Very first british motor race

[AUSTRIA]

I have got a note, that says, that the first british motor race was scheduled for 27 May 1897. No more information available.

An interesting matter, does anybody know some more details?

E.T.

[Peter Mallett]

not being home very much I can't look up the info in my books. However4, I am confident that Tim D will come to the rescue here.

[Francesca]

Can't be sure but I think the first british motor race took place at Brooklands, don't know the date, could be the one you're thinking of.

[TimD]

Good call, Francesca.

Hugh Locke-King had Brooklands built because there was a morotorium on road-racing in Britain. The lack of easy access to any suitable proving ground was stifling British performance car development by the end of the first car decade.

July 6 1907 was the first Brooklands meeting. First race was won by HC Tryon on a 40hp Napier.

1897 is puzzling me, to be honest. The "Emancipation Run" commemorated now by the London to Brighton Veteran Car run was only the previous year, and there were a bare handful of cars in the country. And there was a huge hostility to the car in many of the shires. It's possible that an event took place on the Isle of Man, the venue for the earliest British speed events, but I am surprised at such an early date.

The first Gordon Bennett Elimination Trial held on the Isle of Man wasn't until May 30 1905.
Austria, have you any more information at all? Where did this note originate?

[Graham]

Interesting.

I've been reading that S.C.H. Davis book the past few days and it's difficult to cast your mind back to those times, for they were so different to today. Motor racing was a 'game' to be played hard but fair.

Something that causes some thought is whether mechanical knowledge of the car has been lost now, in these times where the driver turns up and drives(?) In the book there are many tales of how the driver had to swap gaskets, mend wheels, bodge some fixit just to get to the end of the race, more often than not the work being carried out beside the track. They knew what was wrong with the car and could nurse it home, keeping strain off whichever part had failed.

(slightly off-topic I know...)

[SL]

All,

Motor Sport May 2000 P 96 seems to indicate an event at Bexhill on Sea in 1902. I think that this was a speed trial rather than a race as Brighton followed suite in 1905 with an event on the Madriea Drive the FTD being 92.88mph (90hp Napier)

As a reminder Brighton still holds the speed trials on the second / third weekend in September and so is the longest running motor racing event on the same course in the UK, if not the world.

Simon

[TimD]

Nice one, SL.

I found a little monograph on the Bexhill event this morning in Chris Knapman's bookshop.

It was definitely a speed trial in format, held on the May Whitsun holiday in 1902.