1137 replies to this topic

[E1pix]

Having never seen how knobbly your knees are Eric , I couldn't possibly comment!

It's more about my shaved legs. (LOL)

[DogEarred]

Having never seen how knobbly your knees are Eric , I couldn't possibly comment!

I've heard that he take the tops off his beer bottles with his knee caps...

[E1pix]

It's the other way around...

[JacnGille]

It's more about my shaved legs. (LOL)

Taken up cycling, have we???

[D28]

In this season of documentaries, here is one on trail blazer and hard charger Lella Lombardi. The film premiered this month in several world locales including Ca USA. See trailer and story for Beyond Driven here:

 

https://love-enterta...m/beyond-driven

[Sterzo]

My wife tells me I'd be stunnng in a kilt.

Possibly by a wasssp?

[HistoryFan]

Were there female racing drivers in Grandes Épreuves before 1950 (in the major Grand Prix races)

[Sterzo]

'Grandes Epreuves' is a slighty restrictive category, but Elisabeth Junek (Eliška Junková) raced at the German Grand Prix. She starred in the Targa Florio too, but for some reason that doesn't seem to be regarded as a Grande Epreuve. You might want to trawl the thread for more information on who raced where, HistoryFan.

[Vitesse2]

'Grandes Epreuves' is a slighty restrictive category, but Elisabeth Junek (Eliška Junková) raced at the German Grand Prix. She starred in the Targa Florio too, but for some reason that doesn't seem to be regarded as a Grande Epreuve. You might want to trawl the thread for more information on who raced where, HistoryFan.

Until the term became somewhat debased, each of the senior national clubs could only nominate one race per year as a Grande Épreuve; the RACI's was always the Italian GP, just as - before 1950 - the RAC's was always the Tourist Trophy.

 

Elsie 'Bill' Wisdom drove a Fiat in the 1936 Tourist Trophy, although she failed to finish. 'Mrs AC Lace' was unclassified - again in a Fiat - in 1937 and Mrs Wisdom shared an MG with Dorothy Stanley-Turner in 1938, finishing 23rd.

 

'Hellé-Nice' competed in many races for GP cars, but never in a Grande Épreuve. And Eliška Junková finished fourth in the 1928 German GP, but I'm not sure if it had Grande Épreuve status.

[HistoryFan]

Thank you, a lot of names to do more research on. Thanks!

[Bloggsworth]

Jim Clark was known as an occasional cross-dresser. Here's one of him wearing his favourite skirt.

 

Bloody kilt - My daughter's marrying a Scotsman at the end of July, I've been told to play in golfing shorts to brown my knees before the event, lest my legs look "All peely-wally." Chance would be a fine thing, pissing with rain before the lockdown, unending sunshine since and we're not allowed to play golf!

[BRG]

Bloody kilt - My daughter's marrying a Scotsman at the end of July, I've been told to play in golfing shorts to brown my knees before the event, lest my legs look "All peely-wally." Chance would be a fine thing, pissing with rain before the lockdown, unending sunshine since and we're not allowed to play golf!

Assuming the wedding is allowed to take place, you can get artificial tanning creams at your local supermarket or use gravy browning like Mother did during the war.

 

Are you entitled to wear the kilt, incidentally?  You have to have a genuine clan affiliation (unless you are an American tourist, when the Scottish tat industry will invent a tartan for you specially) although as a loyal subject of HM The Queen you can apparently wear the Royal Stewart tartan, as made famous by Jackie and Rod Stewart.

 

With luck, the lockdown will still be in place and the wedding will have to be virtual using Zoom and you will only need to be seen from the waist upwards, so your knees can remain your own wee secret.  And a virtual wedding could save you - as father of the bride - a small fortune!

[Lee Nicolle]

Bloody kilt - My daughter's marrying a Scotsman at the end of July, I've been told to play in golfing shorts to brown my knees before the event, lest my legs look "All peely-wally." Chance would be a fine thing, pissing with rain before the lockdown, unending sunshine since and we're not allowed to play golf!

