primotipo…

Roy Salvadori all set to go in the Longford paddock before winning the 5 March 1961 ‘Longford Trophy’ aboard his ‘Ecurie Vitesse’ (Jack Brabham) Cooper T51 Climax…

These wonderful photos at Longford during the long, languid, hot Tasmanian summer of 1961 were taken by John Richardson who was a Shell Representative for Northern Tasmania and therefore had the ability to prowl the pits and form-up area. His son Greg recalls the meeting ‘I was only 6 at the time and memories get a little hazy. But I will never forget sitting on a 44 gallon drum in the pits and that wonderful almondy smell of the racing fuel and the noise, it was pretty amazing stuff for a little kid’.

The sort of experience which hooks you on the sport for life…

Roy had better luck in Australia than he did in New Zealand- there he raced a Yeoman Credit Lotus 18 Climax at Ardmore, Levin, Wigram and Teretonga, his best a second place at Teretonga. He had gearbox problems twice and a leaking radiator in the other events.

He then crossed the Tasman Sea to Australia and raced the Cooper used by Ron Flockhart that Australasian season- in Tasmania and two International races a day apart at the new Hume Weir circuit outside Albury on the New South Wales/Victoria border. He was fourth in one, DNF the other, both races were won by Brabham’s Cooper T53 ‘Lowline’, the car photographed above.

During my formative years of interest in motor racing, devouring all of the books we all did on the history of the sport Roy Salvadori was ominpresent in publications on the British scene- where he seemed to race anything which had wheels in multiple events at the same national meeting, and also competing in International events.

Whilst his surname is decidedly Italian exotic Roy was very much a Brit, born in Essex of Italian parents…

Well known as the winner at Le Mans aboard an Aston DBR1 together with Carroll Shelby in 1959 he was also very handy aboard single-seaters and is rightfully on the list of those talented enough, but unfortunate not to win a championship Grand Prix.

The highly skilled all-rounders best F1 season was in 1958, when he was second in the German Grand Prix, third in the British and fourth in the drivers’ championship aboard a Cooper T45, the title won that year by another quintessential British driver of the fifties, Mike Hawthorn in Ferrari Dino 246’s. Cooper were not of course using Coventry Climax FPF engines of 2.5 litres that season, making the performance even more meritorious.

Roy Francesco Salvadori was born on 12 May 1922  in Dovercourt, Essex. After leaving school he joined his father’s refrigeration business before starting to trade in cars, running his own garage in Tolworth, Surrey by the age of seventeen. The War put paid to early plans to race but as soon as the war was over he responded to an advertisement for an MG sportscar only to find that the car in question was the R Type pre-war single-seater- a deal was quickly done.

The R Type MG was entered in the very first race meeting post-war at RAF Gransden (Gransden Lodge) on 15 June 1946 with Roy the second of two finishers in a three car race! He progressed quickly to a Riley Special and then a 50% share in a 2.9 litre Alfa Romeo Tipo B/P3 said to have been owned by Tazio Nuvolari.

In May 1947 he entered it in the Grand Prix des Frontières at Chimay, Belgium, and, though the car was stuck in top gear from the first lap, finished fifth. Prince Bira won the race in a Maser 4CL.

He soon sold the P3 and bought a Maserati 4CM finishing 7th in the Jersey Road Race in April, contested the British Empire Trophy in May, DNF and later the 1948 British GP at Silverstone finishing 8th in the race won by Gigi Villoresi’s Maserati 4CLT.

In 1949, he again raced in the British GP, Q23, DNF . He was 5th in his heat and 17th in the final of the August International Trophy at Silverstone and wrote off a Maserati 4CL at the Curragh track in Ireland during the September Wakefield Trophy. 1950 was a year of rebuilding the finances and finding a competitive tool- the plucky motor-trader settled on a Frazer-Nash Le Mans sportscar.

Salvadori’s first meeting in the ‘Nash was the Daily Express International meeting at Silverstone.

