Founded in the year nineteen twenty-four February 1980

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locked by a huge steamroller and its equally huge trailer, full of road metal, drawn up alongside it. Dick tried to get the car up on the left-hand verge but it was too high. Had he succeeded I think we might have tipped over because we were travelling sideways. Meantime the very quick-witted roller driver put his engine into reverse and was actually moving backwards when we struck the front roller. There was remarkably little damage done and we were-able to limp into Maidenhead for repairs. The second occasion was when we took the car for test over some of the worst roads and hills in North Wales and, at that time, they really were bad. There was a sharpish bend in the narrow road somewhere near the top of Dinas Mawddy and Dick misjudged it a little. We ended up with the car overhanging a fearsome slope to the valley below. Fortunately the rear wheels were still on relatively solid ground and by jacking-up the front end, Dick driving and me pushing, we eventually got it back on to the road in a series of spasmodic jerks. All this took about two hours and not a single soul or vehicle passed by. We were both shaken, not only from fright but at the thought of No. 5 lying a heap of wreckage down below. So we returned to the works in a very decorous fashion. Three Minervas fitted with double-sleeve-valve engines were entered for the race. The pistons and sleeves perforce had to be given large clearances and as a result their consumption of lubricating oil was phenomenal. It was necessary to effect a seal and to cool the sleeves. The ultimate result was that when the throttle was closed oil spewed into a red hot exhaust manifold which disgorged a cloud of dense smoke. Any driver who happened to be sitting on their tail when this happened was completely blinded. A protest was made about this smoke emission but was not upheld so one just kept back if one knew there was a bad corner ahead. In this connection, an amusing story was going the rounds of Bianchi who was driving a Crossley. Apparently he was late arriving on the island and, when he set off at 5.00 a.m. the next morning for his first practice lap, no one had told him about the Minervas and their smoke. He was unfortunate enough to find himself close behind one of them at the end of the Sulby straight where there is a sharp turn to the right over the bridge. The usual thing happened and Bianchi was enveloped in a thick cloud. He trod on every¬thing, the car spun, and when he came to rest and could sec, found himself in the middle of the bridge without touching a thing but facing in the reverse direction. That evening in a Douglas hostelry he was explaining to the company around what had happened and that things were more difficult for him because he did not know the course at all, when some wag piped in, “And you are never likely to know it either if you keep on going round it backwards”. What befell the two Star entries in this 1914 TT was described in last month’s “Star Story”. On Brooklands, during practice, the Humber TT cars at full speed emitted a very high pitched whistle which was caused by something in the radiator design. If we were at Brooklands for a few days we used to stay at the Heath Club,a place owned by Locke-King and run by a Manageress, She was the one who always made Hornstead pay his bill before going for a track record! I have tried to trace what happened to this club because there were many photographs there and some very famous people used it. As a club it probably came to an end during the first war. Travelling up to town last December 1 got into conversation with a young lady who said she came from Weybridge and asked if she knew anything about the Heath Club. Not surprisingly she said she had never heard of it but would enquire. She informed me about a week later that she thought what used to be the old club was now a bridge club and was situated near the present Technical College on what used to be part of the Locke-King Estate. Percy Lambert, who covered the first one hundred miles in the hour on a Talbot, was using the track a lot. His works mechanic was a man called Day, an amiable chap who did not mind you examining the Talbot in detail. There used to be a block of lock-up garages near the Club and Talbot and Star occupied adjacent compartments at one time. Speaking of Lambert, Dick Lisle was the first man to reach him when his car overturned and killed him on the home banking behind the Members” Hill. The rear tyres burst and the rear end of the car spun up the banking and then somersaulted coming to rest upright on its wheels at the bottom of the banking. Lambert was lying dead half-way up. Dick said that if he had been in his correct position on the banking the tragedy would not have occurred. As you know, a lap counts as 2.75 miles whether you stick to the middle, the outer edge, or the inside. Lambert seemed to be deliberately holding the car down on the bankings and when the tyres lost adhesion centrifugal force took over. War broke out a month or so after the TT race. 1 went into the Army in August and that was the end of my contact with racing cars for a good many years. Nobby Clark’s attempt to stick a direct-drive 200 h.p. V8 Hispano aero-engine into his Crossley Tender chassis had not really progressed very far before I was posted to India at the beginning of 1921. The engine was purchased from the Royal Aircraft Factory — now the RAE — for a few pounds. I remember some chap coming along with a secondhand Benz scroll-sprung clutch which was being adapted. I would very much like to know the final fate of this project. During the war the factory did much of their engine development using single cylinders made out of shell cases. Many cooling problems were worked out this way. The full-sized engines were tested by rigging them up on one end of a 60 ft. girder pivoted at its centre and counterbalanced the other end. They were fitted with their normal propellers and controlled from the central pedestal. The engines could be opened up at full power and the speed of rotation of the girder controlled by a braking arrangement on the pedestal. Sir Dugald Clerk’s brother was working at the RAE at that time on “flameless” combustion. I had many interesting talks with him but the relevance of “flameless” combustion to engine design has been forgotten. WALLACE MARSH. RALLY REVIEW 17
