Long before the first 24 Hours of Le Mans, the first 24-hour race was held at Brooklands in England in 1907. The famous almost-oval hosted several more full-day races, though later iterations were often held as two 12-hour sessions over a weekend. Like Le Mans, competitors in the “Double-12” raced in several different classes and this old footage from the 1931 Double-12 shows just how manic the race could be for the driver and ridealong mechanic. While dodging handfuls of cars on the track’s high banking, the duos were also managing the cars and by the time the race was in its final hours, nearly all were nursing maladies of some kind.
In the film, nothing looks quite as impressive as the massive Talbots (cars #10, #11, and #12) hurtling past the cars that they dwarf and while the snarling beasts led much of the race, they eventually all suffered failures that slowed them. Like any good desperate racer today, LeMons or otherwise, the Talbot crews tried to fix the cars and get back into the race through any means necessary, which included the attempted use of chewing gum to plug a radiator. Because the race winner in endurance races was often awarded not by most distance covered but by a calculation of distance and efficiency, the Talbots didn’t win despite covering the most distance. Instead, MG Midgets took the top five places in the standings, but there’s no denying that the hulking Talbots look completely insane on the banking.
You can find the whole write-up on the race here and the accompanying film is a fascinating look at some properly old-school racing.
Efficiency? Blasphemy! It’s a race for crying out loud. Whoever gets there first should win.
Cool video, and awesome look into the past.