Interviewed in MotorSport in 2008 Salvadori said ‘I was leading, a big thing for me then, ahead of Bob Gerard, Tony Crook and the other Frazer-Nashes. So I was feeling pretty good about life…We came up to lap a group of slower cars which were having their own battle. I tried to overtake them all, but it couldn’t be done’. He ran wide, hit the marker barrels- oil filled drums and cartwheeled down the road, his foot was stuck in the steering wheel spokes, as a consequence he was flung about like a rag doll as the car overturned. Roy suffered a triple fracture of his head- wearing no helmet and had severe brain haemorrhaging. ‘At Northhampton Hospital they decided they could do nothing for me, and pushed me into a corner. They rang my parents and told them I was unlikely to be alive by the time they got there’. A priest was summoned and gave him the last rites.

Salvadori was back in a car three months later. His only permanent legacy of the monster shunt was deafness in one ear.

Roy acquired the 1950 model Jag XK120 (above) and first raced it at Boreham in August 1951. He had much success in the car over the next 12 months racing it against the similar machines of people like Duncan Hamilton and of course many other marques. A more serious machine was the Grand Prix Alta 1.5 s/c of H Webb with which he contested the Boreham Mail Trophy race in July for a DNF.

With his speed and enthusiasm undiminished he was soon in demand to drive other peoples cars, he raced the Jag on into mid-1952 before selling it to Peter Blond. The Frazer-Nash was repaired and raced at Ibsley in April, the car again crashed.

A significant breakthrough were a series of drives in Irish press-baron heir Bobby Baird’s Ferrari 500 2 litre F2/GP car. In an impressive performance he was Q19 and 8th in a field of 31 cars at the Silverstone British GP.

In August he raced a Ferrari 166 (Baird’s?) in the Daily Mail Trophy at Boreham but withdrew after 21 laps. Back in the Ferrari 500, at  the Daily Graphic Goodwood Trophy in September, he was 6th and a month later he drove the car to victory in the Joe Fry Memorial Trophy at Castle Combe.

In mid September Roy contested the GP di Modena in a Cooper T20 Bristol, crashing the car in the race won by Villoresi’s Ferrari 500.

Salvo’s speed in a variety of cars- his versatility clear even then and ability to handle the demanding GP Ferrari lead to an invitation to join the Connaught team for 1953 to contest GP events in the Lea-Francis four-cylinder engined cars.

The Connaught A Type was a very competitive tool in British national events, Roy’s best results second placings in the Lavant Cup Goodwood, BRDC International Trophy Silverstone, Crystal Palace Trophy and Newcastle Journal Trophy at Charterhall. In September he won the Madgwick Cup at Goodwood from Stirling Moss’ Cooper Alta.

In championship Grands Prix the pickings were much slimmer- he failed to finish all of the events he contested, the Dutch, French, British, German and Italian GP’s. The problem was the cars reliability not Roy’s speed- he qualified 11th, 13th and 14th at Zandvoort, the Nurburgring and Monza respectively for example.

In 1953 he joined Aston Martin in sportscars- although the focus of this article is single-seaters not his two-seater programs.

For 1954 he made the sensible decision to drive a Maserati 250F for Sid Greene’s Gilby Engineering team, the very best 2.5 litre customer GP car of the period. With it he won the Curtis Trophy at Snetterton, was second in the Lavant Cup, BARC F1 race and third in the Goodwood Trophy (all at Goodwood). The Gilby lads took the Maser across the channel to contest the French GP at Reims where Roy was Q10 but had a half-shaft failure. Back at Silverstone for the British GP he was a wonderful Q7 of 28 on a circuit at which he always excelled but had a transmission failure on lap 7.

Still in the first flush of youth, he raced the Gilby Maser ‘2507’ on into 1955 with wins in the Glover Trophy and Curtis Trophy at Goodwood and Snetterton respectively. He qualified first and finished second behind the Collins 250F at the International Trophy, Silverstone.

The 11 April Goodwood meeting says everything about Salvadori’s speed, versatility and work ethic- he contested six of eight events! He won the Lavant Cup in a Connaught A Type, was second in the Chichester Cup, first in the Richmond Trophy and second in the Easter Handicap all in the 250F. He won the ‘B Sportscar’ race in an Aston DB3S and was fourth in the ‘C Sportscar’ race in a Cooper-Maserati. Wow!

The team again entered the British GP at Silverstone this time yielding Q20 and DNF due to a gearbox failure.

