It was nice to finally put some names to faces. I met up with Ray Bell and Ben Jamieson aka Bernd at about 12pm on monday. Ben had brought a friend Brett along for the ride so that made 4 of us. Not sure where David was...

Anyway, first off we decided to do a lap. Ray went through the corners and where incidents happened. We did 1 lap then Ray needed the camera from his Peugeot so he decided to drive his car while we followed in the Magna.

Ray told me he did a quick lap of 9 mins the other day. He said he limited his speed to 120kph. That's fair enough i thought... Ray must have decided he'd do another quick lap as before we knew it he was up to 120kph in the 60 zone out of Lobethal and around the fast right hander!! We gave chase but Brett hadn't driven the road before...

By the time we got to the pits Ray was about 400m ahead and he cranked up his camera to take some very nice photos. We also found one of the tree's that the commentator's sat in - a board stuck in the fork of a tree.

More to tell when Ray gets back home...


BTW, Ben, remember i told you when we stood at Kayannie Corner that the fence corner post looked old and prolly was there 50 years ago? well i think it was! I'm sure there is a photo of it in The Official 50-race history of the AGP. In the background you can see the railway very clearly and the paddocks behind it.





Jamie

Lobethal o Lobethal how do I love thee!

Ladies and Gentleman I have just witnessed the ultimate race circuit. Whatever you may think from what Ray has said in the past multiply it by 4 and you would have close to reality.

We peeled of about 2 laps then hopped into Rays Peugeot for a lap doing 'Ray Speed' which I assure you is mildly exciting.

When Ray returns from his LONG drive we shall relate some more but it was a fantastic day in which I learned a lot about what Motor Racing was and should be.

Yeah I thought that post looked a tad tired Jamie

Approximately 55 photographs taken yesterday will cover the whole of the circuit.
It will be a few days or even more before I start posting these, but I will start a thread for the purpose and we'll just post them section by section so comments can be made by those who've been there.
Driving back from Adelaide today I even pondered the thought that I could send the pics to Allan Tomlinson and have him rack his brain for comment. I'd like to do this with John Crouch also, but probably in person.
The photos will be a beginning, for I feel they still won't do the place justice. But you will see the blind corner that was probably a 100mph effort with a huge off-camber exit lined by equally huge gum trees...

I agree Ray the only way to truly appreciate the place is to lap it, photos and track maps simply do not capture the majesty of the place. I am still grinning like a goon now thinking about it.

Looking forward to the photos.

Ray, what you need to do with those photos is send them to someone who can produce a race sim of Lobethal for Gp2 (or at worst GP3) or even better, Legends. Then we can ALL drive round it!

GP2 has a lap limit of about five miles, Lobethal is 8.65. A video would be better, wouldn't it?
Jamie wanted to do it for GPL, but now he's going to help on the Tasman project for the time being.
Anyway, you still need to be there.

Right! But that's dead easy for you to say.

What about us impoverished Northern Hemispherites who have about as much chance of getting to Oz as we have of being chosen Queen of the May..... ducky!

Actually Ray, there have been some developments in track making for GPL in the last few days. I only found out last night. I might go ahead with the project after all




JR

Ray - and others in attendance - that must have been a great day. I wish I could have been along. By the way, what did you all think of the ALMS race?

Barry (Boor) - sorry, no sympathy from these quarters. I have spent a winter near Wales (actually across the bay in Bristol) and I can promise you that the snow and cold (43 inches here in December and below 0 Farenheit last night) in Chicago makes a British isles winter seem like a picnic.

Good news... the photos will be put on CD immediately (even before the prints are made!) and then on the processor's website, of which I'll be notified by email, still before the prints are made!
New crowd do this, all for $11.00 a roll of film... http://www.extrafilm.com.au is their website (haven't looked at that). It still takes three days to get the film to them, though.
But for the sake of the service, I won't bother going to the Minilab.
Let me say, also, Jamie, it was terrific meeting you and Ben and Brett, and great to see your appreciation of this place I have so long been admiring.
Shame you missed out on meeting the old guy with all the Hudsons...

They sure don't build them like they used to do they Ray. That fine old Gentleman and his lovely wife accommodated us (people they had never met) for over an hour talking about old times etc. What a collection of old Classics he has!

Mike... The ALMS race in a word confusing! I found it almost impossible to follow the race positions etc and tell between cars or drivers. The Prototypes were not as quick as I thought either their performance fell far short of the 95 Spec F1's that last raced at Adelaide which I did not expect to be the case. I though they would be reasonably close due to their aerodynamics and gizmos etc. The night racing was quite spectacular I must say.

