Private View

Private VI

A ‘You fe There’ sprK,ial ng gnored for dec.-s, tnese s des faces and cars Aft otter a rt Baxter has been a faithful Motor Sport reader, and pretty regular correspondent, since the 1950s, when he watched Giuseppe Farina drive the Thinwall Special at Charterhall in 1953. (It’s hard to imagine what the Italian ace thought of that bleak Scottish airfield…) David collected the magazine from 1952 on, but sadly, having more recently

retired to a vineyard in the Dordogne (his wife is a professor of wine), he lost all his back issues in a degat des eaux when a pipe burst. Luckily he had already bought a set of the Motor Sport archive DVDs so he can still enjoy all the old stuff. Over the years David attended scores of races around Britain, majoring on Formula 1 and the big sports cars plus a bit of Formula 2 when it was still a clear stepping stone to Grands Prix. While living in Edinburgh a trip to Oulton Park meant going by car, but once he moved to London he often travelled to the tracks by public transport even after he owned a car. “You got the train to Northampton, a bus to Silverstone and then you walked — just like everyone else was doing. And there was

a bus right to Brands Hatch.” He especially liked going to Crystal Palace circuit, though: “it was the only race track that you could get to by Tube…” At the tracks he carried his Canon SLR camera with telephoto lens for the action shots, but as so often it is the close-up images of cars and drivers off the track and off-duty that provide the most interest at this distance in time. After it was ‘suggested’ that he tidy his study, he made a selection from thousands of slides that he says he had not looked at for 40 years or more and sent some to us. He adds: “there must be hundreds of thousands of other photos that will never appear as their photographers don’t read Motor Sport”. Well, we like to think that with You Were There and Private View we’re doing a public service… These are what took our fancy from David’s offerings. a)

Brands, c/w from top right:1969 BOAC 500: Miles in Lotus 62; Amon in Ferrari 312P; Gerard Miner’s Porsche 908/2. Race of Champions, ’68: HuIme’s McLaren heads for track; Monte winner Vic Elford. 1967 Guards Trophy: Jo Schlesser, F2 Matra, and team-mate Pescarolo; Chris Irwin, Lola, makes for F2 grid