Motor Racing Memories

A few days ago, my son, Mad, was telling me about a motorbike race he attended at Silverstone. It was one of a national series, not one of the international MotoGP races, and so was a lot less restricted and he was able to walk along the pits and could have spoken to the drivers. The informality sounded to me like the races I watched in Zimbabwe back in the sixties.

When I think about how only celebrities are allowed anywhere near the pits in modern Formula One races and the public is kept well back from the track behind barriers and run-off areas and fencing, I am amazed at how free we were to go anywhere in those local races in Zimbabwe. There were no barriers and I spent much of my time in the pits before the race, looking at the cars and talking to the drivers. I took photographs from the inside of a corner, standing right alongside the road surface. The only things comparable nowadays are rallies, in which the onlookers often stand far too close to the road for safety.

The first race I saw was held on the old Salisbury airport that had been converted to a simple but effective track. The cars were from the fifties, secondhand Cooper-Bristols and Connaughts, that sort of thing, and we could see the drivers wrestling with the steering wheel as they drifted through the corners. It was exciting stuff and I hardly needed the noise and the smells to be hooked immediately.

Soon after that, the races moved out to a purpose-built track farther from town. It consisted of a long straight past the pits, followed by a tight left hander, leading immediately into a long, sweeping right hand curve that straightened out eventually and then climbed a steep hill. At the top of the hill, the road went through a cutting and this was a good place to stand, looking down on the cars as they went light over the crest, engines bellowing at full throttle. The road went straight from there down the other side of the hill until making a sharp turn to the right, followed by the longest straight of all, the back straight. This led to a less severe corner that could be taken at high speed (if you were brave enough) and so back to the pits straight again.

It was a simple enough circuit and a small one by the standards of the day but was the scene of many an intense battle. Once a year the South African equivalent of the Formula One circus would visit for the Zimbabwean round of their series and this was the highlight for us. Many of the cars and drivers would enter for the international South African Grand Prix and we would hear how they did against world class opposition.

John Love was our local hero, for he had raced Mini Coopers in Europe, even getting the odd drive for the works Cooper F1 team. He had an old Cooper to race in the South African series but my favorite was Pieter de Klerk, mainly because he'd built his car himself and then squeezed a highly-tuned Alfa Romeo engine into the back. He did well, too.

There is one moment that stands out in my memory, however; the time the Ford Galaxies came to show off on our little track. They were monsters powered by 7 liter engines and had succeeded in overpowering the opposition in European saloon car races. It was a phenomenal sight to watch them unleash the power as they accelerated up the hill, passing all the local Mini Coopers and Lotus Cortinas as they did so. That thundering V8 sound at full throttle was truly marvellous and the acceleration unbelievable.

It was the corner after the pits that nearly embarrassed them, however. They were achieving such high speeds that they would have to start braking halfway along the pits straight and the locals would come streaming past, braking at the last second and then hurling themselves through the corner faster than the Galaxies could dream of. And then would be repeated the chase and pass manouver up the hill.

They won in the end but only just. Honour was satisfied on both sides, I think, for the locals could console themselves with the fact that their engines were less than half the size of the American cars'. And the crowd had witnessed a sight that would not be repeated in our forgotten backwater.

Such memories. Motor racing - there's nothing like it...

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