As for the day as a whole quite amazing. Lapped Lobethal multiple times the last few at quite a clip though well (3-4 minutes or so ) off the lap record. Then went over to the old fellas place mentioned above for a hour or so, then went and lapped Lobethals successor circuit whose name escapes me (Ray?) this circuit had a spectacular S bend section that really had me gushing but the rest of it was rather ordinary (Still miles better than a modern race track)

Woodside, Bernd... and did I mention that the railway line crossed the main straight at a very shallow angle?
The braking area after the bridge wasn't too shabby, either, and don't forget the road was much narrower in that section leading back to the main road.
I'm just glad you enjoyed yourself.

Ray, hope you got that corner post into one of the photos you took at Kayannie Corner. As i've said, i believe it can been seen in the Offical 50-race history of the AGP showing Kleinig round the corner sideways on page 108.

BTW, am i correct in thinking the accident Tomlinson had just before the s-bend into town ended his racing career?




Jamie

I will ask him. I have to say I am not sure at all about this. The story goes that he landed atop the Morgan and then went into the tree, the photos extant of the crashed car look more like it's in the tree outside the next right hander, hundreds of yards down the road.
Or did he merely get out of control there and fight it all the way to the tree?
As for the post, my pic is from the opposite angle... It is distinctive enough, though, to pick it up, I'm sure, the mere size of it being unusual.
The best plan with that book, by the way, is to keep it in the dunny. When you sit down there, simply flick it open to a page. If you haven't previously read that year's race, just go to the beginning and read it through.

Can someone give me directions to the man with the Hudsons?

I would like to have a look next time I am in the area.

This guy has, since he retired, cleared acres of land and built a house, acquired and broken in a housekeeper, restored 9 Austin 7s in nine years, chased all over the country in the Kombi he fitted with a Subaru engine looking for headlights for Terraplanes and restored a number of the latter. In addition, he has repaired the 1936 straight 8 after a truck crashed into the front of it, played with his Goggomobile, fitted the Terraplane engine into the speedway chassis and built up a body, worn a track in his backyard with it, and a number of other things.
The big holdup is making a runner out of the Riley 2.5, which he bought complete...
I'll PM his details.

Ray you didn't damage the windscreen washer on the rear of your Peuguot too much did you? i've never seen anybody use them as a ladder

No, and I didn't scratch the paint either...
Noticed you weren't out there giving me a leg up, Jamie.

Just spent a bit of time on the phone with A G Tomlinson. I'm arranging to get together with him in March when he's in Sydney... others might like to be there, I guess, too?
One purpose is to get comments from him about each corner in the photographs, which I will also get from John Crouch about the same time.
Maybe I should organise for them to get together?

Ray

I would absolutely love to meet Tomlinson when he is in Sydney. Please make arrangements and let me know.

If you want John Crouch (winner of the 1949 Australian GP, for the benefit of those who don't know) to be there, you'll have to take Tomlinson to him. John assures me he never wants to see Sydney again, despite being only one hour north. He said he hates the place now.

Spoke to John on the phone tonight actually. He received an award from the Queen on 1 January 2001 for his services to motor sport.

His wife June told me when she answered the phone, but she couldn't remember exactly what it was. When I spoke to John he forgot to tell me about it and I forgot to ask him. We were engrossed in the mechanical details of his 1930s Skirrow speedcar and 1920s Fronty Ford DO.

Naturally you were... that award was also the first topic of conversation when I dropped in on George Reed a few weeks ago, and Allan told me of getting a note to go to the Post Office. "I got down there and they had this huge box for me, and it had 'Commonwealth Government' on it..."
What a surprise for him, too!
Wonder who made up the list of recipients?
Other drivers who raced at Lobethal who still live are?
Gavin Sandford-Morgan
Bill Patterson
Who else? There must be some South Australians...

In the meantime, an image from 1948:

Of course, sometimes things go wrong, the same car didn't look so smart later in the day:




The car was the Itala Mercury, owned by Lex Denistoun and driven by Ern Seeliger.

And there were changes to the scenery, too. Practice day saw Lex Davison's MG TC do this to one of those famous Stobie poles:



These are substantial structures, with a bracing concrete centre sandwiched between steel channel sections. Not to be toyed with!

Those Poles are exactly the same to this very day quite unique to SA. I havent seen them anywhere else in Oz or elsewhere.

Ray the photo of 1948... You can see a signpost in the background. Could this be the pits corner with the pits on the right/background? It is obviously a slow corner too.

No, Stobie did it all because of the lack of substantial indigenous timbers. Tall straight gum trees are hard come by in SA to this day. You noted, no doubt, that these come in a number of different sizes.
As for the picture, yes, in those days there was a grassy centre island in the junction, it seems, Jamie, overgrown compared to the picture in the AGP book on page 106.
Ern looks smart in his white overalls, too, doesn't he?

