From Playboy to Racer: 'Babe' Barnato's Triple Triumph at Le Mans

In the run-up to this year’s Le Mans 24-Hour race the thought occurs that it marks the 90th anniversary of Woolf ‘Babe’ Barnato winning the first of his three consecutive Grands Prix d’Endurance there, in 1928. ‘Babe’ Barnato was ostensibly the massively-built, Champagne-quaffing, playboy leader of the so-called ‘Bentley Boys’ – that glittering social set of car-crazy backers, customers and amateur or semi-professional drivers for the Bentley Motor Company of Cricklewood, north London.

But I am not alone in having always wondered just how good a driver Barnato really was. He cannot evidently have been any slouch behind the wheel of one of the great works team cars that he bankrolled. Winning the Le Mans 24-Hour race once might be the mark of a multi-zillionaire merely flexing financial muscle, and simultaneously striking lucky. That has happened before – and within living memory. But ‘Babe’ Barnato didn’t just win Le Mans once, that first time in 1928; he won it again in 1929 and then – glory be – returned to do it a third time in 1930. You see the pattern emerging here? Such a record reflects not mere money. Neither does it reflect mere luck. Within the motor racing world, ‘Babe’ Barnato actually had a trump card up his sleeve – for I have it on first-hand authority that he really was a very fine racing driver indeed. Bentley cars had first won Le Mans in 1924, with John Duff and Frank Clement co-driving the former’s new 3-litre. The team was out of luck in 1925 – both cars retired – and in 1926 all three 3-litres failed – but in 1927 what had become ‘the great race’ was of course the stage on which ‘The White House Crash’ played out. ‘Sammy’ Davis, artist and sports editor of The Autocar was involved in that multiple accident in the 3-litre ‘Old No 7’ which he was co-driving with Dr J D Benjafield. He managed to extricate the badly damaged car from the multi-car melée, while team-mate Leslie Callingham had the macabre experience of seeing Davis and the third team member Duller searching the wreckage for his body.

Davis and Benjafield then set out upon an 18½-hour chase of the leading French Aries co-driven by Chassagne and Laly, battling against queasy-feeling steering caused – as a post-race strip-down revealed – by a cracked ball-joint. When the Aries blew its engine ‘Old No 7’ finally took the lead with under an hour to run – and Bentley Motors had won its second Le Mans 24-Hour race. It was never again to fail at the Sarthe.