Answers on the back of a postcard please

[billyblister]

While enjoying the Irish leg of the F1 powerboat Championship last week I had a discussion with someone about the unfortunate f1 driver of the 60/70's who died because a pigeon flew through his helmet.

Now this i'm pretty sure of, but I was also under the impression that this driver had a wooden leg and had a mechanic with a hook!!

Now I'm branded as a liar!!
Someone posted a link to this story on this forum just wondering if its still online or if anyone can verify it and save my dignity.
(The Powerboat race was sooo boring, no crashes or flips or nothing. But I got a spin in the 2 seater one though. which was nice)

can anyone answer it???

[Peter Mallett]

Billy I'm not sure about this at all. However I can tell you that Tom Pryce died as a result of a Fire Extinghuisher being carried by a marshal decapitating him at Kyalami. The Marshal also died.

[Mr V]

Peter, it was the marshall who was decapitated, (in half.....eek) Tom remained intact (for want of a better word)

[djb]

I do not have another version of the Pryce incident, nor of a pigeon one, but made me recall a photograph I saw in my middle teens of a similiar incident.

I was just starting to get interested in photography and had found a fat book of press shots, and came upon this shot of a poor fellow whose open wheel racer had come upon an ambulence on track and had hit the rear bumper. Basically the shocking impact of the photo was that the drivers helmet was lodged back in the roll bar....I still recall the black and white image very clearly and the effect it had on me.

By no means did I want to get into a "my story is grosser than yours" thing, but this topic made the memory of that photograph come back pretty fast.

[Armco Bender]

Alan Stacey,Belgian GP 1960

[djb]

Armco, just read the bit about Stacey in 1960 at Spa. Talk about bad luck. When I had my third motorcycle, I got hit in the chest by a seagull at around 60mph on a highway, got completely winded and managed to hang onto the bike and slowly steer one handed onto the shoulder without incident. Through a leather jacket, a sweater, a shirt and two undershirts, I had a great big red welt. I have often thought how lucky I was that it wasn't flying a foot or so higher.

again, the poor bugger.(and what a race weekend at Spa that year)

[Armco Bender]

Name: Alan Stacey
Nationality: Great Britain
Date of birth: Aug 29, 1933 - Broomfield
Date of death: Jun 19, 1960 - Spa-Francorchamps

Stacey was a talented, extrovert driver from an Essex farming family who showed great speed in a works Lotus despite having an artificial lower right leg and therefore needing a motorcyle-type twist-grip throttle control. He was killed in the 1960 Belgian Grand Prix when his Lotus 18 hit a bird at speed on the Masta straight.
Yep must have been a sad race with 2 guys killed,a bit like Sennas last race.Although Stacey was hit by a bird,crashing off into the trees would have been just as fatal,no armco or sand traps in those days.Has there ever been another GP weekend when 2 drivers have been killed?

[imull]

springs to mind, Senna and Ratzenberger

[billyblister]

Thanks guys, but does anyone know anything about his mechanic having a hook??

[Armco Bender]

His mechanic was Bill Bossom, who had a missing arm. So there was this weird combination of a guy with one leg and a mechanic with one hand!" They were tremendously popular with everyone because, despite their particular handicaps, they had each risen to the top of their branch of the sport
There you go,do we get half the bet??

[strad]

Since this tragic weekend is often overlooked...I offer this..Just as I stole it from Forix.com ...in two parts because of length

"""The 1960 Monaco and Dutch GPs saw two plucky drives from men taken away from us at the next event. Both would die in a traumatic race at Spa - it would last until the black Sunday at Imola in 1994 before again two drivers would get killed during one event.

Of course, when a driver dies in action he is always taken away too early, but in the case of Bristow and Stacey the word "early" received an entirely new meaning. In the end, the bare statistics remaining are a mere four (Bristow) and seven (Stacey) championship entries and no points. It's a hollow reflection of what could have been.

Particularly in the case of Chris Bristow, the record books only show the promise of his outstanding qualifying performances in a private year-old Cooper. Yet Bristow is now remembered by some who knew him as "a Michael Schumacher of his day". A meteor in the true sense, his career took off in dramatic style and came to an even more dramatic end. Nor do the books remember the overshadowed Alan Stacey, a valiant soldier with a disability that did not avoid him progressing in his chosen sport. Only the newspapers, on Monday, June 20, 1960, gave the two men praise as they related how at Spa fate had made no distinction between their respective abilities and prospects, and reached out for them both.

