FUTURE OF TRACK RACING

Taranaki Daily News, 5 July 1930, Page 21 (Supplement)

FUTURE OF TRACK RACING

BRIGHTER BROOKLAN DS ? ROAD RACE APPEAL. (London Motor Correspondent.) Recent events at Brooklands combined with the appointment of a new clerk of the course, who is obviously desirous of securing larger attendances, have served to direct attention to the future of that famous track. With regard to the accident which occurred during the Double Twelve Houis Race it would be improper to oiler any comment as investigations are proceeding and legal actions are said to be pending, but the mishap has shown that spec--tutors who come to Brooklands to be thrilled ' may receive a thrill which is not 'tv their liking. --c. The unfortunate mishap which led to the injury of a number of spectators has, however, a direct bearing on the whole question of the future of Brookhinds. Frankly the average event at that track is an extremely dull affair, after the first lap has been covered by* the competitors’ cars. They go round and round hour after hour and the immensity of the track is such that in the eyes of the patient spectator the full implications of their performance are narrowed. What is really a very high speed, calling for skilful manoeuvring on the part °of the drivers, soon seems to the onlookers a monotonous forty or fifty miles per hour. Even the genuine lover of motoring sport soon has his fill of that sort of Ching and such interest as remains has its origin either in betting or in the half-hope that sooner or later a car will crash or burst into flames. I have no intention of course of alleging that the type of spectator who continues to watcli the gyrations of the cars round the track are addicted to a new foun of blood, sport. Nothing would distress them more than that the driver or passeimer of any competing car should be injured, but'a nice little. spill which wrecks the car or causes it to behave abnormally ■ certainly does relieve the monotony in their view.

JADED PALATES. ’ It is difficult io see what can be done- to brighten Brooklands without turning ‘it at the same time into a potential Roman circus with human sacrifices. When the track was ouilt ear speeds were not what they are to day. The public appetite for speed has become spoiled by land speed records of recent years. After reading of ber'rave, Malcolm Campbell and others, wit’n their speeds of over 200 miles pel hour it is somewhat poor sport to see cars dashing about at a paltry 100 miles per hour or so. When, in addition, such sport is complicated by a system of handicaps requiring almost a mathematical calculation to discover who is the winner, the prospect of a bright afternoon at Brooklands is even more remote as far as the average 40-miles-per-hour, week-end, picnic-basket owner-driver who forms the majority of motorists fe concerned. I do not know what Mr. Percy Bradlev, the new clerk of the course, intends to do to give Brooklands a wider appeal, but he will certainly carry with him the goodwill of the great mass of motorists, who would be very loth to see the track falling into disuse, for Brooklands is synonimous with the development of motoring itself. Recently while touring in Surrey I came across various bands of small car owners and motor cyclists who had chosen some delectable' bits of that hilly county in which to engage in competitions. The wayfarers and others who had come to those particular spots to escape the noise of London traffic looked at the competitors with positive hatred in their eyes. I suggest that the Brooklands authorities should add to their revenue and earn the thanks of those in search of rural solitude by facilitating the holding of such trials on their track.

Personally I find it impossible . to succumb to the charm of track racing. It is too monotonous. The only kind of racing that can evoke enthusiasm in my case is road racing after the pattern of the R.A.C. Grand Prix, To seo famous makes of cars driven by famous drivers of all opuntrics careering round the Ards Circuit or skidding round the corner, of a town street constitutes a real thrill, for it is an authentic race. The details already available as to this year’s Grand Prix in Ulster indicate that those who will be privileged to attend will see motoring sport at its best, FLUID FLYWHEEL. Some time ago a report became current'that the Daimler Company was experimenting with a new type of gearchanging device. It was asserted variously on the best of inside information that the new invention was the longawaited press-the-buttou type of gearchange, that it was only semi-auto-matic like the Armstrong-Siddeley gear and that a good old firm like Daimler would have nothing to do with any new-fangled device. Why it should be the habit -of some people to associate good old firms with good old ways, which means in other words a distrust of all new ways, I have never been able to understand. It is certainly not applicable in the case of a firm which makes the only double-six cylinder car in this country. But the secret of the new gear-chang-ing device has now come our. It is no press-the-button device and it does not. even abolish the use of the gear-lever. What the Daimler designers have evolved is a transmission device which they term the fluid flywheel, and the term means approximately what it implies, for the main feature of the (levies is a centrifugal .flow of. oil between the fly-wheel, or driving member, and the driven member of the transmission system. It is a complex and entirely mysterious piece of mechanism, which it is almost impossible to describe without the aid of illustrations, but the best approximate description of It is that I of a hydraulic coupling. The Daimler Company is keeping the full secret of its invention to itself in the meantime, I so in any event a detailed technical i explanation Is out of the question even | if it were out of place in this j article. (

LUX CRY DEVICE, What is more to the purpose is to describe what the fluid flywheel does. Briefly, it furnishes a much easier change of gear and enables the car vvithYvhich it is equipped to glide away with almost uncanny smoothness on the level and even on a steep hill without the need to manipulate the clutch. On a hill the requisite gear must still be engaged, for the fluid flywheel docs not improve the actual climbing power of the car. It only enables the car to take up the load with greater smoothness. The fluid flywheel is a luxury device intended to give .a large limousine even oreater mechanical amenity. It adds a new fascination to driving and gives ’.u the indifferent gear-changer the cachet of the expert driver. At present the makers fit the device only to one model of the double-six “30,” and the extra cost works out at about £5O. Running at low speeds as in heavy traffic is another advantage which the device confers. The ordinary friction clutch is retained in the mechanism, hut it is much smaller and lighter than the normal clutch for it has less work to do thanks to the fluid flywheel. This transmission of power by fluid velocity is certainly a novel and interesting development' and it indicates . that the whole problem of transmission systems is under review by automobile designers throughout the world. The modem .voar-box °is not yet doomed, but it is obvious that important modifications, ’which must in time affect even the owners of low-priced cars, are only a matter of the. fairly near future.

