Letters: David Brodie talks brakes with Barry Sheene

It was with much sadness to hear of the passing of David Brodie – ‘The Brode’ – a proper racer, if ever there was one.

I was a guest of Dave’s at Donington when he was racing the Starion. I had read a letter in Autosport from Dave saying that he had visited the trophy room at Duns, as he was a big Jim Clark fan, and said how good it was, urging people to visit.

Jim Clark is also my hero and I wrote a letter to Dave, and received one back with the invite to spend the day with the team.

It was wonderful. I remember sitting on the pitwall with Dave, when Barry Sheene wandered over and sat with us. He was driving a Toyota Supra, giving bikes a miss after his awful injuries. Dave asked how it was going, and he said he just couldn’t stop the damned thing. Words of advice about changing to different brake pads from Dave, to which Barry replied, “Nothing will work as I have a bunch of Cortina mechanics working on the car!”

The attached photo, above, is not the best quality, but it’s a lovely picture of times we will sadly never see again. RIP David Brodie, no one matches your style.

 Dave Griffiths, via email.

Mat Oxley’s article in the January 2025 issue [Matters of Moment: Motorbikes] bemoaning BMW’s lack of top level motorcycle racing success from 1952 until virtually 1980 omits to mention that BMW were world sidecar champions between 1954 and 1974, winning a total of 19 drivers’ and 20 manufacturers’ world championships.

Their RS54 flat twin engines were uniquely suited to sidecar installation. BMW outfits were ridden throughout this period mainly by German and Swiss crews as BMW were loath to allow their engines to be used by ‘foreign’ riders.

Bill Pack, via email

Regarding your profile of the 2002 Ferrari F2002 (Grand prix history up for grabs, February). In the statistics at the top of page 84, two of the figures quoted are:

Races 19
Podiums 28
That cannot be correct, surely?

DR Moad, via email 

The podiums data refer to both drivers’ cars that contested that year’s Formula 1 world championship – Ed

Thank you for the mention of Spain’s Montjuich Park in the February issue of Motor Sport [Matters of Moment: Great Lost Circuits].

It reminded me of my schoolboy days when my great hero Denis Jenkinson wrote of a sidecar race there in 1949, keeping the third wheel of world champion Eric Oliver’s 596cc Norton outfit somewhere near the cobbles and Tarmac as they progressed to eventual victory.

I got to know the man as an occasional acquaintance when I was freelancing for Motorcycle News later in life and he has remained a favourite of mine through the long years that I have subscribed to only one motoring magazine.

Jim Reynolds, Shropshire 

We are in the process of building a Pocher model 917. I suspect the estimate of a 30-hour build is more than a little optimistic, as mentioned in Small Wonders in the February issue.

The Pocher model is a replica of the car driven by Siffert and Bell that came second in the Monza 1000Kms in 1971. The original car that won, driven by Rodriguez and Oliver, is now part of the Finburgh family collection. So if we get a bit stuck building the model we just have a look at the original.

UK model builders don’t have to go all the way to Le Mans to see an original 917. The Monza winner is in the National Motor Museum in Hampshire.

When I and my brother started collecting classics in the 1960s/early 1970s it seems you could buy some of the originals for not much more than the models today.

Mark Finburgh, London

As I picked up my copy of the February 2025 issue, I wondered what Gordon Cruickshank would be writing about and what books he might be reviewing, since his writing was, to me, a reading priority and his reviews being exceptionally both informative and perceptive.

I was privileged to write (as DDH) for Motor Sport in the late 1980s in what Andrew Frankel has described as its heyday, under a truly great editor, Bill Boddy, his deputy William Kimberley, with Gordon making up the third member of this stellar triumvirate with whom I was in contact (DSJ was not to be seen in the office). I knew Gordon both before and after the tragic accident in which he was a passenger in the Mercedes, which left him tetraplegic, but what struck me most then and since is that despite being physically much different, his mentality and personality remained very much the same.

After returning to my profession as a historian, I occasionally wrote to Gordon about things of mutual interest, like Brian Hart’s Formula 1 engines or the grand prix driver Peter Revson, who was a schoolboy friend. Invariably his replies were clear, concise and knowledgeable. He was a remarkable man who did much for the magazine to which he devoted his working life, not just making it survive the difficult 1990s but thrive right up to the present day. He will be missed.

Dr David D Hebb, via email

I have just read Andrew Frankel’s beautiful paean to Gordon Cruickshank [Parting Shot, February] and it brought a tear to my eye. I never met Gordon, but we exchanged a few emails over the years, not just on the finer points of grammar, but also on the Rouen, Reims and Clermont-Ferrand road circuits (in the summer of 2008 I did a road trip encompassing all three circuits, or what is left of them).

Please thank Mr Frankel for such a loving appreciation of a clearly wonderful and much-loved friend and colleague.

Simon Arbuthnot, London 

Great to see Jenks’s old Porsche 356 featured online in December (Denis Jenkinson’s 356 roars again at Goodwood) and better still to see it out on track where it belongs rather than weeping quietly to itself in a museum.

I know the car well as I stored it for many years for ‘S’, the previous owner. The photos, show it back in those days.

My good friend S the welder found the car derelict in the early 1980s – a time when such a car was seen as a fixer-upper. He duly fixed it up, painted it in Mini Metro metallic blue, talked to Jenks about it, drove it once and realised it was a taste he had not acquired. And so it was parked up again.

Years later I persuaded S to sell the car to a good home and Tom Pead fitted the bill. S cared more about that than about the money. I have other cars and never fancied it. A Porsche pal reckoned it would cost £70,000 or so to restore again.

The old restoration was not up to current standards, but I think S deserves a lot of credit – both for rescuing the car and selling it on rather than hoarding.

It would be a nice touch to extend an invitation to see his car race at Goodwood at some point soon.

Does the car still have the sticker for the 1955 Mille Miglia in the window?

Mark Brett, Cobham, Surrey  

James Elson, who wrote the website piece, says, “Yes it does” – Ed

I note in Doug Nye’s always excellent article in the January 2025 edition [Archives] the photo caption of Alberto Ascari winning the 1925 Belgian Grand Prix. A great driver and so precocious winning a GP at the tender age of six! Could it be his dad?

Russ Taylor, via email

It could. And it was. Apologies and thanks to the other readers who pointed out the caption error – Ed

Your article on quick Kiwis in the January edition [The Kiwi conveyor belt of talent] took me back to 1960, when I was spectating at Snetterton. The main race started with local hero Mike McKee leading in Jim Russell’s Cooper-Climax followed by the similar cars of George Lawton and Denny Hulme, both making their European debut.

McKee had a comfortable lead and then it started to rain. With the Kiwis gaining rapidly McKee had an off at the esses and was unable to continue. Lawton went on to win with Hulme second. On that day I got the impression that Lawton was the quicker of the Antipodeans. He was more flamboyant. Sadly he was killed in September. McKee retired from racing in 1961, but Hulme went on to become world champion.

John Hindle, Penshurst, Kent

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