Bo Pittard

..I briefly mentioned this driver on another thread. I am interested in knowing more of him if anyone is able to enlighten me, he drove for Willment racing I think and was killed at Monza at the Parabolica during the Lottery. Did he drive a Ford Anglia earlier in his short career? And did he throw this car around like crazy??

Off the top of my head....
Boley Pittard was a Jerseyman who made his name in British club races with an Anglia. He later raced Alfa TZs internationally, and followed the lead of Jonathan Williams by basing himself in Italy and racing F3 - for BWA, I seem to remember. He was killed there, but I don't recall the where, when or how.

I see that Moody has asked this question on another forum, but I hope he won't mind me replying here. this is from autosport June 6 1967

It is with great regret that we record the death of boley Pittard lest Saturday, as a result of severe burns e received in an accident in the opening seconds of the final of the Monza F3 meeting on 4th June. Bo was 29 years old, and was born in St Hellier Jersey, the son of a fisherman. He made his competition debut riding motorcycles on the sands at St Ouen's Bay, and his first taste of motor racing was in 1958, when he drove an old Lancia. He arrived inLondon in 1960 and worked as a car salesman in Warren Street, and that year started kart racing. His perseverence soon found him in a ford anglia with which he scored no less than 20 outright victories and secured a place in john willment's team. That year he won the Brooklands memorial Trophy and a Grovewood award and was given a test drive by Ken Tyrell. 1965 saw him in the Walker-Day equipe, teamed with the late Tony Hegbourne in Alfa GTZs, with which he won his class in the spa 1000kms. Perhaps his greatest race was at the Whit-Monday Crystal Palace meeting, when he battled wheel to wheel with Jack Oliver's Elan and broke te lap record. Last year Bo moved to live in Italy toconcentrate on F3, where he got a drive with BWA. This year he moved to Tecno, but after a disagreement with the team e bought a Lola. this was the car that caught fire when the grid moved off for the final of the Monza race. Boley stayed in the car and drove it off the track against the barrier to get it out of te way of te rest of the closely bunched field and was gravely burned. Bo's amusing tendencies to err from the straight and narrow, both on and off the track, made him an imensely popular bachelor, and his Jersey brand ofpidgin-Cockney and fabulous sense of humour will be long remebered.

..once again I am very grateful to Roger for his time in supplying what has been the most I have ever read about Bo...

..it was a great shame he was lost like that, the memory I have of him is a televised race from Silverstone in 64 or 65 in the Anglia, I thought it was terrific to watch Clark in the Cortina, but this fella in that Anglia had me mesmerized four wheel drifting the car through the then untouched Woodcote, and after that I heard precious little of him until his death in a short news item when I was then living in Singapore.

..many thanks again Roger I still have that BRM shot on my desktop by the way..

.. Moody

Almost a year later...and Boley Pittard comes back.
You never know what you can find whilst browsing...and here it is what I understand might be a 1964 article by Anthony Marsh (chez Sportscar) on our man.