Chris Bristow, the son of a south London car hire operator, began racing an MG Special in 1956 but sprang to international prominence in the John Davy Trophy F2 race at Brands Hatch on the August Bank Holiday of 1959. Ken Gregory recalls the details of how he went to meet and sign young Bristow during the Crystal Palace meeting on 18th May 1959, shortly after the London Trophy race: "Ivor [Bueb, their number one driver] eventually finished second and George Wicken was fourth. Sandwiched between our pale green cars was a surprising young man, twenty-one-year-old Chris Bristow from Streatham, who drove a hybrid motor car called a Hume-Cooper [actually based on a 43, entered by T G Payne] with immense zest and commendable skill. The driving of Bristow had been brought to my attention by several people and as by then we felt that George Wicken, who was as good a fighter on his day as any other driver, was not able to give his best in the BRP Cooper, it was agreed that the best thing was to seek a younger driver to take George's place. Shortly after the Crystal Palace meeting, we gave Bristow the opportunity of trying out a Cooper-Borgward at Brands Hatch. The tests were surprising, almost alarming, so fast did young Bristow prove, yet so capable was he that we lost no time in signing him up to drive for BRP during the reminder of the 1959 season as well as holding an option on his services for 1960." So they went to Reims, on July 5, 1959, for the III Coupe Internationale de Vitesse. Gregory continues: "Despite his retirement, young Bristow had driven splendidly in his first race for the Partnership - and, incidentally, his first race abroad, and Alfred Moss and I were well satisfied with our new recruit."

The following weekend they went to Rouen for the VII GP de Rouen-les-Essarts. "We were more than pleased at Chris Bristow's performance. Though a newcomer to the splendid circuit at Rouen, he 'mixed it' gallantly with older hands, and fought a spirited duel with Maurice Trintignant in Rob Walker's Cooper-Climax, finally beating him into fifth place by half a length."

On July 26, the team headed for Clermont Ferrand to participate in the second Trophée d'Auvergne. His team-mate Ivor Bueb was killed there whilst Chris made a fantastic start and shot into the lead for three laps but was forced into retirement when the water cap in his radiator became loose and lost all pressure on the cooling system. Gregory recalls the events with sorrow: "Ivor Bueb's crash and eventual death had a terrible effect on young Bristow, who had so far not been subjected to the tragedies of motor racing, and it very nearly put him off racing altogether. Chris was due to race at Brands Hatch on the August Bank Holiday Monday meeting, but almost decided not to appear. We had to leave him to make his own decision." Fortunately Bristow eventually decided to race, putting up such a brilliant show at Brands that he completely stole the limelight and won the main Formula 2 event against such comparative veterans as Jack Brabham and Roy Salvadori. He won from Salvadori and Brabham by four and five seconds respectively in the first heat, then settled sensibly for third, close enough behind them in the second, to take the overall win (by a total of 1.8 seconds!).

Then Ken Gregory arranged for Bristow to drive in the Porsche works team at Goodwood in the TT race early in September, co-driving with Hans Herrmann. There, before crashing after a tangle - ironically with Alan Stacey - in which he practically wrote-off the Porsche, he harried Cliff Allison in the works Ferrari Testa Rossa.

For late September, Gregory decided to make him debut in the BRP F1 car and they went to Oulton Park for the International Gold Cup. He was excellent again, finishing in third place, just behind Moss and Brabham. No more than 2 seconds away from the winner, the kid had once again shocked the establishment.

[strad]

...........
For 1960, and with veteran Harry Schell having been appointed as team leader, he started the season with another spectacular drive at Goodwood for the Glover Trophy (April 18, 1960) where he took pole and finished third, only Ireland and Moss beating him. But on May 13, while practising for the International Trophy, Schell crashed at Abbey and was killed. When Bristow finally made his World Championship GP debut in an outright F1 car at Monaco a fortnight later he was mighty, qualifying a sensational joint third fastest with Yeoman Credit team mate Tony Brooks and Jo Bonnier. Ken Gregory was worried about Bristow's inexperience and thus nominated Brooks to start on the front row alongside Moss and Brabham. "That was my judgement, and a mistake, in hindsight," he admitted many years later. Bristow's transmission failed early on (lap 17).
In Holland on the 6th of June, Chris qualified seventh and retired on lap 9 with engine trouble while running sixth. Photos reveal his character head down, bulling the car at Goodwood and Spa, two-wheeling at Monaco, tail out at Zandvoort, exuding the will to win. "He was a master of the four-wheel drift," Gregory confirms. "I wasn't his manager and didn't want to be, but I regarded him as a protegé and he knew that we were preparing him for what would have been great things."

Meanwhile, three years of club racing had taken Alan Stacey to works driver status with Team Lotus by 1958, when he made his F1 debut in the British GP. He was eighth in the same race a year later, but promotion to Innes Ireland's number two for 1960 only brought frustration, with retirements in Argentina, Monaco and Holland, where he had run third for almost the entire race before the transmission broke on lap 57.

