WOMAN MOTORIST TRIUMPHS IN MARATHON TASK.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17836, 3 May 1926, Page 8

WOMAN MOTORIST TRIUMPHS IN MARATHON TASK.

MISS V. CORDERY COVERS 21,000 MILES, AND BREAKS STRING OF RECORDS.

(Special to the “Star.") LONDON, March 26. Miss Violette Cordery, the young wo- ' man motorist, fresh from breaking thirty-three records on the Monza track, near Milan, stepped briskly from the boat which arrived at Dover from Calais at 5 p.m. yesterday, and sank into a Pullman seat with a grateful: “Well, that’s that.” She was alone. Only a relative was there to greet her besides myself. Not one of the passengers knew who she was. An unassuming girl, with resolute features and a brusque, matter-of-fact air, of medium height and medium build, one would have taken her for just an ordinary, breezy country girl fond of open-air life. She had not even shingled hair! Yet this was the woman who, turn and turn about with four men drivers, but doing always two three-hour spells at the wheel- to their one, had driven that invincible little 19 h.p. Invicta for eleven and a half consecutive days and nights, completing .25,000 kilometres, or about 15,625 miles, at an average speed, including stops, of fifty-six and a half miles an. hour. She also did an additional 9000 kilometres—s6oo miles—at the beginning, but these were disallowed owing to one of the men falling asleep at the wheel and crashing. On the journey to Victoria we talked. “The car was wonderful,” she said. “I believe we could have done 50,000 easily. We never touched the engine all the time —not once. In the 2*min stops every three hours, for changing over, we just oiled up and petrolled, and sometimes changed a wheel for tyres. “One came to regard it almost as a living being. It was uncanny. Every time one got up from sleep* there it was purring round and round at anything up to seventy miles an hour, as though it had never done anything else and would go on doing it for ever. “We slept in offices on the course. Slept? Well, all the time one seemed to hear that car Subconsciously; even while one slept one heard it going on, and on. WEIRD NIGHT DRIVING. “The night driving was weirdest. That endless white line shining under the headlights, the red lights at intervals round the 21-mile course—they fascinated one, terribly. Sometimes for three hours I saw nothing else. At times there was fog, and I lost all sense of direction, steering by the bank.

“I think I must have done 4000 laps altogether. Dead, dead monotony? No, I don't think it was as bad as it plight seem. All one knew was that the car was going, and going Splendidly- All that mattered was that 25,000 kilometres. If anything the car was too comfortable. One wanted to go to sleep.” Once or twice, now, did she not want to give up? Was she not strained to 1 breaking point? “Yes,” she said. “It was after the re-start. It had taken three days of almost frenzied work, ;with the me-

chanics working night and day to put the car in order again. “The under-shield of the body had been crumpled like a handkerchief. “I was tired, tired, with all the strain. For a moment I thought I should never get through with it. But only for'a moment. Then the old determination came back stronger than ever. It was not the physical strain which told, but the mental.” Just as Miss Cordery was in at the first lap, so she was in at the last. “It was a wet night when we finished,” she said. “I went all out—perhaps seventy-five miles an hour—for the last few laps, and got a front skid and nearly went off the track. It brought my heart into my mouth. “That was the only really exciting moment. When finally I came to a standstill, all I could think of was the car, and what a fine thing it was.” ITALIAN ENTHUSIASM. The Italian people, she said, were splendid. On Sundays the course was packed. She came away with far more bouquets than she could possibly carr>“lt was a new experience for them to see a woman racing motorist,” she said. “In Italy you never see a girl even driving an ordinary car.” Miss Cordery has been driving for seven years. “I took it up at eighteen, and after a couple of years went in for racing at Brooklands and elsewhere. I do not train, nor do I diet for a test of that sort. “All I want to do now is the 40,000 kilometres,” added. “I shall just rest at Cobbam for a week or two, and then start racing again at Southport wwith the same staunch little Invicta which is following me over.” Miss Cordery had the greatest praise for her fellow-drivers, Mills, Cushman, Garland and Moy. The whole achievement was carried through by a party of nine, including drivers and mechan-