Letters March 2023
The BMW photographed at Brands Hatch in 1978 by a teenage Simon Arron is back on British soil
Simon Arron
What a great picture of Tom Walkinshaw in the Pentax Cameras BMW 530i at the British Grand Prix support race in July 1978 at Brands Hatch, shown in Parting Shot [January].
I thought you might be interested to know that this car is now owned by my family and I. We were fortunate to have found this car due to talking to Jack Tetley at Duncan Hamilton. They knew the owner in Connecticut, USA and we managed to come up with a deal and secure the purchase of the car and return it to the UK.
We have been preparing it to hopefully race later in the year alongside our other Group 1 BMW 530i UFO Jeans car.
Jay Sadler, by email
Thank you for your wonderful magazine. Always a great blend of old and new. Nice to see the fabricating ‘force of nature’ that was Phil Remington getting his due [All American Hero, December]. As a young boy I used to see Ken Miles and Augie Pabst in their thundering, Phil-prepped Cobras at Mosport in the early Player’s 200 races.
Nowadays, as a self-taught ‘garagiste’, at times of needing some technical inspiration I take a breath and refer to the small banner I’ve posted over my workbench that says, “What would Rem do?”
Stuart Clow, Toronto, Canada
Doug Nye recently wrote about autograph books [The Archives, November] and as a result I got out my own. I started collecting autographs in the 1950s at Oulton Park and Aintree. I hadn’t got Fangio’s autograph, so I took a page out of my book and posted it to him in Argentina enclosing an envelope, and he took the trouble to send it back. I still have the envelope [below]. I wonder how many F1 drivers would do that today.
In 1960 my father took my mother and I on a holiday to Italy, failing to tell my mother before we left that he had tickets for the Italian Grand Prix. I managed to get into the paddock to get some autographs including that of Carlo Chiti, Ferrari’s chief engineer, who was guarding Phil Hill’s car.
In 1963 a friend and I drove to Monza in an Austin Mini, and once again I got into the paddock. Spotting Enzo Ferrari I thought I would ask him for his autograph. Clutching my book and pen I approached him only to be pushed away by his minder. Ferrari remonstrated with him, took my book, produced his own pen and signed – a coup! On the opposite page is Sir Alfred Owen’s signature. Two motor sport greats together.
Occasionally I would pack a photograph which I had previously taken along to a meeting to get it autographed, such as this of Stirling Moss and Innes Ireland taken at the 1960 Aintree 200. The best way to get an autograph was to be patient and not interrupt if the individual was otherwise engaged, and ask politely.
I was lucky enough to inherit from a motoring enthusiast a copy of the caricaturist Sallon’s book Motor-Racing Drivers Past and Present. This enthusiast had managed to get many of the individuals featured to sign their caricature – these include WO Bentley, Sammy Davis, Kaye Don, Earl Howe, Billy Cotton and others.
Finally, does anyone want an Edmundo Ros or Beverley Sisters autograph?
Michael Cookson, Audlem, Cheshire
Innes Ireland and Stirling Moss were expertly autograph-hunted in 1960
I would like to thank Mark Hughes for his moving tribute to Simon Arron in Matters of Moment in the January issue and to share in the condolences.
I first wrote to Simon in 2007, asking him for advice about spectating at Spa before my first visit there.
You won’t be surprised to hear that Simon wrote back generously with the most comprehensive and helpful information, and since then, to my life’s enhancement, he and I kept up a correspondence about motor sport, culture and wildlife (he was gracious about the amateur photos that I sometimes sent to this accomplished photographer).
Mark exactly captured Simon’s generosity, his humanity, his humour, his enthusiasm.
David Goddard, by email
You’d think that with all that we are enduring in the UK and wider world right now that we’d be impervious to one more piece of bad news. But I was more saddened than I would have expected to read of the death of Simon Arron. I never met Simon, but I felt like I knew him well.
Though he rarely wrote about himself, when he did do so I came to realise that our early exposure to motor sport ran along very similar lines. I lived near Brands Hatch and, like Simon cycling regularly to his local Oulton Park, I would travel independently by bicycle to Brands every weekend, no matter what was on, from what would now be considered a very young age. These early visits cemented in both of us a love of motor sport that endured throughout our lives.
Simon’s prose always reflected that love and a very deep knowledge of our sport that you trusted and were enlightened by. Sadly, I will never get the opportunity to meet Simon, though I feel we’d have shared a lot and could have enjoyed a nice pub lunch after a trip to Brands.
My condolences to his family and to you all at Motor Sport on what must be an enormous loss to you.
Paul Duffett, Sidcup, Kent
How many eagle-eyed readers spotted in the January issue on page 55 [The Motor Sport Interview: Alastair Caldwell] that although heavily sponsored by Marlboro, James Hunt is about to spark up a Rothmans?
Great days indeed.
Stuart Drysdale, East Lothian
With Mayer, centre, and James Hunt at the 1977 Monaco Grand Prix, but Caldwell refused to become friends with F1 drivers
Getty Images
The Delage article in the January 2023 issue [Delage à trois] took me back to one of my earlier motor racing memories. When I was a ‘ junior’ my father used to take me to spectate at Snetterton, where he was paddock marshal.
In May 1952 we attended a meeting where the principal protagonists in the main Formule Libre race were friends and rivals Duncan Hamilton and Tony Rolt. Hamilton was piloting his Lago-Talbot, Rolt the Rob Walker ERA-Delage.
The weather was appalling and my father predicted that Duncan Hamilton, who had a reputation for exuberance, would spin and that Tony Rolt would win.
He was right in the latter prediction, but Hamilton managed to keep it on the island despite a lurid slide on the first lap and finished a close second in what to me was a thrilling race that promoted a lifetime interest in our sport.
John Hindle, Penshurst, Kent
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