Going to Spa he had only a fourth place in the International Trophy at Silverstone by way of consolation. Journalist Gerard (Jabby) Crombac knew Stacey well, both professionally and socially. "He had an artificial leg," Crombac writes in Colin Chapman, The man and his Cars. "His right leg was cut just under the knee, and in order to double-declutch he had a motorcycle throttle on the gearlever. His mechanic was Bill Bossom, who had a missing arm. So there was this weird combination of a guy with one leg and a mechanic with one hand!" They were tremendously popular with everyone because, despite their particular handicaps, they had each risen to the top of their branch of the sport.

Ireland, Stacey's great friend and team mate, took delight in kidding a disbelieving Jim Clark, during their early relationship as Colin Chapman's drivers, that Stacey indeed had a false limb. "At Rouen one year," Crombac recalls, "Alan had to pass a medical. Team Lotus was - like most British teams at that time - very scared of the bureaucracy of French organisers. So I was sent to go with him. Well, there is that test where the doctor touches your knee with a rubber hammer, to check the reflex. So Alan showed his proper leg for the first test, then I distracted the doctor's attention and Alan quickly made sure that he tested the same leg again!"

Friends speak of both men with great affection. Tony Tobias remembers them well: "BRP was based in Lots Road, Chelsea, near where we lived," he says, "and I remember Chris driving down the King's Road in a Jaguar K140, standing on the seat and only bending down to steer. He liked doing that! He was a cavalier person. He'd duck and dive, selling sportscars. I saw him do his party piece once at Silverstone too, driving along, standing on the seat. But he was a total racer. If you talk of him today, you'd talk of him being like Rindt." Many years after Stacey's death, writer Eoin Young was embarrassed to note that while speaking of him one day, Ireland was movingly close to tears. "Alan was a very nice bloke; cheerful, not complicated," Crombac confirms. "A lovely bloke. A really nice chap."

Bristow's and Stacey's careers seemed to offer different futures as they lined up on the 18-car grid that day at Spa: Bristow ninth, Stacey 17th.

Stacey had probably gone as far as he could. Crombac felt that his F1 career was about to stall. "In Formula Junior and the Lotus Eleven he was terrific," Crombac says. "But when it came to Formula One he didn't enjoy the proper throttle control which he needed. That was really his shortcoming. I think the cars were getting too much for him. When he wanted to put the throttle down, he had to shift his hips."

By contrast, Bristow had the potential to go all the way. "In those days you had to get the car sliding," says J Blunsden. "The sense of balance and co-ordination was typified by Stirling. In those who had it, it shone so clearly. In those who didn't, it didn't half show. Chris had it. Undoubtedly he could have been something. He was bloody quick. Another couple of years and people would have seen just how great he was. There were quite a few who didn't get over that fearlessness threshold in time, and were killed. But Chris was so quick that even in his short time his talent was all too obvious. He was incredibly quick but relatively inexperienced, and for a such driver that was the most dangerous period of all." Ken Gregory comes to a stunning conclusion: "If he had survived, almost certainly he would have been a potential world champion. He was the early Schumacher of his day."

But Gregory rejects the "fearless" tag. "I don't agree with that. I think he knew fear. With the greatest respect to those who believe Chris was fearless, if a driver is fearless he is going to find situations he doesn't expect or can't cope with. It is the capacity to get as near as possible to the line of disaster, with confidence, that enables the good drivers to go as fast as they do. If they are fearless, they would get up to that and beyond it, and wouldn't survive long. So I don't think fearless was the right word for Chris, at all."

Gregory's recollection of Bristow's off-track character also cuts across the Cockney, Jack-the-Lad image others saw. "He was a relatively quiet young man, not boisterous at all. He didn't have an outgoing personality. He kept fairly well to himself and was extremely fond of his sister, Sonia. He was always extremely neat, very punctual and utterly committed. An ideal team member."

That fated weekend Spa was at its malignant worst, for in practice Stirling Moss shunted heavily, sustaining a broken nose and legs, when his Lotus lost a wheel at Burnenville, just beyond the spot where Bristow would crash. Many drivers stopped at the scene, and it was some time before people in the pits realised that the missing Mike Taylor was not one of them and had had his own alarming accident near Stavelot. His Lotus had plunged into the trees after its steering column sheared. A dark cloud descended, but worse was yet to come. These were only the warning shots, just as Rubens Barrichello's horrific crash on Imola Friday.

On the next day, during the race, Bristow was embroiled in an aggressive dice for sixth place with the Ferraris of Wolfgang von Trips and wild Willy Mairesse when, on the 20th lap, he made what appeared to be an unforced error at Burnenville. The apple green Cooper rolled over several times, decapitating him in the process. Clark, in his first season of F1 for Lotus, nearly struck his body where it lay. This horrifying experience, coupled with the death of Archie Scott-Brown two years earlier, lay at the root of the peerless Scot's absolute detesting of Spa.

Two laps later Stacey, lying seventh, crashed at 140mph. Though his Lotus burned, there was sufficient evidence to convince his mechanics that he had been struck in the face by a bird.

It was a silent Formula One fraternity acknowledging Jack Brabham's victory that day.""