Into 1956 Roy again raced the Gilby 250F which was getting a little long in the tooth compared to the latest spec works-cars but was still a good thing in national events- he was first in the Vanwall Trophy and Sussex Trophy at Snetterton and Goodwood respectively. Moss won the Glover Trophy at Goodwood in a works 250F ‘2522’ with Roy behind him.

In International events the 250F was 3rd in the GP de Caen and had DNF’s at both Silverstone and the Nurburgring- the British and German GP’s but qualified 7 and 9 to remind everyone of his speed in the old jigger. He was Q14 and 11th- last at Monza.

Success also came in mid-engined F2 Cooper T41 Climaxes with wins in the British GP support event, at Brands in the Bank Holiday meeting and at Oulton in the International Gold Cup F2 race.

A man in demand he signed with BRM for 1957, but after his cars brakes locked solid, causing his retirement from his BRM debut race and then failing to qualify for the Monaco Grand Prix, he walked away from the team.

Raymond Mays failed to intervene satisfactorily to improve the P25’s notoriously poor brakes. The P25 became a race winner- it won BRM’s first GP in Jo Bonnier’s hands at Zandvoort in 1959 of course but in 1956/early 1957 it was a problem child. No less than Alex Moulton and Alec Issigonis, Colin Chapman and Piero Taruffi- the latter two track testing the car applied their talents to dealing with the racers many handling, roadholding and braking problems. Leaving BRM at the time was as good an F1 Salvadori decision as being part of Aston’s F1 program in 1959 was a bad one!

Roy continued racing Aston sportscars throughout 1957 and was invited by David Yorke to drive a Vanwall VW57 in the Reims GP in early July, for 5th and in the French GP at Rouen a week later- Q6 and DNF engine. Chapman had of course applied his magic touch in Acton too a year earlier!

 

For the balance of 1957 Roy joined Cooper beside Jack Brabham, the pair racing Cooper T43/45 Climaxes in F2/F1 events. Cooper ran Coventry Climax FPF’s of just under 2 litres in F1 that season, the class capacity limit 2.5 litres from 1954-1960 inclusive. He was 2nd in the GP de Caen and failed to finish the German GP having qualified 14th running a 1475cc FPF as an F2 car within the F1 grid.

Generally Jack did better than Roy in F2 but he won the Woodcote Cup at  Goodwood, and the F2 class of the Daily Express International Trophy, was 2nd in the London Trophy at Crystal Palace and 4th in the Coupe de Vitesse at Reims.

For 1958 Roy stayed with Coopers and had his best season in GP racing as detailed early in this article. In addition to Championship GP events he was also quick in British Internationals taking 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the BRDC International Trophy at Silverstone, Glover Trophy at Goodwood and the BARC 200 at Aintree.

Aston Martin finally got their DBR4 race ready- it was to Roy’s credit that he felt bound to drive it and did so but his first steer of the front-engined bolide would have been enough to indicate that AM had missed the boat relative to the Coopers with which he was now very familiar and had done so well.

It was a backward step indeed. To stay with Coopers would have been the go in 1959 fitted as they were with Coventry Climax FPF’s of 2.5 litres- they won the drivers and constructors titles of course. Roy did more than enough to stay with Cooper in 1959- in ’58 the qualifying record was fairly evenly split between Jack and Roy with the Brit getting far better race results. Oh to have stayed put at Surbiton!

In a fullish GP season he raced Tommy Atkins Cooper T45 Maserati at Monaco and Reims and the Aston DBR4/250 at Zandvoort, Aintree, Monsanto Portugal and at Monza- his best placings 6th in the Monaco, British and Portuguese GP’s. Sixth at Monsanto was 3 laps behind the Moss winning Cooper to give some idea of the relative pace of the new and old paradigms.

In non-championship races he won the London Trophy, was 2nd in the Lavant Cup in a Cooper T43 Climax F2 and frustratingly got a good, long, hard look at the back of Brabham’s Cooper T51 Climax finishing 2nd behind him at Silverstone in the Daily Express International Trophy aboard the Aston.

Following his 1959 success at Le Mans, in 1960 Salvadori returned to the 24 hour race in another Aston Martin DBR1 beside a very young Jim Clark, finishing a good 3rd behind two Ferraris.

