorn keeps a corner of Maranello forever England
Among the drivers, too, there was strong feeling. Stirling Moss always wished for a competitive British car, and when none was available made certain that his mount would at least carry British colours. Mike Hawthorn raced a green Ferrari in his first races of 1953 as a tribute from Enzo Ferrari himself, and later added a green windcheater to his racing uniform to ensure that, even when the cars were red, a flash of green was on show.
Of course Stirling also benefited from the pre-war ethos of team orders when at Mercedes-Benz, being handed his victory at Aintree in 1955 by his team-mate Fangio as a handy bit of PR for the Stuttgart marque.
Moss beats Fangio at Aintree – to Mercedes’ great relief
Today the modern version of Grand Prix racing takes the sport to nations which pay for the spectacle from public funds and seek to gain something back in terms of status, tourism, business and PR. The Caterham team, meanwhile, is owned by 1Malaysia, a government organization intended to promote racial harmony among its discordant Chinese, Indian and Malay population.
So it’s clear that, today, the sport is still carrying on at least some of the traditions that have kept it in rude health for more than a century. Politics are part of the fabric of life in all walks – although motor sport still has a long way to go to catch up with the Olympics!