7 replies to this topic

[Mal9444]

I've seen on TNF a reference to this some time ago but cannot find it via the Search engine, nor do general web searches help.

My question concerns the little red/white/blue roundel sometimes seen on models and period photos of British cars at Le Mans in the Fifties and Sixties. What is its significance? Was it just a patriotic gesture; a regulatory requirement (a sort of GB plate); or did it - as I belive I recall from the aforementioned but now lost reference - signify that the car was entered in some special race-within-the-race? And was it used in years other than 1951?

Did all British entrants show it, or only some - and if the latter would a whole team have shown it, or only some?

My question is prompted by a close study of the pictures in Andrew Whyte's Jaguar, Sports Racing and Works Competition Cars to 1953 - now out-of-print, I understand, but recently found at Motor Books- and indeed in the companion volume Jaguar... from 1954 which I have had for some time. For example - the roundel can be seen on the 1951 winner of Peters Whitehead and Walker (car no 20) - but not on the Moss car (22). There is no sign of it in '52 or '53 - or on the D-types.

I have seen it, however, on British cars other than Jaguars - Fraser Nash, IIRC - in other photographs and on other models.

[Tim Murray]

They denoted participation in the Biennial or Triennial cups. More info in this earlier thread:

R.A.F. roundels on Belgian C-type

and here's another thread about the complicated criteria governing those cups:

Biennale Cup Le Mans

[Mal9444]

They denoted participation in the Biennial or Triennial cups. More info in this earlier thread:

R.A.F. roundels on Belgian C-type

and here's another thread about the complicated criteria governing those cups:

Biennale Cup Le Mans

To quote a correspondent on one of those two links: 'amazing what's been discussed on TNF...'

Thanks, Tim.

Does anyone know if ALL the '51 C-types were entered in the Biennial Cup of that year, or only the Walker/ Whitehead car?

And if the latter, why just one car since from the referenced threads I gather that continuity across the years of the biennium was not a requirement?

And I wonder what happened to the 'other' year: in 1950 there were no C-types, and there is no sign that I can see of roundels on the '52 C-types (not that they would have won very much adding those two years together).

Andrew Whyte's book, so comprehensive in so much else, is as far as I can see silent on the subject. A curious omission.

Thanks again.

Edited by Mal9444, 23 February 2011 - 09:58.

[AJB]

These are French roundels with a red outer and blue inner, the opposite of RAF roundels.

Alan

[D-Type]

Please read the previous threads. These roundels related to the Coupe Bienniale [sp?].

They had nothing to do with the RAF or any other air force.

[RA Historian]

Are you sure about that, Duncan?
Tom

[D-Type]

Are you sure about that, Duncan?
Tom

Yes

[AJB]

I wasn't implying that they were anything to do with l'Armée de l'Air, merely noting the correct colours as I have seen the odd model with the red and blue reversed.
As a keen modeller, such accuracy is important. But thank you for reminding us, Duncan.

Alan