FAMOUS BRITISH DRIVER

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18653, 23 August 1930, Page 10

FAMOUS BRITISH DRIVER

RETIREMENT OF BARNATO. The famous British competition driver, Captain Woolf Barnato, recently announced his retirement from racing. which deprives Great Britain of one of her most brilliant road-racing experts. Captain Barnato is manag-ing-director of Bentley Motors, Limited, and the firm has also decided to give up racing for the present, at least. Teams of Bentley cars will still, however, be entered privately by the Hon. Dorothy Paget. Setting aside ordinary Brooklands handicap racing, with which Barnato and most other drivers commenced, and neglecting for the moment the 24-hour record and its preceding attacks. because Barnato is much more a road-racing driver than a track driver, his record of success commences with the second Six-Hour Race, in which his car finished eighth, and then at one bound becomes extraordinary. In 1928 he won the Grand Prix d'Endurance at Le Mans with the 4£-litre four-cylinder Bentley which was the first car of its type to appear in races; in 1929 he won the Grand Prix d’Endurance again with the first of the Speed Sixes and this year he capped the whole performance by winning the same race again with the same Speed Six. To make the thing all the better, he won the Rudge Whitworth Cup against the handicap formula both last year and this year.

Then, in the Six-Hour Race last year he won again, always with the same Speed Six, and in the “DoubleTwelve” this year was once more the victor, though on this occasion he was not driving the now famous No. 1, but a sister car in its first race.

A Wonderful Record. The only time he failed to finish at all was in the first Double-Twelve-Hour Race, when the Speed Six dynamo drive came adrift, and, incidentally, it is curious that that occasion, the first race of all for the type, was the only time any one of the big Bentley sixes has been put out of a race by mechanical trouble of any kind whatsoever. Nobody has a more consistent or thorough record of success, and, what i 6 much more, Barnato is easily the most even-tempered driver who ever took part in a racing team. He never seems to be in the least worried; he is just as pleasant when a long race is nearing its close as he is at the beginning, and has never shown the slightest signs of those curious tantrums which develop from a natural nervousness and the inevitable excitement.

This is all the more interesting because the casual onlooker would certainly think that he did not take the races seriously, especially beforehand; but underneath that apparent carelessness it is obvious that he is intensely serious; and let it be said, that he has not won all these races simply because he is managing director of Bentley Motors, Ltd., nor has his position in team order invariably been that of leader. Everyone has to retire sooner or later. Barnato retires at exactly the right moment, when a very famous British team has reached the peak of success.