10 replies to this topic

[Ray Bell]

"Guest of Honour" at the 65th Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park will be the oldest surviving Aust GP winner.
Allan Tomlinson won the last AGP before the war, the 150-miler at Lobethal in the Adelaide Hills, over a daunting 8.65 mile circuit. He drove an MG TA which he had developed in company with his good friend Clem Dwyer.
It had a single-seat body which retained the MG grille, and the engine was supercharged with the pump hanging off the 'cold' side of the engine away from the exhaust pipes. The brakes were standard, but very carefully prepared, while damping, springing and gearing had all been 'attended to.'
The race was a handicap, as were all but one of these events up until 1948, with the fastest cars being the Alf Barrett Alfa Monza, the Jack Saywell Alfa 2.9 P3 and Frank Kleinig's Hudson 8 Special based on a chassis from an MG Magna. Saywell set fastest time in the event at 83.93 mph while Barrett and Kleinig vied for the lap record at 91.5 mph.
Tomlinson, now 83, still works every day as a steam engineer. "I like the challenge," he says. Dwyer still plays with cars, and while he has just sold his Westfield (fitted with a Mazda rotary!) and usually drives a Subaru WRX, he has just bought an MGA to which he's fitting a supercharger. He claims he wants to work his way back to the supercharged MG P type he started out with! He's about 86 and rides his pushbike to the speedway each Friday night. "I don't know what the police would say if they saw me," he has said, "but I usually sling a fold up aluminium chair over my shoulder so I can sit in the back of my mate's ute when I get there."
"ute" is pickup, aluminium is our way of spelling aluminum.
The them for the historic events at the AGP will be "Australian Specials versus the World," especially harking back to when Alan's dad Stan Jones beat the V16 BRMs in the New Zealand Grand Prix with his Maybach Special (4litre scout car engine, Studebaker front suspension, fabricated chassis, modified Fiat gearbox, limited slip diff out of an old truck).
The courage of Tomlinson and others who drove really fast at Lobethal cannot be underrated. A number of fast (very fast!) corners followed crests that got the cars airborne. How did they do it?
"We turned before we got airborne," he told me. Alf Barrett confirmed this.

[Ray Bell]

Everybody seemed to pass this topic by - so I elevated it to the top of the pile so it would get another go.
Is nobody interested in "nostalgia" in this forum? The guy's a legend, raced in the days of Seaman and Chiron - could he help it if he was on the other side of the world?
And in a few weeks, for the first time in his life, he attends a World Championship race.

[Ian McKean]

I agree that there were some heroes who never made it to Europe, or F1, but had all the skill, courage and ingenuity that is needed. Unfortunately I cannot comment on Allan Tomlinson, but he sounds a real good guy and Clem Dwyer too.

I love it when people do what they do because its their life all their life rather than price themselves out of the drivers market. Why should someone retire just because some journalist thinks he may be over the top? A racer races.

So in my view the following are out;

Nigel Mansell
Most of today's overpaid exponents

... and the following are in;

Fangio (kept going till 47)
Moss (still having fun at 70)
Clem Dwyer (ditto)
Nuvolari (kept going till he had to be lifted out of racing cars coughing blood)
Caracciola (not generally known that he still raced after the second world war)
Varzi and others (ditto)
Gerry Marshall (too fat to fit in a single seater but has won 595 races over about 35 seasons and is still going strong)
Per Eklund (one of the very few ex-works drivers who carried on at his own expense after the works drives dried up - and won the European rallycross championship last year)
Stig Blomqvist (general hero and genius on snow)
Denny Hulme (carried on long after F1 was over for him)
Emerson Fittipaldi (ditto)
Alan Jones (ditto)
Mario Andretti (he just carried on)
Jo Schlesser (carried on in Raids after World Sports Cars and F1 was over)
Basil Davenport (like Tomlinson and Dwyer a special-builder who took on and beat the better-financed teams - he reigned supreme for nearly three years at Shelsley Walsh in a self-built special so tatty that one year the policeman on duty at the paddock entrance would not let it in)

This list is not exhaustive but gives an idea of what impresses me.

I might start a topic on Basil Davenport at the weekend, but I fear that like Tomlinson it would not arouse much interest!

