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© Tom Delaney |
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Brooklands - a racing legend |
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Dressed in white overalls, cloth flying helmet and glass split screen goggles, Tom Delaney cut a dash on the banks of Brooklands.
His racing prowess, in his 1.5 litre 100 h.p. supercharged Lea Francis, could have coloured the pages of Boys Own Annuals.
At the age of 92 he is the world's oldest active competitive driver, but here, he recalls some of club life and early days behind the wheel.
Tom's father, who had himself raced against the likes of Malcolm Campbell, bought him his first car - the Lea Francis - in 1930, and he is still racing today.
He took the first opportunity to get Tom on the track too. Tom recalled: "He had been taking me to Brooklands in my school days, so I was getting tuned up for it. Yet when it happened, it was quite a surprise for me."
Tom Delaney recalls...
Brooklands was to become a very familiar place to Tom. If he wasn't racing, he would be enjoying the club life on the tennis court or as he says with the "very good bar."
He remembers the unique track banking and what a difference it made to the way they all drove: "You could keep your foot hard down all the time, off the new end of the straight, then going up onto the banking, keeping power down. You had to get your position right, otherwise you were in trouble."
Tom liked the "Mountain" circuit most of all. This was a track within a track - built around the hill in the centre - he enjoyed the very "testing" nature that it gave both car and driver.
He first visited the track in 1925, seeing all the famous drivers of the time: "They had some good races there, everything from short five lap races right up to 'Double-12's', where the cars would run for 12 hours then be impounded for the night, then start off at eight o'clock next day for another 12 hours."
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