14 replies to this topic

[racer159]

At the season 1957:

Which F-1 pilot got famous, because he jumped out of the car by accidents at the last moment ?

Was this Roy Salvadori or Mike Hawthorn or Masten Gregory?

[bill moffat]

Masten Gregory.

[Huw Jadvantich]

Whats the story?

[BorderReiver]

Masten Gregory sometimes bailed out when in trouble, so did other people, but Masten seem's to have garnered a reputation for it.

[Tim Murray]

Masten was certainly famous for baling out, but not in 1957. According to Joe Fan in Totally Fearless, the first of these occurred at Silverstone on 19 July 1958. Where does that leave us in relation to the original question?

[Vitesse2]

Originally posted by Huw Jadvantich
Whats the story?

.... and which quiz is this a question from?

Dead right, Tim.

The correct answer is in a book I read recently .....

[Manfred Cubenoggin]

Close but no cigar...

Taken strictly from memory of an article in Road & Track covering an early edition(probably 1962 or '63)of the Canadian Grand Prix(for sports racing cars)at Mosport.

I recall a passage that stated that Harry Entwhistle lost control of his Lotus 15 and was standing up, preparing to jump but decided against it at the last moment, hurling himself prostrate onto the floor/seats of the car instead. He suceeded in impaling himself with the gear lever in the process but this was apparently his only injury. I read with amusement the line that finished the story that said Harry was seen at the awards banquet later that evening 'manfully swinging an amber medication.'

PS edit: The author of the article may have been Bruce McCall. Whatever happened to him? DCN?

[Ray Bell]

Don't you just love these stories of things people find time to do during the course of a high speed crash?

Gregory standing up and bailing out at the last minute, yes, I can see that happening. But getting up there, then 'hurling himself prostrate on the floor/seats of the car' gives a picture of things happening awfully slowly, not to mention depriving you of the inertia involved, the bouncing over the grass tussocks or whatever that are likely to impede a car's smooth off-circuit course!

[WGD706]

Originally posted by Manfred Cubenoggin

PS edit: The author of the article may have been Bruce McCall. Whatever happened to him? DCN?

"Tuner Transformation, Sports Car Revolution, Dream Car Garage and Chop, Cut, Rebuild all celebrate automotive mayhem from the most unlikely of locales: Ontario, Canada.

The guys behind each show are certifiable car freaks, yet none of them feels Canada is a backwater of automotive culture.

It wasn’t always so, according to Bruce McCall, the Canadian-born humorist whose quirky worldview frequently finds an outlet on both the cover and inside pages of The New Yorker.

In his memoir, “Thin Ice: Growing Up Canadian,” McCall reflected on the pangs of envy he felt, as a kid stuck in the bleakness of rural Ontario, at the sight of the big, flashy American cars of the 1950s that would speed past his boyhood home.

The States, a young McCall convinced himself, was the only place an incorrigible car nut could ever find lasting happiness.

He eventually escaped the dour Scots-Presbyterian vibe of mid-1950s Ontario, crossed the Detroit River into the U.S. and began a car-centric career that included stops as an ad copywriter on the early 1960s Corvette campaign along with David E. Davis, as a contributor to Car and Driver in its David E. heyday, as a writer for “Saturday Night Live” and “National Lampoon”, and as an illustrator whose spoofs of America’s hyperbolic car advertising are collected in his classic book “Zany Afternoons.”
http://www.speedtv.c...mmentary/11155/


He's also on the writing staff of Automobile Magazine.

[David Beard]

I have always thought these stories about leaping out of car to avoid the impact are utter nonsense. Surely, the time expended in thinking about doing such a thing, let alone doing it , would be better put to use attempting to avoid the collison by use of the car's control systems.

How often has something happened on the road when you may or may not have blown the horn.? If you had time to blow the horn, it was no use anyway. Same sort of thing.

[D-Type]

David, I think Masten simply climbed out of the seat and let the impact catapult him clear. His other famous 'bail out' was from the Tojeiro during the 1959 Goodwood TT. On that occasion he received some injuries: I think broken ribs, broken leg, and a dislocated shoulder. Had he stayed in the car he would have been a lot worse off as I believe the car folded at the cockpit. If he's still about, I'm sure Joe Fan can give us chapter and verse.

racer159,
How good a historian is your quiz setter? Can you trust his dates. There are examples of drivers being thrown from Formula 1 cars but not in 1957. Try Porto and Avus for two famous examples. Also the film Such Men are Dangerous

[Mike Riedner]

racer159 has asked (as have done others since December) at least one more question in TNF for a quiz in the weekly publication Motorsport aktuell published in Zürich (CH).

[Geza Sury]

Originally posted by Mike Riedner
racer159 has asked (as have done others since December) at least one more question in TNF for a quiz in the weekly publication Motorsport aktuell published in Zürich (CH).

Oh, noooooooooo.... Finally we got rid of the disturbing Russian quiz questions, and now Motor Sport Aktuell decides to set up yet another quiz. As Don has put it very politely a couple of months ago: "This nonsense has to end..."

[D-Type]

Does the Motorsport aktuell quiz carry a big prize like the Russian one?

racer159,
Whether it carries a prize or not, do you not think that it is basic good manners to say you are looking for a quiz answer so people can decide whether to give up their time help you or not.

[ian senior]

I remember a story of Frank Gardner bailing out of a racing Lotus Cortina that caught fire, he was a bit worried when flames started coming through the dashboard. I think I would have been tempted to do the same and to hell with the risk of broken bones. Fire scares the brown stuff out of me.