From the Cradle by Tom Mooney
Today, Brooklands racing circuit outside London is not dissimilar to the Colosseum in Rome: both have seen better days, but there is ample evidence of their previous claim to fame in the fading glory of their ruins.
Brooklands is synonymous with the pioneering days of motoring and reportedly staged the first uncompetitive race in England between two cars, even if it was an impromptu affair.
What is indisputable is that Brooklands was the world’s first purpose-built motor circuit, and within a few years of its conception in 1907 at Weybridge, it became the cradle of both motorsport and aviation when the British Empire was at its zenith.
As the Empire began to disentegrate with the meagre spoils of the victory that was World War 11, so too did Brooklands, heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe because it was so visible, and what remains today are enobled vestiges of its greatness.
The test hill, designed for time trials and both acceleration and braking tests, is untouched by time, and it meets with the track at Members Banking, the steepest section of the circuit at almost 30th feet, when drivers had to be at their most vigilant, overlooked by an anti-aircraft gun tower, testament to the relationship between the RAF and motor racing.
The test hill is also parrallel to the half mile finishing straight, which was 100 feet wide. Naturally, the RAF saw its potential for departing Hurricances and Spitfires, and built the Wellington Hangar at its mouth, which today is a museum, housing exhibits which celebrate the seismic events which took place at Brooklands: the development of the Dambusters bouncing bomb by Barnes Wallis and the remains of a Wellington Bomber recovered from Loch Ness, (minus Nessie).
Brooklands seeps with aviation and motoring history, side by side, each technological advancement abetting both disciplines: the acoustic building which was a test laboratory for Concorde, the Jackson Shed which was used to retune racing cars of the 1930s and speed pioneer Malcolm Campbell’s work shed.
The famous Members Bridge, overlooking the speed trials, is still there, but unfortunately and poignantly this is as good as its gets for the concrete surfaced three míle circuit, shaped like the sole of a shoe, with a mere three turns, whose use for racing didn’t survive the war, and which today lies dissected, a dismembered hulk, breached by overgrowth and a supermarket carpark.
Leaving aside for a moment the halcyon years before the Great War, when it was the pre-eminent circuit in England, Brooklands for generations of young boys like Stirling Moss and Mike Hawthorn, who didn’t live too far away, was a field of dreams.
Among the photographs of the many races that took place at the oval and steeped Brooklands they would have seen is Count Louis Zborowski in his 12 ft-long wheelbase Mercedes in 1924, a mount shaped like a steel coffin on four wheels.
If you look carefully at the photograph, you will notice Zborowski driving above a black contour, known as the Fifty Foot Line: driving over the líne was a licence to take the banked corner, on the uncoated concrete, without using the steering wheel. Seems inadvisable, but the generation that followed after the Great War had a peculiar take on life and death. Foolhardy, perhaps, but indefatigable brave.
It would take yet another European war and the brains behind the Spitfire and the Hurricane, coincidentally at Brooklands, to begin to understand the science of aerodynamics, but it seems to me that it was the Mercedes Silver Arrows who were the first to capitalise on this revolution in design and thought. The SL was unconquerable, as Moss proved with Jenkinson in the Mille Miglia in 1955, until the tragedy at Le Mans a few short years later.
Downforce, in Zborowski’s time, was the effect of being thrown head first from your mount onto the track. It wasn’t pretty, as Zborowski was to discover, and usually ended in dismemberment, or death, or both.
He was one of competitive racing’s earliest superstars, driving for Aston Martin in the French Grand Prix and often at Brooklands, and was unique among his peers because he designed many of the cars he raced in, the Colin Chapman of his time, or Jack Brabham.
These included a 23,000 cc six cylinder Maybach aero engine, called Chitty Bang Bang, while his Higham Special had an enormous 27 litre aero engine, which killed his friend and rival J.G. Parry Thomas during his land speed record attempt at Pendine Sands.
Zborowski was n0 stranger to death by car, driven fast. He was only seven when his father perished during a hill climb in Nice, and sixteen when his mother followed his father, leaving him the fourth richest adolescent in the world. He had, however, because of his addiction to speed, a mere ten years left on the planet to enjoy his riches, and he didn’t hesitate.
He was not, as befits the very wealthy, without a sense of adventure, driving Chitty Bang Bang with his new wife Vi and a couple of the lads into the Sahara Desert. Louis of Arabia lived to tell the tale.
A short time after the famous photograph was taken at Brooklands, Zborowski died when his Mercedes struck a tree at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, also a banked circuit. His reputation outlived his wealth, which is why you are reading about him here.
Among the many children who had flocked to Brooklands to see the legendary count race was Ian Fleming, who, emerging from MI5 after the war, would write a childrens’ book inspired by Zborowski and his machines, and which would become a famous film and a musical, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Brooklands quickly became associated with records: it hosted the world’s first 24 hour motor event, hardly a race, with the track lit at night by hundreds of railway lamps; the first motorcycle to cover over 60 miles in an hour was at Brooklands; the first Blue Bird driven by Malcolm Campbell was at Brooklands, and the first driver to cover 100 miles in an hour was also at Brooklands.
Today, the circuit at Brooklands is a crestfallen reminder of another age, when young men and women sought to harness the best technological advances of the time, and drive as fast as possible on a private track, indifferent to though not unaware of the dangers of this unadorned circuit, a theatre of dreams for a generation destined for the fields of Flanders.