THE BANDAMA RALLY A TITLE collected without any contest is hardly worth crowing about, but one earned the hard way, with a close rival snapping at one’s heels throughout the year, provides immeasurable satisfaction. It was therefore fitting that such a well-matched tussle should have taken place in the first year of official FISA recognition of the title World Rally Champion. For many years the FISA has steadfastly refused to create an official world title for drivers, although such a series for manufacturers has existed for ten years. Unofficially, points tables have been kept for a hypothetical world scries for drivers for some years, and each year MOTOR SPORT has given prominence to these in the absence of recognition by the FISA that onlydrivers, not their machines, can be garlanded, held up as figureheads and interviewed on television. In 1979 the official World Rally Championship for Drivers produced a year-long contest between two drivers who emerged as leading contenders for the title, far ahead of their nearest rivals, and it was most appropriate that in this first year the contest was not settled until the 12th and final round in December, the Bandama Rally. Bjorn Waldegard from Sweden and Hannu Mikkola from Finland, both contracted to the Ford team, were the two who outshone all others during the year. They each drove in nine of the 12 rallies, seven each for Ford and two each for Mercedes-Benz, and the outcome was a slender one-point win by Waldegard with 112 points to Mikkola’s 111. Throughout the year Waldegard was ahead of Mikkola for much of the time, but there were two occasions when they were exactly level, after Waldegard won the Acropolis and Mikkola New Zealand’s Motogard. It was only after Mikkola retired from the Rally of the Thousand Lakes in August and Waldegard won Canada’s Criterium du Quebec in September that they became separated by anything like a reasonable points difference. Mikkola’s win on the RAC Rally, coupled with Waldegard’s failure to score points which could count (he was ninth), meant that when they both went to the Ivory Coast to drive 450SLCs in the Bandama Rally for the Mercedes team, Waldegard’s lead was very slender indeed. The Mercedes factory team was present in even greater strength than it had been in the Safari, when observers did no more than laugh at attempts to deny official factory involvement, This tine there were no such attempts, for who can hide an army in a single bell tent? Four cars, a fleet of service vehicles of various kinds, aircraft and a huge stock of spares and equipment made up an operation vastly bigger than those of other teams, and it was hardly surprising that those four 450SLCs occupied the first four places among the eight finishers. Peugeot were there, as usual, with V6-engined 504 Coupes, but their European professional drivers failed to make the finish and it was left to local resident Alain Ambrosino to take sixth place in the only Peugeot to finish. Save for the regular activities of Toyota South Africa, there has never before been an official Toyota entry in a non-stage African event on open bush roads, and it is to the credit of Toyota Team Europe that Ove Andersson made fifth place in a Celica in the team’s first African sortie. In the early stages it was Andrew Cowan who took the lead, followed by his team-mates, but when he forged ahead on the second leg, taking advantage of the dust-free run provided by his place as leader on the road, he was instructed by Mercedes team management to pull over and allow both Mikkola and Waldegard to pass him. It must have been pretty daunting to be so instructed, but he did it and from then on occupied third place to the finish. Similarly, the two Scandinavians were instructed not to risk retirement by indulging in a personal duel, but whether they actually did this will perhaps never be really known. Mikkola scored 20 points from his win and was able to count them all since he had only previously scored six times and seven scores were allowed to count. Waldegard scored 15 points, but already had more than seven scores so had to drop a six. The nine points which he was therefore able to count was enough to keep him ahead of Mikkola by a single point. The enormous effort by Mercedes didn’t really go down well with other competitors, but of course teams are entitled to use whatever resources and facilities they arc able to afford, and the German team obviously feels that this kind of financial outlay is worthwhile. They are planning a similar programme in 1980, concentrating mainly on rallies in Africa, South America and perhaps the Motogard Rally in New Zealand. 18
Page 1 and 2: February 1980 Motor Sport Founded i
Page 3 and 4: is more than twice as dangerous as
Page 5 and 6: and Swedish F3 driver Stefan Johans
Page 7 and 8: During the warm-up Andretti’s Lot
Page 9 and 10: go that there was no need for major
Page 11 and 12: acing a white, low-chassis. 100 m.p
Page 13 and 14: time, there comes the temptation to
Page 15 and 16: in a taxi, on a day of visits to hi
Page 17: layer of leather. The lid was then
Page 21 and 22: FORD’S SABBATICAL IT is just over
Page 23 and 24: Apart from having to provide an ope
Page 25 and 26: ack. “At least we had our back se
Page 27 and 28: Fitzpatrick’s opinions of the mac
Page 29 and 30: We got totally confused and found l
Page 31: the International Sporting Code and

Founded in the year nineteen twenty-four February 1980

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