Hey Nonny for the New Season

Hey Nonny for the New Season

A Happy New Year to you, my gentles. The first of January and only two months to wait for the first race of the year, the Round the Town race at Pau. Charlie Martin tells me he is entering his Monoposto Alfa, with which he is very thrilled, in this event. Says the ” Bugatti ” rear-springing is a great success, does away with that corkscrew motion on rough roads. Shuttleworth has now had his Alfa converted to quarter elliptics.

Ski-Sport

Skiing is ihe only sport which compares with driving a racing car, and Chiron’ Stuck and many of the other Continental stars will be active in Switzerland during the next two months. Martin is doing his stuff at St. Moritz and later at Kitzbilhl, and Temple, of Aston-Martins, is leading the usual gang, Ashton Rigby, Briault, Robin Jackson and all to Grindelwald, where there is already two feet of snow.

Bentley at Le Mans

Most exciting of all the snow sports, I should imagine, is the Cresta Run, where you shoot down an icy slope face first, lying on a tea-tray with skids. Eddie Hall used to be a great exponent of this pastime, but is no long-er quite so active in this direction. I see, however, that he has entered his Bentley for Le Mans this year, which is splendid news.

F. S. Barnes, brother J. D., and A. H. Langley have just brought out a plan to race Singers in a number of events, and two of the Le Mans Replica Nines will be entered in the 24 Hour Race by the new Scuderia. They will also be entered in the T.T., and the Relay Race which, of course, was won by a team of Nines last year.

11-litre cars will be entered in several of the longdistance Continental trials this year, while the programme includes facilities for private owners to hire cars to compete at Donington and Brooklands.

Reverting to Le Mans, Rile ys are entering an official team of iflitre four-cylinder cars, to be driven by Paul E. McClure, Von der Becke and the French driver Sebilleau.

Lord Howe to Drive an E.R.A.

Visiting the E.R.A. factory at Bourne the other day, I found the decks being cleared for producing a large consignment of cars in preparation for producing this year’s cars.

Lord Howe has fulfilled his ambition of racing ” British ” by ordering a 11-litre car, other purchasers being ” Bira,” Fairfield, R. E. Tongue, Scribbans, a Birmingham man who has not previously appeared at the wheel of a racing car, and Dr. Benjafield. Peter Lillie and Hodge, who have raced Singers at Brooklands, are sharing a 1,100 c.c. job.

Lord Howe, Raymond Mays, and probably a wellknown Continental driver will form the official team, and Humphrey Cook will drive in a few races such as the International Trophy. Mays is still having a good deal of trouble with his arm. His right one is Winches shorter than his left, as the result of a compound fracture when he was a small boy, and the E.R.A. steering wheel is off-set by a similar amount, so he has been driving throughout the season with one arm, in effect, three inches shorter than the other. His shoulder muscles, not surprisingly, objected to this treatment, but rest and sunshine in Switzerland should get him fit for next year’s racing. He is having the steering-box transferrvd to the other side of his car to prevent any further strain.

Seaman and the Delage

After a remarkably successful season driving an E.R.A., Richard Seaman has purchased Lord Howe’s Delage and, with the aid of Giulio Ramponi, plans to bring it into line with modern practice.

The principal alterations, he tells me, will be in the direction of reducing the weight. By fitting a lighter body and other alterations, it is hoped to bring this clown to about the same weight as the E.R.A. The engine and transmission are set over to one side of the chassis and this will facilitate fitting an off-set single-seater shell with the driver sitting really low.

Ten Main Bearings

The engine, which has a ten-bearing roller-bearing crankshaft—two centre mains—was said to develop about 150 h.p., but it is hoped to boost this up considerably. Lord Howe removed the five-speed gearbox and fitted instead an eight-speed self-changing