The front row of the Victorian Trophy grid at Fishermans Bend on Sunday, October 4, 1953 comprises, from the left, Doug Whiteford’s Talbot-Lago T26C, Stan Jones’ Maybach 1, Cec Warren, Maserati 4CL and Lex Davison, Alfa Romeo P3.
Tony Johns notes, ‘My program has Lex Davison’s HWM Jaguar scratched, so he raced his back-up Alfa Romeo. Doug Whiteford retired the Talbot-Lago with broken gears in the transfer box. Stan Jones won the race with Davison second and George Pearse, Cooper Mk4 Vincent third.’
‘Reg Nutt driving Jack Day’s Talbot Darracq TD700 sheared the blower drive and for Sunday and fitted a TC manifold and carburettors.’ Wow!
Didn’t Stan jump outta the box! Whiteford at left, then George Pearse, Cooper Mk4 Vincent and then the distinctive, upright-stance of #14 the ex-Sinclair The Spook Alta 21S Ford with Ted Gray up.
While the Victorian Trophy was a scratch race, there was also a handicap section won by Silvio Massola’s HRG from Davison and Jones.
Etcetera…
Regular readers may recall that I wrote a pointless article a while back to determine the 1956 Australian Driver’s Championship Gold Star Winner-Faux Division. Reg Hunt was the victor racing a Maserati 250F. See here: https://primotipo.com/2024/02/10/australian-gold-star-championship-1956/#:~:text=Drum%20roll%E2%80%A6the%20winner%20of,points%20in%20his%20new%20250F.
While researching 1953 I thought I’d make a similar determination but there seems to be only three potential qualifying rounds that year: the Australian Grand Prix held at Albert Park won by Doug Whiteford’s Talbot-Lago T26C on November 21, the Victorian Trophy on October 4, and the 100-mile New South Wales Grand Prix held at Gnoo Blas on October 5. Jack Robinson won the handicap race in his Jaguar XK120 Special while the ‘Grand Prix title (the scratch section of the race) was awarded to Jack Brabham’s Cooper T23 Bristol (below) who had set the fastest race time.’
You will appreciate the degree of difficulty for a competitor in contesting races in Orange and Melbourne on consecutive days.
The Australian Sporting Car Club – hitherto the Bathurst promoter – organised that first race at Gnoo Blas as the ASCC was ‘splitting asunder’ and its relationships with the City of Bathurst and the local police were so poisonous that Bathurst’s blue-riband Easter and October long-weekends of racing – probable Gold Star rounds – didn’t take place in 1953. The ASCC couldn’t get a permit, whereas the Auto-Cycle Union did, running a two day Easter ‘bike meeting.
Those of you with John Medley’s Bathurst Bible should read chapter 17, it’s interesting to be reminded of the sequence of events that saw the Australian Racing Drivers Club take over from the ASCC as the promoter of car racing at Mount Panorama.
So, given all those circumstances, it doesn’t seem appropriate to calculate a ’53 Gold Star Faux Division winner…The historians amongst you may know that the 1978 and 1979 Gold Stars were held over three rounds, while the 1981 affair was contested over only two; all three were in F5000’s dying days. In 1987, the Gold Star was a one-race gig, so I have precedent on my side, but I’ll leave it alone, I think. One race and ‘two other rounds’, which were effectively mutually exclusive, seems as lame as the one race 1987 championship. The perfect world in 1953 would have been for Whiteford, Jones, and Brabham to have faced off in all three races, I would have had a couple of pounds on Dicer Doug coming out on top….
Credits…
Arthur Gordon Fraser-State Library of Victoria, Tony Johns, Leon Sims Archive, Ian Arnold, Wikipedia, The Age
Finito…
primotipo... 