Here in Oz golfers are playing. Social distancing etc and it seems no 19th hole.

[D-Type]

Assuming the wedding is allowed to take place, you can get artificial tanning creams at your local supermarket or use gravy browning like Mother did during the war.

 

Are you entitled to wear the kilt, incidentally?  You have to have a genuine clan affiliation (unless you are an American tourist, when the Scottish tat industry will invent a tartan for you specially) although as a loyal subject of HM The Queen you can apparently wear the Royal Stewart tartan, as made famous by Jackie and Rod Stewart.

 

With luck, the lockdown will still be in place and the wedding will have to be virtual using Zoom and you will only need to be seen from the waist upwards, so your knees can remain your own wee secret.  And a virtual wedding could save you - as father of the bride - a small fortune!

 

The "Royal" version of a tartan can only be worn by the chieftain and his family, in this case the Queen's family.  Peasants should wear the "Hunting" version. 

In the case of the Stewart tartan as a motor sport fan you could always wear Jackie Stewart's specially commissioned "Racing Stuart" tartan - for a fee (knowing Mr Stewart).  Or you could find a Morelli ancestor and wear the Morelli tartan in Italian red, white and green, which was reputedly commissioned by a family of Glasgow ice cream vendors and fish & chip shop proprietors.

Edited by D-Type, 27 February 2021 - 21:14.

[ensign14]

According to the Scottish Register of Tartans, anyone subject of Her Majesty can wear Royal Stewart.  That's what Sir Jackie had on his helmet, after all.  Paul had Hunting Stewart.   Mark on his GFOS drive had Racing Stewart.

 

The one tartan that would be treason to wear is Balmoral. 

 

 

Designed by Prince Albert and restricted to the Royal Family and the Royal Piper.

 

Although the whole tartan thing was more or less invented by Walter Scott, the old Highland families just had random plaid. 

Edited by ensign14, 15 April 2020 - 23:07.

[Michael Ferner]

...random plaid.

Which is what all of that looks to me. Bit like modern racing helmet designs, all with intricate details, probably changing from race to race, but they all look alike to me.

[FLB]

Elisabeth Junek is today's Google Doodle for her 120th anniversary:

 

[JtP2]

Jim Clark was known as an occasional cross-dresser. Here's one of him wearing his favourite skirt.

 

 

Please note the mismatch of socks and kilt. It had afterall been a quick change of dress between shooting pigeons. At least the car was freshly washed, but not by Jim

[Doug Nye]

My Boss - who is a Scot - just glanced at all this stuff about costly kilts and crash helmets...and sighed, "So much, to protect so little".

 

I can't imagine what she meant.

 

DCN

[racinggeek]

Elisabeth Junek is today's Google Doodle for her 120th anniversary:

 

 

Very nice, and thanks for the link (because we didn't get this Doodle in the U.S.). I remember a short profile of Junek appearing in one of the first Autosport issues I ever bought/read, late in 1981 I believe. The writer led with an observation of Junek driving a road car and saying she was worried it wouldn't go fast enough for her, having a little turnabout with the idea of a dignified 81-year old lady wanting a more bad@$$ car than (what for that time would be considered) the usual dignified 81-year old lady. I use "lady" instead of "woman" because as I recall, the writer indicated Junek was a lady in the most complimentary sense of the word, as well as a real racer.

[blueprint2002]

Have scanned this thread, somewhat hurriedly, and hope I haven’t missed something relevant, but got the idea that one significant name could merit another mention.

This year is the sixtieth anniversary of the outright victory, by Pat Moss and Ann Wisdom, in the Liege-Rome-Liege Rally, driving an Austin-Healey 3000: a car as rugged as the event then was; there being only 13 finishers out of 83 starters. Nor was it any fluke, for that same season, the same pair also finished second in the Alpine Rally.