I like motor racing because it gives me the sort of excitement which I've never found in anything else—and believe me I've tried!' 'No-one knows how long they're going to live, so I say why not get the kicks while you've got the chance?' 'One day I'll find myself a boat and sail round the world.'
Remarks of this kind, and fascinating stories of family clashes with the Germans in Jersey, where Boley Pittard was born just before the war, provide rather a contrast with the quiet, mild-mannered first impression he makes. His father and grandmother both ended the war in concentration camps, and when they returned 'i was a bit wild, having had no control'.
He found school 'too dull and humdrum—a big bore', and spent as much time as possible in a friend's garage down the road, where he went to work as soon as he left school. He'd already got the racing bug, and while he helped to build cars for others to race (he was still too young) he used to get his own kicks with a bunch of chums on souped-up old motorbikes. They used to belt round their own private scrambles courses which they marked out on a benevolent farmer's land. This, and midnight rabbit shoots over rough fields—one riding and the passenger firing—taught them a lot about handling and sliding, and Bo could usually show them the way home.
Later, he left the garage to hire out Vespas—'a lot easier than getting covered in grease'—and the next step was to run his own car hire business, which he opened next door to his friend's well-established one. This got the customers delightfully confused, which was just as well in view of some of the old bangers he was trying to hire out!
Boley's 'real' racing started with motorcycles, on a closed one-mile sand circuit, and graduated to cars, also on the beach. Races were held every Thursday afternoon, and many were his customers who were told that they would have to bring the hire car back at mid-day on the Thursday for a routine service, and to pick it up again on the Friday morning! The Renault Fregate was the favourite for this treatment, as it would do quite well against some of the regular GT cars on the sand.
Then there was the straight-eight Hudson special, which no-one reckoned, but which had so much torque it only needed top gear. Boley entered this for a big 50-lap end-of-season race, led for 40 laps, then lost a tyre valve. Out came the black flag, which he ignored for a couple of laps, then rushed in to look for another rear wheel. There were no other 19-inchers around so he settled for a 15-inch off an Austin Healey, and lurched off back in the race, still first. Out came the flag again—'too dangerous'—and so he stopped for the other Healey wheel. Back into the race he went. and still he was first, but hopelessly undergeared, and though he tried his best to coax the car to the finish, the engine blew asunder, but not before his '£10 lot' had really shaken the establishment.
Then Boley went through a rough patch, and came to England penniless, but determined to work his way into real motor racing. He worked in Warren Street with Bobby Day, now the British kart champion, and reached the British kart team himself after about three races. 'But the English kart people are very funny—they take it so seriously, and get all upset if you give them a bang', so he decided to try proper racing, and as we all know with great success, in a Group 3 'angry Anglia'. Thanks to much appreciated help, with an engine and preparation, from John Willment, he has won the Brooklands Memorial Trophy (first time it has gone to a saloon), was first in class and second overall in the Spring Grove Championship, lies third in the Slip Molyslip Championship, and has caused quite a sensation all round, with about 20 wins in his first season.
Pittard is a cheerful, casual character. One feels that nothing very much could ever rattle him. 'You cannot frighten yourself when you are racing— you should know what you're doing. If anything goes wrong you must concentrate on putting it right. There's no time for fright.*
There is a seriousness about his determination to get to the top. He has subordinated everything to it, and until John Willment gave him that valuable leg-up, he was dependent on what he could save from his car trading. He'd like to be a grand prix driver—'I should think it's a good romantic life, and there's certainly nothing humdrum about it'.
We're back at the beginning again. He must have excitement, but the old wild days of Jersey are over. A new Bo Pittard was born on the circuits this year.

Felix

Felix thankyou so much, what a lovely surprise after so long. Dare I ask if anyone has any photos of Bo Pittard?

For my sins - I was a teenager at the time - I worked on 'Sportscar' magazine and recall Anthony Marsh interviewing Bo Pittard in our office which was a Portakabin at Brands Hatch. Pittard was a good bloke, but dangerous to know. He lived life to the full, and - poor chap - he died perhaps the hardest of deaths.

DCN

I was at Monza this day with Delfino Colmegna, one o two weeks after Bandinis accident at Monte Carlo. The fire workers equipped with new overalls and fire mask. When Boleys Pittards car in the first row on outside (grand stand side) tack fire, hi make same meters, they war exactly on the other side. They arrive when the started field have nearly finished the first lap. See have to put first the equipment. I’m not sure (? the memory) how Pittard cam out of his car, I think by himself, but the first intervention was for the car.

Hunting for something else, I came across the Motor Sport obituary for Boley Pittard. Written by Andrew Marriott, it adds nothing to the above, and is probably a paraphrase of the Autosport report. But it will save someone some searching, sometime .... Motor Sport, July 1967, p611

I came across the following article in CP&A, which gives more details on poor Boley Pittard's accident and agony... "the hardest of deaths" indeed. And quite a shocking and scandalous sequence of events to say the least.

By D.O. Cizzi, Competition Press & Autoweek, page 25, Vol. 17 No. 27 – July 8, 1967

Series of Incredible Happenings Result in Death of Boley Pittard in Italy

MONZA, Italy, June 11 – A series of incredible circumstances resulted in the death of Englishman Boley Pittard at the 16th Monza Cup race for Formula Three cars.