His Grand Prix program in 1960 was limited to the Dutch and British GP’s in Astons for a DNS and DNF- and at Monaco and Riverside in an Atkins Cooper T51 Climax for a DNF and 8th. In Cooper mounted non-championship events he was 3rd in the Oulton Park Trophy and Lavant Cup at Goodwood and 4th in Snetterton’s Lombank Trophy. He won the Lancashire & Cheshire Car Club F2 race at Oulton Park.

After Aston’s withdrawal from GP racing he drove Reg Parnell’s Yeoman Credit Cooper T53 Climax FPF 1.5 litre engine cars in the first year of the new GP formula.

In a great mighta-been drive in the 1961 US GP at Watkins Glen he charged his Cooper T53 Climax FPF from eighth place up to second- closing on Innes Ireland’s leading works Lotus 18 when with five laps to go his engine failed. He was 6th at Aintree and Monza in a season dominated by the squadron of V6 Ferrari 156’s and notable for the brilliance of Stirling Moss in the under-powered Rob Walker Lotuses at Monaco and the Nurburgring.

Roy commenced the 1962 season with a trip to Australasia to race a Bowmaker Cooper T53 Climax with ‘…our first two races cut short because of rain storms and I took a 4th in the NZ GP and 5th in the Hudson Memorial Trophy. In contrast the following weekends Lady Wigram Trophy was held in stiflingly hot conditions and i again finished 5th’ Roy recounts in his biography.

But his tour was cut short with a practice crash at over 130 mph during practice at Warwick Farm on 4 February, the first Australian leg of the tour.

‘At Warwick Farm we were using an improved Dunlop tyre and although Surtees and I had a set each for the race, we had to share a set in practice. Surtees came back into the pits near the end of practice and the mechanics had a frantic rush to transfer the wheels from his car…I charged off from the pits, joined the long (Hume) straight and was approaching the hairpin (Creek Corner) that followed very quickly. As to what happened next I have to rely on what I was told, as I remember nothing of the accident. As I braked for the hairpin the car turned sharp right into a flag marshalling area protected by the sleepers and hit this at about 100 mph. I suffered head injuries, a broken cheekbone and severe facial cuts, the car was a write-off and two marshalls were injured (with broken legs). I was unconscious until the following day…I was later flown back to the UK for further medical treatment…My theory as to the cause of the accident is that we failed to pump up the brakes (a procedure peculiar to the Cooper after a wheel change) and then as I pumped them up quickly for the corner, the right front brake locked’.

Roy flew back to Australia for the Sandown Park Trophy on March 11/12- the circuits opening meeting and drove a Lex Davison Cooper, ‘I was far from fit and it was a very stupid thing to do, although it seemed like a good idea at the time! I was slow in practice and in the race retired because of mechanical trouble’.

Warwick Farm and its fallout was hardly a good start to what would be Roy’s final GP season with a Bowmaker Lola alongside John Surtees.

They drove Eric Broadley’s Lola Mk4 Coventry Climax FWMV V8’s with Surtees consistently outpacing the veteran Salvadori who was terribly cramped in the cockpit of the car more suited to the shorter ‘Big John’. He carried this off with dignity with Surtees remarking after Salvadori’s death ‘Roy had always been serious about his motor racing and in my view, never quite realised his full potential as a grand prix driver, mainly because he was waiting in the wings while Aston Martin were being so slow in developing their DBR4 in 1959’.

Roy had shocking luck with unreliability whereas Surtees had a much better time of it and seconds at Aintree and the Nurburgring. There was nothing too wrong with the basic design, Roy’s best qualifying performance was in Germany with Q9.

The time had come though, Roy was 40, it was right to retire from Formula 1 at the seasons end. But he continued to race sports and touring cars with great success, often for his lifelong friend, John Coombs until 1965, when he retired from racing but not before another couple of big accidents- flipping into the lake at Oulton Park after a puncture to his Jaguar Saloon and at Le Mans in 1963 when his E Type Lwt spun on oil dropped by Bruce McLaren’s Aston Martin. He crashed, then Bino Heins was burned to death in his Alpine, Bino  having sought to avoid Jean-Pierre Manzon who was unconscious in the middle of the track having also crashed after losing control on the oil.

