There were several motor-racing fans in the REME Workshops, and I remember many conversations with Bob Ord, Alan Holroyd, Eric Vasey et alia about races, rallies and cars. We were all intrigued reading the story in the magazines of how Innes Ireland had locked up his gearbox by changing into the wrong gear coming out of the tunnel at Monaco.
We were very fortunate to have Lou Ramsbottom with us. Not only a very likeable character, never pulling rank on us that I can remember, he avidly supported our Go-Kart efforts and on May 28, 1961 he organised a bus trip for us to see the 44-lap 1,000 km Sports Car Championship at Nurburgring. The weather was bad, with frequent rain showers during the morning.
Stirling Moss and Graham Hill were driving a Porsche 718. Stirling Moss led the race for the first few laps, despite having a 2-liter engine vs. the 3-liters of the Ferraris driven by Ginther and Rodriguez. This got all us Moss fans quite excited, but he dropped back a couple of places and then went into the pits with mechanical trouble. I took this photo after he restarted, and the track had started to dry out a bit, but the car was eventually retired with clutch problems on lap 21.
The eventual winner was a Maserati driven by Masten Gregory and Lloyd Casner. I believe Stirling Moss drove another car for a short while, a 1959 Aston-Martin DBR1 prepared by the legendary Carroll Shelby.
Photo: John Walker
Just to the right of where this photo was taken there was a humpy bridge over which the Porsches and Ferraris became slightly airborne. I wasn't able to get a good photo of this due to a large bush obscuring the view, but I do have a very distinct memory of Lou pointing out to us the way the engines screamed as the tires left the road. I never found out what the black attachment is on the top of the windshield, but I think it might have been a rear-view mirror to comply with new sports-car rules.
The original 5 x 3 photo is a matt paper finish, and disappointingly I can't make a really good copy from it. For example, the car's headlights are completely burned out in this copy. The negative decomposed many years ago.
In 2003 I managed to get a poor but passable enlargement made, and Sir Stirling Moss autographed it for me at the Festival of Speed at Goodwood in Sussex.
Copyright - John W. Walker
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