THE SPEED RECORD.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18286, 8 June 1929, Page 15

THE SPEED RECORD.

SEGRAVE’S METEORIC CAREER. The following account of the career of Segrave as a racing driver is from “The Motor”:— Major Henry O’Neal De Hane Segrave first made his acquaintance with a racing car in England at the wheel of Captain A. G. Miller’s Opel 11. This was in May, 1920, at Brooklands, and he quickly showed his skill as a pilot in the capable handling of the car when losing a rear tyre on the banking at over 100 m.p.h. At this meeting also he scored his initial success with the same car, winning the last event of the meeting at 881 m.p.h. His driving at Brooklands soon became an outstanding feature, and in 1921 he was a member of the S.T.D. racing team, in company with such famous pilots as K. Lee Guinness, Andre Boillot, and Rene Thomas. In this year he drove a Talbot-Darracq in the French Grand Frix, and managed to finish in the eighth place after encountering tyre trouble. His first big success was in 1921, when he won the J.C.C. 200-Mile Race at Brooklands. The following year he was third in the same race, made the fastest lap in the Sunbeam in the T.T. Race, in the Isle of Man, and beat Count Louis Zborowski at the speed championship meeting—s-litre class—after a desperate 'struggle. In 1923 he shared in the remarkable Sunbeam victory in the French Grand Prix over the Tours circuit, piloting the winning car at an average speed of 75.3 m.p.h. Another success in that year was the winning of the Grand Prix de Boulogne in a Talbot. The San Sebastian Grand Prix and the Grand. Prix de Provence were his outstanding victories in 1924, at the end of which year he joined the Sunbeam Motor Car Co. In 1925 he. won for the second time the Grand Prix de Province and the 200-Mile Race, while in the Boulogne speed trials he established a world’s record for such events on the road by covering four miles at an average speed of 140,146 m.p.h. with a 12-cylinder Sunbeam. The culminating stage of a wonderful racing career was in 1927, when, driving the 1000-h.p. twin-engined Sunbeam, he was the first man in the world to travel at more than 200 m.p.h. on land. It was his intention then to retire, but America having wrested the world’s speed record from Captain Malcolm Campbell, he came back to better his previous best by no less than 24 m.p.h., at a speed of over 231 m.p.h. He was born in 1896, so that his age is 32. Educated at Eton and Sandhurst, he served in the European war in the 2nd Warwickshire Regiment and Royal Air Force, and was wounded three times and mentioned in dispatches. In 1916 he was attached to the G.H.Q. Staff in France, was private secretary to the Chief of Air Staff in 1917, on the British Aviation Mission, Washington, in 1918. ;