Ian McKean

[Don Capps]

I regret that I don't have the chance to reply to all the items that are posted, but I do read them all. And I truly enjoy so many of them like this one. I am always amazed at the variety and the span of knowledge that shows up here on the forum.

I thought it great that Ray posted this since it illustrates why this forum exists: to make us aware of the past and its links to the future.

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Yr fthfl & hmbl srvnt,

Don Capps

Semper Gumbi: If this was easy, we’d have the solution already…

[Fast One]

Ditto for me, Ray. Unless I think I have something to add, I usually don't post. This was a good one. But I know what you mean. Whenever I've posted, I've been dissappointed if only a couple of people responded. I'll try to remember that when other folks post.

[Dennis David]

It's also important to understand that we still have a small audience here. We've come a long way but this forum is still in its infancy. So it behooves us to recommend this forum to our friends and acquaintances that might be interested in what we are discussing here.

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Regards,

Dennis David
Yahoo = dennis_a_david

Life is racing, the rest is waiting

Grand Prix History
www.ddavid.com/formula1/

[davo]

Perhaps Denny Hulme takes the record for driving until the very end? (Excluding crashes of course).

As well as his various F1 exploits and being half of the Bruce and Denny show (got to love that CanAm technical free for all) Denny Hulme later drove touring cars.

Through the last years of his life he drove privateer 3 series BMWs in Australia including the annual 1000K at Bathurst. He had a heart attack at the wheel driving down the main straight and died then or very soon after (hours). Unsure of the year but relatively recent.

Having done it all (in various catagories and countries) he certainly seemed to still get in and enjoy it.

[Ray Bell]

Denny left us about 91 or 92, and he pulled the car up as he was dying. My understanding, although I haven't exactly asked anyone who would know (like Team Mgr Frank Gardner - the connection through whom he got the annual drive), is that he was dead when they got to him.
Speaking of aging drivers, I recall reading that there was a guy in the States who built his own Formula Ford (Ugh!) and was dicing with the best of them in his sixties. Is he still going?
Bib Stillwell, started in TCs just after the war and was Aust Gold Star Champion four times over in the sixties, returned from running Lear Jet Corp to resume a heady schedule of Historic Racing in a late-60s Repco Brabham V8 and crashed heavily at the Geelong Sprints a couple of years ago. He died last year, just weeks after running the car the last time, aged about 70.

[Stephen Herbert]

I remember reading in 1995 about Dan Carmichael, who had just won the SCCA Formula Atlantic Run-Off at the age of 76.

In the UK there is a driver called Tom Delaney who races a Lea-Francis Hyper who still competed into the late 1990's when aged 86. He competes annually at the Brighton Speed Trials where he made his debut in 1934. He also competed at the opening race meeting at Donington Park in 1933, driving the same Lea Francis that he was racing at Donington during the 1990s.

Incidentally, Denny Hulme died during the 1992 Bathurst 1000.

[Incal]

I feel quite ashamed that I didn't know of Tomlinson ( I stick with the excuse that I am a new Australian, well semi new ). Said this elsewhere, but I have been lucky enough to have seen Jack Brabham in his own car going hammer and tongs with Fangio in the monster Merc at Sandown (the year the WSC came to Oz). Seeing Fangio at 70+ fourwheel drifting the Merc through Repco corner was and still is awe inspiring. Apprently the Merc execs were having collective heartattacks, they thought he would just cruise around the track. I understand that Fangio pointed out that it was a race car on a racetrack. I reckon having Sir Jack on the same track in the same mood was to much to resist. For a fan that day will live forever.

[Ray Bell]

Incal -
you need to subscribe to the National Newsletter of the Historic Racing Register. Email raybell@eisa.net.au for details...
The highlight of the Sandown appearance of Fangio was the chee-cheep-chee-cheeping of the tyres under brakes at the top of the back straight, and he just looked like he was gently backing off and lining up the esses!
Also to see that famous way he worked with his hands on the bottom of the steering wheel. Makes a nonsense of the "10 to 2" position taught everywhere!
Are you going to Phillip Island Historics?
Anyway, email me, you've got a lot of catching up to do, I might be able to help.