As the cars rolled forward from the dummy grid, flames were licking the bottom of the red Lola. Another driver, intent on drafting the Lola, said he saw the flames.

The cars reached the real grid, paused for an instant, and as the starter dropped the flag, the Lola burst into a ball of flame engulfing all but the tops of the tires. With the car still in motion, the driver tried to get out, but the Lola is a hard car to get out of, especially for short people as the inside of the cockpit is smooth without any toeholds. He got half way out before the hot gas caused him to loose consciousness ; he fell to the left against the molten windscreen steering the car across the track and into a retaining wall in front of the grandstand where it continued to burn.

The rest of the field flashed by with no one stopping to render aid. Two officials and a fireman ran into the smoke and put out the fire sufficiently to extract the driver who was almost completely nude. His previously clean white driving suit, which he had made to order of a synthetic fabric some months before, was reduced to two singed strips of cotton cloth which had been piping, a waistband elastic and a zipper.
His goggles had partially melted and had slipped down over his mouth, where they were to stay until his arrival at the hospital some time later.

He was put into an ambulance, accompanied by his closest friend who had run from the pits to help, and the ambulance started an erratic journey in Sunday afternoon traffic to the Monza Hospital some 10 minutes away. There was an Italian Army rescue service helicopter standing by on the pad of the semi-permanent heliport behind the pits which could have been used for transport to Milan’s main hospital for the same cost in time. The ambulance driver didn’t know this, couldn’t be convince by the person accompanying the driver and pressed resolutely on, arriving at the outdated and soon to be replaced Monza hospital which is unequipped to handle burn cases of any gravity.

Here Boley was put into a private room after it was determined that he had first, second and third degree burns over 80% of his body, with a particularly bad area on his upper left arm due to the windscreen. Various cures were instigated, and at 3am Monday a professor from the burn center of the University of Turin arrived, escorted by the police.
After a perfunctory examination, he opined that the chances for survival were “one in a million.” Later on Monday almost one hundred well wishers filed into the room where Boley was fighting for his life, virtually unrestrained by hostpital authorities. Contact was made with the East Grinstead burn center, London, which promised the use of their specially equipped aircraft for transport as soon as travel was advisable.

On the other hand, the wheels of Italian justice were slowly turning, an inquest had been opened by the district attorney, and the remains of the car, which had been put into a sealed garage at the track, were removed to Road Police headquarters for a complexe examination, and, if possible, a determination of responsibilities. Boley, for his part, said on Monday, “I stepped on the clutch and the car caught fire, but I remember some kind of wetness on my legs before.”

Tuesday saw fewer visitors, ultra-violet light, plasma and the first of three kidney stoppages. Wednesday, hospital authorities finally placed a veto on visits and assigned 24-hour nurse service.

Thursday and Friday saw small improvements with a cautious statement from the chief surgeon. Saturday morning, Boley lapsed into a delirium, and an emergency procedure was started. He lasted in these conditions until the evening at 8:15 ; the factors against survival were too many.

A gasoline leak, plus the inflammable driving suit, the ambulance, the ill-equipped hospital – the odds were against him from the start.

I have a family connection with Boley. Does anybody know his birth date and where he is buried.

Born 14 October 1937

Originally posted by moody
..once again I am very grateful to Roger for his time in supplying what has been the most I have ever read about Bo...

..it was a great shame he was lost like that, the memory I have of him is a televised race from Silverstone in 64 or 65 in the Anglia, I thought it was terrific to watch Clark in the Cortina, but this fella in that Anglia had me mesmerized four wheel drifting the car through the then untouched Woodcote, and after that I heard precious little of him until his death in a short news item when I was then living in Singapore.

..many thanks again Roger I still have that BRM shot on my desktop by the way..

.. Moody

I saw Bo in the Anglia and the TZ, I remember him being super fast, and me being very saddened at his death, I was fourteen at the time and he was a regular at Brands.

Info on Bo Pittard in my site some photos http://www.mountgree...ita_D_1964.html

Thanks Luca & Dave for that information.

Bo with his Lotus 23 at Brands Hatch 31st January 1965. Photo copyright Tim Blackburn