To my knowledge, this represents the highest achievement by any female driver in any branch of motor sport (before the incomparable Michele Mouton). That includes Madame Junek’s astonishing drives in the Targa Florio of 1927 and 1928, when she matched the likes of Divo, Nuvolari, Campari, Fagioli and Materassi, even leading the ’27 event at one stage, and finishing fifth in ’28, after running second and third much of the way.

Which gives me to wonder, what might the Moss/Wisdom pair have achieved if they had taken on the Mille Miglia (pre-57), the Targa Florio, the Giro di Sicilia or like events, all of which had much in common with the Marathon de la Route?

[Myhinpaa]

Some rally that was, 96hrs non-stop! Photo with car and prizes/trophies : https://d39a3h63xew4...960-500x355.jpg

 

A nice article about Pat : https://petrolicious...rsport-pat-moss

[Graham Clayton]

Interesting story about Sarah Bowden, who became the first female driver to compete in a BRISCA Formula 2 stock car world championship final at the age of 17, but had to retire at age 18 due to breaking two vertebrae in her neck:



 

[E1pix]

Nice video Graham, Thanks.

[Graham Clayton]

https://www.oldstox....n June 2017.pdf

[Vitesse2]

An interesting aside from researching Darren's query about an obscure Turkish race - a failed bit of misogyny and a list of women drivers from Turkey, competing in the 1930s, probably mostly in rallying, originally sourced to a specific issue of a newspaper - Google translated from the Turkish:

 

 

... Afterwards, races were organized at the Istanbul Hippodrome and joint bets were made as in horse races. Samiye Morkaya, the first Turkish female auto racer, won some of these track races at that time.

“…In 1931, an automobile race was held on the road between İstinye and Maslak. Only Samiye Burhan Cahit Hanım had registered as a woman. He had no rival. Samiye Hanım wanted to compete in the men's class. The Organizing Committee and the Referee Committee saw no harm in this. Race started. Mrs. Samiye came first, outstripping all her male rivals with her Ford brand car…”

The runner-up of the race, Paşazade Vehbi Bey, protests on the grounds that “If the lady had not been included in the race, I would have been the winner”; the referees of the race cannot get out of the way and submit the objection to the judiciary; After all this noise, the Sultanahmet Magistrates Court, which is handling the case, decides that the trophy should be given to Samiye Hanım.

In addition to Samiye Hanım, we see Lemia Hanım, Muazzez İpar, Izetta Fracgini, Mademoiselle Blache and Azize Hanım, who challenged men behind the wheel, in the following races of that period, where there were 18 female deputies in the Turkish Grand National Assembly. In 1937, Azize Hanım became the Balkan Champion in the women's group in the Balkan Rally, which was held jointly with the Greek Elpa Club and where Ali Sami Yen was the head of the Turkish Organizing Committee. (Quote: Günaydın Newspaper, 11 June 1972)

 

Source: https://www.isok.org.tr/tarihce.php

[Vitesse2]

More on Samiye Morkaya:

 

https://tr.wikipedia...e_Cahid_Morkaya

 

https://www.ntv.com....TD0WPzXkCEtvQyg

[BRG]

I like the irony* of a Muslim country (albeit one that was secularised at the time) having a female race winner as long ago as 1931, but in the 'woke' and PC years of the next century, we apparently need W Series to keep women and men racers separate.

 

* as opposed to coppery or brassy as Pte Baldrick would have said.

[cooper997]

7/3/63 Motoring News Track Topics has this photo of Aussie lady driver, Lorraine Hill. Sister of Lance and married Brian 'Brique' Reed. (all now deceased)

 

 

The reference to Lakeside most likely relates to the 15-17/2/63 International meeting

 

 

Stephen

[john winfield]

The other day, a propos nothing at all, the name Michelle Burns-Greig came back to me from the early/mid sixties in her Mini Cooper, racing a little later than Christabel Carlisle. Was MB_G's car the one which carried the index mark SEX 1 ? Any recollections?