...and what is that large white or perhaps greg thing behind the row of bushes or something on the left? interesting.

It seems to me, looking closely at the print, that there's a tent to the extreme left, the roof of which is darker than the patch to which you refer.
The rest of the 'shape' is made up of a gap in the trees in the background and the people and all, with the sparse branches of a tree making that darker pattern as the camera has panned. Compare it with the other tree to right of centre of the photo.

Yes that seems right Ray. Do you know which section of the circuit the Italia crashed on? my guess is the section between Lobethal and the pits corner.

Just think, we parked our cars right where that sign used to be some 52 years later... The hay bales around the sign are interesting too. If a car hit the bales i'm sure that the sign would be damaged. It surprises me even more now Ray that the guy who lit up the hay bales at the start/finish for fun would do so considering the grass in the area. Madness!

I'd have to get the pictures back first, but I would think it might be after that blind right hand corner with the bad camber (see the trees on the exit!) just heading down to the first of the two left-handers in a row on that stretch.
It might, however, be a bit closer to town, but I don't think so.
Tomlinson was great last night, talking about spending three weeks walking round the circuit every day, starting off at daybreak... He said it took a bit to get the circuit right, but when you got it right it was "great fun!"
Yes, he was getting airborne over the hill before Kayannie, and the thing with the Morgan happened over that crest going into town, with the whole incident taking him until the tight right hander to complete when the tree stopped his fall.
He also has the name and address of the man who picked up his lucky horse shoe and kept it when he heard he was dead. This is the guy who contacted John Walker when he won the AGP in 1979 to ask how to get in touch with Tomlinson. He'd seen him present the trophy on TV and realised stories of his death were exaggerated, and he wanted to return the horse shoe!
He may be a reasonably reliable eyewitness to it all...
What do you reckon the conversation will be like in March when we get Tomlinson and Crouch together?

I think the conversation will be thick and fast, I would not have much to add to it unfortunately but I sure will listen!

Do you chaps smoke? It sounds like the ideal venue would be a Cigar Lounge to me. I can bring them, I age my own Cohiba's and Hoyo de Monterrey's..... Cubas finest!

Hey Bernd, this is the 21st century! Nobody smokes anymore!!

Bunch of savages round here

Good thing you didn't light up in the Peugeot, you would have been kissing a gum tree at high speed if you had!

Maybe what we should do is tape the session and send those interested a copy?

Christ Ray your Pug is so um... full! with assorted memoribilia I think we would have all gone up in a conflagration if I had!

Seriously I only smoke one a day and always after dinnner.

How long till you get the Photo CD?

The CD I don't expect to see until next week, but the photos perhaps by thursday via the net. I'm off to Queensland this weekend, and I won't be back until Monday week, what's that, the 22nd, and then late at night, I guess, or even early Tuesday. So I'm hoping to post the very first of them before I go and then get stuck into it when I get back, although I really should get onto a computer up there and move it along a couple of corners before the 20th...
When I do the posts, I will be allowing for a return to them with Tomlinson's and Crouch's comments on each corner, straight or hill. I will post the pictures, then post a comment separately, and then come back and add these in by editing my posts. I'd like to see about four pictures per page, so this will be a long thread when I get it rolling, with about 40 main pictures and another 10 or so subsidiary ones to help give a better perspective. So please get your posts in after each picture (I would reckon I'd leave each one a day and a half in the normal scheme of things to allow everyone who wants to comment a good chance) and then we'll move on to the next one. Then each page will be quicker to download, too.

Still no sign of the pictures, but I have now spoken to John Crouch and he's agreeable (even keen) to meet up with Allan Tomlinson when the latter comes to Sydney in March. He's happy to make it a real session with various interested people there, and we'll see about the rest.
One thing's for sure, we'll have to record the whole conversation!
I'll keep you posted.

Oh, in speaking of Lobethal, he said categorically:

"That was the greatest circuit, for a driver, that there has ever been."

I think he raced there three times.. 1939, 1940 and 1948.

Out of curiosity, did the meeting of Crouch and Tomlinson ever occur ??

No... not at all...

Allan had his wife fall ill and that caused the abandonment of the trip he planned. He will be, however, at Lobethal in October this year.

Allan will be at Sporting Car Club of SA at Easter - courtesy of email from them earlier this week:

"There are a few tickets left for Easter Thursday Dinner - March 20th, 2008 at the Clubrooms $40.00 per head

3 Course Meal

2 Guest Speakers - Alan Tomlinson (winner of the 1939 Lobethal AGP) and Jeremy Burgess (the genius behind Rossi, Doohan and Gardner).


Essential to book by the 14th of March.

Contact the office by return email or Phone (08) 8373 4899."

Obviously it might be a bit late to get tickets now...