RACE TRACK CRASHES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 150, 27 June 1931, Page 10

RACE TRACK CRASHES

SOME AMAZING ESCAPES SOMERSAULTS A NJ) BURST TIRES Luck undoubtedly plays a prominent part in the life of a racing driver. Some emerge unscralched from accidents of a particularly serious charac ter, whereas others are killed outright as the result of trivial occurrences. Brookiands and other famous race tracks have been the scene of many amazing crashes from which drivers anu mechanics concerned have escaped un hurt, but on the other hand they have witnessed fatalities from the most minor accidents. in The Alotor of recent date a writer recounts some of his experiences ol Brooklands, and from cold print it seems incredible that anyone concerned m the accident described could survive them. Malcolm Campbell, whose meteoric racing career, has been crammed luh of incidents had a lucky escape on Brooklands m August 1912. Coming oil the banking into the finishing straight, his Bluebird Darracq shed its olf-snh front tyre. The car shot wide, the wheel struck the edge .of the track and came adrift. Another swerve caused the rear wheel on the same side to col lapse, and the car to slither down the straight on one side ami head for the timekeeper’s box. Here the front axle mounted the kerb, and after running along it for over 100 yards, came to rest in safety. The speed at the time was just over 100 m.p.h., yet Campbell came through uninjured. Perhaps the most amazing incidcu on Brooklauds occurred in 1914, when L. G. Hornsted’s 200 h.p. Benz, a chain driven monster capable of over 120 m.p.h., skidded sideways at two miles per minute. The car broadsided 100 yards, turned two backward loops in quick succession and mounted the banking tail lirst. Hornsted, who had declutched at the commencement of the skid, let in the clutch as the car was about to go over the banking in another loop. Eventually the Benz dashed oil’ the concrete track and came to rest in an adjacent sewage farm territory, 15 seconds after the commencement of the skid. Hornsted’s mechanic, who was killed subsequently in a less spectacular smash, said that the 15 seconds seemed like live minutes. The late Harry Hawker, Australia’s pioneer air race, came to grief in a meeting on Brooklands in 1920, not long after his memorable attempt on the trans-Atlantic Hight. He was driving a 400 h.p. Sunbeam when the front off-side tyre burst at 125 m.p.h. The car immediately swerved and struck the corrugated fence, careering along it at a speed of 100 m.p.h. until it finally plunged through, bonnet first, with a nerve shattering roar. The car dropped down some two feet and finally came to rest right side up with a stout piece of wood jammed in one of the wheels, and with Hawker unscratched and not very perturbed. On the same day C. L. E. Geach’s Sunbeam also skidded, and driving straight, for the inside of the track bounded high into the air, and threw its driver clear into a soft patch before it turned three complete somersaults and came to rest. Geach sustained only minor hurt. Another who owed his life to the fact that he was thrown clear of his car at the beginning of one of these terrific skids was Alajor C. G. Coe. At the time he was driving a 3U-98 h.p. Vauxhall at a speed of 190 m.p.h. when the car skidded, struck a post and spun into a series of mad evolutions before stopping 300 yards further on. During its gyrations it struck and demolished a post, and the fence. Fortunately in the first appalling moments of the skids, Coe and his passenger were hurled clear as the ear somersaulted. Coe was uninjured, but his passenger was badly hurt. The late Count Louis Zborowski emerged from a crash in his leviathan “ Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.’’ A burst tyre was again responsible. The accident occurred in the railway straight, the Car striking the parapet of the bridge over the road with a resounding crash, and bouncing off half sideways and half backwards. Next it shot down the bank at an alarming speed, took the timing box in its stride and struck the hub on the inside of the track which wrenched off its front wheels, Zborowski stayed with the car throughout, and the only person was an official of the track who was standing near tho liming box. He lost three fingers as the result. It does not fall to the lot of many to have two remarkable escapes from death within a very few months, but such was the experience of Captain J. F. Duff, one of the best pilots who ever handled a difficult car. He was the owner of the huge four-cylinder racing Fiat “ Mephistopheles, ” a pre-war product, and while racing in this in 1922 the engine exploded with a thunderous report and pieces of metal and the bonnet were hurled into the air like the fragments of a bomb. Duff escaped, but how no one can tell. The engine was completely wrecked, and strewn over the track in pieces, there was hardly a part of it left intact. Duff ’s second escape was equally sensational. This time lie was in a huge Benz when it skidded sideways and dashed over the top of the lank to drop 20 feet into some trees below. Contact with a pole eu route prevented the car from overturning and saved Duff’s life. He. escaped with abrasions and his mechanic with a broken .mid?. To recount the various remarkable escapes would become tedious There were hundreds of them, and few if any ol the more famous drivers of to day ami yesterday have not had their unenviable experiences.