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The Donington Grand Prix - 1937
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Volume 1 | ||||
by Rodney Walkerley |
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![]() Although I had been watching these cars and reporting their races since they first emerged from their factories in 1934, the race on that October day remains in my memory, not so much on account of the racing, which developed on the usual lines, but because of little incidents and one moment which was profoundly impressive. There were the remarks of a group of journalists who were attending the race to observe the German Grand Prix machines for the first time. We were standing in the autumn sunshine during the first practice session on the sloping grass overlooking the so-called Hairpin Bend, which was a sharp, right-angled turn to the right on an uphill gradient at the foot of a fast, curving downhill approach with the woods on one side and the famous blasted oaks of Donington in the parkland on the other. Behind us the celebrated mansion of Donington, once the residence of a dissolute nobleman of the 18th century, a prisoner of war camp in World War One, and at the time in question a kind of hotel and restaurant for visitors to what had become a Derbyshire pleasure park open to the public. The enterprise of the Derby and District Motor Club, led by the energy of brusque Fred Craner, who used adjectives when referring to a spade and was no respecter of persons, especially those we now call "VIPs" turned the roads of the estate into a racing circuit for motorcyclists. The immediate success of the venture led to motor racing, then to the steady extension of the circuit and the organization of important, international events.
The practicing had just begun. Away beyond the woods we heard the approaching scream of a well-tuned E.R.A. and down the winding slope towards us came Raymond Mays. He changed down, braked, skirted round the Hairpin and was gone. "There's the winner," remarked one of my friends. "Knows this course backwards." Half a minute later came the deeper note of a 2.9-litre Maserati, and "B. Bira" (Prince Birabongse of Siam, Mays nearest rival and a new star in the racing firmament) shot past us, cornering with that precision which marked him as the master he was. "Or him," said another. We waited again. Then they came.
Far away in the distance we heard an angry, deep-throated roaring - as someone once remarked, like hungry lions impatient for the arena. A few moments later, Manfred von Brauchitsch, red helmeted, brought a great, silver projectile snaking down the hill, and close behind, his teammate Rudolf Caracciola, then at the height of his great career. The two cars took the hairpin, von Brauchitsch almost sideways, and rocketed away out of sight with long plumes of rubber smoke trailing from their huge rear tyres, in a deafening crash of sound. The startled Pressmen gazed at each other, awe-struck. "Strewth," gasped one of them, "so that's what they're like!" That was what they were like. ![]() |
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