Lap Records

Sir,

Thank you for your comment on my letter in the August issue, but I still maintain that I am right and that your logic is fallacious. This is not it question of lap records, for Howe’s 1936 performance was never a record anyway, but of how fast a car it was compared to other cars. If Howe’s Bugatti was recorded to do a lap speed only exceeded by three other cars then it is the fourth fastest car to run at the Track, irrespective of actual record attempts.

In your excellent book on Brooklands you give the fastest recorded laps to almost every car which ran at the Track. As nearly all these times were recorded in races, is all this priceless information to be regarded as a load of non-history?

Furthermore, may I remind you that at the August Bank Holiday meeting in 1934 Cobb, in the Brooklands Championship race, “set up it new Brooklands lap record of 140.91 m.p.h.” I quote from Motor Sport of September 1934, p. 501.

Yes, Howe did do his 138 lap in the second race and not the first as I wrongly stated – one to you.

Banwell – Tony Taylor.

(l know that I quote official BARC lap speeds throughout my book – what else could an historian do? One assumes that they are to all intents and purposes accurate. But as cars became faster the BARC wisely decided that official lap records had to be electrically-timed, as the faster a vehicle travels the less accurate is human timing. Motor Sport didn’t refer to Cobb’s 140.91 m.p.h, as an official lap record, did it? – Ed.)