RL

 Yes, Roger, it was, but I expect you had already confirmed the fact sometime in the last seventeen years!  Rachel's Speedqueens site shows the photographic evidence:

 

http://speedqueens.b...lle Burns-Greig

 

There's some interesting detail, including   After retiring from motorsport, she followed her mother into local politics in the Borders, where she remained active for many years. She was still going strong in 2021, as a Google search shows an online letter to the Scottish Borders Council berating them for considering a planning application that would threaten Abbotsford House, the home of Sir Walter Scott.  In the letter she refers to having been the Council's Chairman of Planning and Development in the 1980s. 

 

I don't have any current news of MBG but see from this 1964 Max le Grand article that, all being well, she was eighty this month. Happy Birthday Michaelle.

 

 https://charterhall....-michaelle.html

 

What made me revive this post/thread was finding a couple of loose pages from a February 1965 VW magazine (VW Safer Motoring?) in which Michaelle had a column 'Michaelle's Motoring Mirror'. It's an entertaining read, including a short, affectionate piece on the loss of Formula Junior, and the whereabouts of the defunct formula's stars. She writes warmly of Roy James "..whose fantastic success and assured future was crushed when the Law convicted him of taking part in the Great Train Robbery - a crime many of us believe he did not commit.  However, we in racing accept people as they are, and seeing we all admired Roy, both as a driver and a person during his all too short time in the sport, his place among us is being kept for his return."

 

She is rather dismissive of young JY Stewart's recent rise, pointing out that his place in the "..only works team in F3.." virtually guaranteed him success in 1964. She felt he had shot up too rapidly to be racing F1 this year (1965) and feared he may be being pushed too quickly like Gary Hocking and Timmy Mayer.  Michaelle also covers the Bandini/Hill incident in Mexico 1964, whether she might go rallying again, scrutineering and compliance in saloon racing, and her experience at Rob Slotemaker's Anti-Skid School in the Netherlands.  "I first heard about it one night when Jimmy Clark (they were both from Duns) was having dinner at my home, soon after he had attended the school."

 

The column is very well written and, assuming it wasn't ghosted, Michaelle could have had a successful career in journalism.  Perhaps she did!

Edited by john winfield, 27 February 2023 - 14:21.

[Lee Nicolle]

Interesting story about Sarah Bowden, who became the first female driver to compete in a BRISCA Formula 2 stock car world championship final at the age of 17, but had to retire at age 18 due to breaking two vertebrae in her neck:

https://www.youtube....h?v=tR2ox3Myf2o

Carli Holmes in NW USA races sprintcars and winged Karts. She too broke her back at I think 16. Rode a wheel while lapping car when in the lead. Absolutely dumb and dangerous track,, she ended up in a creek!!
She and big brother Tanner both have You Tube channels.

[LotusElise]

https://www.pen-and-...ardback/p/22582

 

This book looks interesting. I have absolutely no idea about the writer though...

[Vitesse2]

https://www.pen-and-...ardback/p/22582

 

This book looks interesting. I have absolutely no idea about the writer though...

[Vitesse2]

https://www.pen-and-...ardback/p/22582

 

This book looks interesting. I have absolutely no idea about the writer though...

Just received my copy in the past few minutes. Thanks for the acknowledgement. Because you just knew what I was going to check first in the index, didn't you?

[Timmymonster]

Just received my copy in the past few minutes. Thanks for the acknowledgement. Because you just knew what I was going to check first in the index, didn't you?

How very exciting…..

 

Perhaps you could explain to the rest of us what you are referring to?

[E1pix]

I read it as an inside joke between two trusted veterans here.

I’m also personally comfortable in life not having to know every single little thing that I read.

[RTH]

Tina and Aimee had a good run on Sunday last in Tina's appendix K    pre '65 Cooper S  at Silverstone on the Grand Prix layout    despite  choosing the wrong tyres  for the deceptively  damp  slippery track   

[LotusElise]

How very exciting…..

 

Perhaps you could explain to the rest of us what you are referring to?

 

I believe he helped the mysterious writer with a part of her work. Not that I know anything about her though.