Motor racing is and very much was dangerous!

Salvadori was also involved in the original Ford GT40 campaign via John Wyer, his friend/Team Manager from Aston Martin. In fact his last race was in a GT40 at Goodwood in 1965 finishing second overall and winning his class.

In 1966 and 1967 he managed the Cooper F1 team, but was still not averse to a steer, doing some of the early test and development work on the new for ’66 3 litre V12 Cooper T81 Maserati at Goodwood. The driving strength included Pedro Rodriguez, John Surtees and Jochen Rindt.

Meanwhile the garage business which funded his racing in the early days had flourished into major BMW and Alfa Romeo dealerships- they were sold to a public company providing the means and tax necessity perhaps for he and his wife Sue to move to Monaco.

His flat overlooking the Grand Prix finishing line became famous for its parties during GP weekends. He died on 3 June 2012 a familiar figure at historic racing gatherings down the decades.

Etcetera…

Wharton and Salvadori, BRM and Maser, Madgwick, Goodwood, Easter Monday 1954…

I was researching the photo above, its before an infamous high speed contretemps between the two Brits and found this piece Doug Nye wrote in his ‘Goodwood Road and Racing’ column in November 2016- here it is in all of its wonderful glory…

‘One of the great personal rivalries that used to be played out – in part – at Goodwood, was the personal antipathy between Roy Salvadori and Ken Wharton. Roy was a supremely self-confident, stylish, charming, debonair, soft-hearted, philanthropic south-London used-car dealer. His race driving philosophy was pretty much no holds barred, and he was always prepared to stick his elbows out and push and shove, or to position his car in such a way on track – as in a braking area or turn-in point for a corner – in which a close-quarters rival would be embarrassed (or intimidated) into giving way, fearing the consequences of contact – which in that period could be utterly horrendous.

Ken Wharton was evidently an almost equally charming, friendly kind of chap out of a racing car’s cockpit. But the Smethwick garage proprietor – who was in the 1950s one of the most versatile of all competition drivers – having been a front-runner in everything from mud-plugging trials to rallying and road racing in cars ranging from tin-top saloons to 500s, Grand Prix cars and the centrifugally-supercharged Formule 1 and Libre V16-cylinder BRMs, had a less armour-plated personality. He was never quite confident that he was really as good as he earnestly wanted, and tried, to be. In the car – especially at BRM when he found himself teamed with Fangio and Gonzalez (two hopes, no hope and Bob Hope) – he could only play second or third fiddle to the true stars of the day. But he plainly felt that Salvadori was not quite from the top drawer either – not a Moss, and most certainly no Fangio, nor Gonzalez. And so should Salvo attempt to assert himself on track against Ken Wharton, than Smethwick Ken would push back.

This became a pretty explosive situation in that era when drivers were not belted into the cockpits of their racing cars, when wire wheels were narrow and racing tyres slim, heavily treaded and easily intertwined should cars clash side-to-side. Competing cars were also quite tall, quite hefty, relatively unstable, and easy to overturn. On the back of the admission ticket or pass were printed the words ‘Motor racing is dangerous’ and in the ’50s that was absolutely and often painfully self-evident.

There was a history between Salvadori and Wharton before the Easter Monday Goodwood race meeting in 1954. The feature Glover Trophy race was run over 21 laps, for Formule Libre cars which set Roy Salvadori’s new Sid Greene-entered Maserati 250F against the V16 BRMs of Ron Flockhart – in the latest short-chassis Mark II variant – and Ken Wharton in the full Grand Prix-spec long-wheelbase V16 Mark I.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography…

MotorSport article by Simon Taylor in August 2012, ‘The Guardian’ obituary, ‘Goodwood Road and Racing’ column Doug Nye, ‘Goodwood Remembered’ Peter Redman, Stephen Dalton Collection, oldracingcars.com, ‘Roy Salvadori Racing Driver’  Roy Salvadori & Anthony Pritchard, David Fox

Photo Credits…

John Richardson, John Ross Motor Racing Archive, B Cahier, Getty Images- GP Library/PA Images, Pinterest, Simon Lewis Transport Books, LAT, Tom March, George Phillips

Tailpiece: Roy, Aston DBR4, Zandvoort 1959…

Finito…