THE FIRST AUTOMOBILES, A SURVEY OF EXPERIMENTS. It is a little surprising to find that the idea of transportation in self-pro-pelled vehicles over ordinary roads is at least five centuries old, and that practical demonstrations of automobiles have been made for as much as 160 vears. One of the earliest evidences of man’s attempt to overcome distance ill’ self-propelled vehicles is found in pictorial records dating from about 1430. The idea had been suggested even earlier, but the practical form , was lacking. In all probability the I picture records of that early date lep- ■ resent nothing more than diagrams of an idea by some ingenious individual, and it is unlikely that he ever constructed a vehicle to demonstrate his pla.n. From time to time otheis ad vancc'd similar idea?, whicn were doomed to failure. It remained for Joseph Cugnot, of France, to invent in 1769 a three-wheel-ed carriage which actually moved a load in addition to its own weight, This carriage was driven by two steam cylinder* 3 placed either side of the front wheel and directly connected to it. The boiler was suspended in front of the driving wheel, and in guiding the clumsy vehicle it was necessary to move the weight of the cylinders and the boiler, as well as the weight of the large wooden wheel. The boiler resembled a tea-kettle, and in its prominent position it made steering difficult, The first demount ration was not a complete success. Mechanically the performance was satisfactory, judged by the standards of the time; but, due to the difficulty in steering or possibly to the excitement of the hour, the inventor lost control and crashed i»to a stone wall, upsetting his cargo of human freight and giving them the fright of their lives. For this little episode lie was sent to the Bastille, thus be--1 coming the first person “sent up” for a motor traffic accident. However, his status soon changed from that of malefactor to benefactor, for he was rescued and granted a pension in recognition of his achievements. Following Cugnot there were a number of men who attempted to attach steam engines to the wheels or carriages, but no advances of note were made for some time. In ISOI a young English engineer, Richard Trevethiek, produced a working model which succeeded in hauling seven or eight passengers up a rather steep hill faster than a man could walk. Much attention was focused upon him and he might have been famous as a builder of ° team motor coaches had he not been forced through bankruptcy to go back to tlie mines as an engineer. After Trevethiek came Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, whose steam coach made regular trips between Cheltenham and Gloucester (England) more than a hundred years ago. His interesting carriages were spectacular affairs with their loads of gaily dressed men and women trying to appear at their ease when most of them were having inward qualms, fearing that the journey might as likely end in purgatory as elsewhere. Small wonder they were nervous, for the steam generator was directly underneath some of the passengers, and boiler explosions were very frequent. Gurney attained a fair measure of success financially, but the opposition of his own class land owners, breeders and users of horses l e d him to abandon the enterprise, and no further attempt was made to popularise this type oi road vehicle for many years to come. The nevelty and glamour had disappeared, and without doubt the costs of operation were too high to encourage general usage. Furthermore, the development of the steam automobile was arrested by the growing success of railways. Although most of the ancient automobiles were driven by steam, .some were operated by other sources of power. Even’before the steam engine had been invented by Watt, men had been experimenting with fuel burned in a cylinder. Some had used gunpowder, others turpentine, but the results were unsatisfactory. Most of the early internal combustion engines were what is called air-pressure engines. Gas was exploded in a cylinder to drive the piston to the top and so expel the air. As the burned gases condensed, the vacuum in the cylinder was held and the pressure of the atmosphere drove th? piston downward. It was during this downward stroke that the real w&ck was performed; hence the name, air-pressure engine. Several men made mu engines which performed a little useful work, but the one invented by ■Samuel’ Brown in 1823 was the first to be used to move a cariiage. Tlte principle of the modern petrol motor was first specified in .18112 by Beau de Rochas, of France. Ha des-

cribed in detail the operating principles of a - four-cycle engine such as is now used in practically every motor-car. No attention or credit was given his invention, and it remained for Dr. Otto, of Germany, to re-discqver the principle of de Rochas, and make a practical application of it. The whole history of the automobile abounds with men who were so far ahead of their contemporaries that their valuable ideas were often rejected. It is to France and Germany that we must look to find the men who finally succeeded in getting the world to recognise the utility of the automobile. In these countries experimenters were unhampered by legislative restraints, and superior roads made the motor vehicle a more useful product than in other countries. Then came the introduction and development of the pneumatic tyre, which made possible the ultimate growth of ‘the great automobile industry of to-day.’

ALL-OUT DRIVING. THE CAR’S LIMITATION. The great Italian racing driver Caracciola, winner of the Tourist Trophy race last year in Ireland and prominent throughout the 1006 miles road race in Italy a few weeks ago, with one of the biggest cars that took part in this famous and thrilling event, threw an interesting sidelight on motoring the other day by remarking to one of the Englishmen present that there is no car in the world that will stand driving really fast, all out, for thirty miles, along one of Italy’s Autostrada. An Autostrada is one of those great motor highways which. Italy is constructing from point to point, reserved entirely for through motor traffic, all other roads being carried either or over, and on which speed is unlimited.

Even on the powerful car he drove in the 1000 miles race, Caracciola de-, dared, he hail to lift his foot off the accelerator pedal in order to avoid overdriving it. The Autostrada are toll roads, but are subsidised by the Italian Government on account of their great military value. As to the effect of all-out speed, it may be added that every Sunday scores of cars may be seen z stationary at the side of the roads, their engines wrecked through over-driving.