{"id":51904,"date":"2015-11-11T16:26:48","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T16:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/issue_content\/glimpse-from-dsjs-seat\/"},"modified":"2019-07-19T16:00:39","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T15:00:39","slug":"glimpse-dsjs-seat","status":"publish","type":"issue_content","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/archive\/article\/july-2015\/84\/glimpse-dsjs-seat\/","title":{"rendered":"Glimpse from DSJ’s seat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty years ago, Stirling Moss returned to the Mille Miglia. His lucky navigator caught a flavour of Denis Jenkinson\u2019s experience in 1955 \u2013 but only by mistake
\nWriter Simon Taylor<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sixty years ago I was a damp-eyed 10-year-old boy, incarcerated in a traditional prep school 100 miles from home. To cheer me up, when my father had finished reading his monthly copy of Motor Sport he rolled it up into a tube and posted it to me. It took me most of the month, between Latin lessons and the loathsome rugger, to read every word, from WB\u2019s introductory leader via DSJ\u2019s Continental Notes to the last classified ad. I kept every copy, and they became the seedcorn of the run of bound volumes I maintain today. <\/p>\n

The June 1955 issue took longer to read than the others, because I was mesmerised by DSJ\u2019s incredible 9000-word article With Moss in the Mille Miglia. You will understand why when you read it, if you haven\u2019t already (it is readily available via our online archive<\/a>). <\/p>\n

It was clear to me even then that Jenks \u2013 as I somehow already knew DSJ was called \u2013 had written this immense piece of work entirely from memory, because during the race itself he was otherwise occupied. <\/p>\n

I wanted to preserve the article but didn\u2019t want to mutilate my magazine, so I wrote to my father (telephone calls weren\u2019t allowed except in cases of near-fatal illness) and asked him to get me a second copy. When that arrived I carefully cut out the huge blocks of tiny type \u2013 almost totally devoid of paragraphs, because Jenks didn\u2019t do paragraphs \u2013 and pasted them into a school exercise book. On the front I stuck the oval picture from the cover showing Moss and Jenks after their win, faces streaked with oil and dirt. Over the past 60 years I have kept that exercise book too.<\/p>\n

I was already a fan of Stirling Moss, of course, but now he became my hero. Jenks, too, was elevated to almost god-like standing. Many years later I was privileged to be able to call them both friends. So in 1995 I reminded Stirling it was the 40th anniversary of that great victory. <\/p>\n

I suggested that Mercedes-Benz should get the 300SLR out of their museum and he and Jenks should do the Mille Miglia Retrospective, which covered most of the original route as a three-day regularity event. In those days Mercedes didn\u2019t use the 300SLR, number 722, as a publicity machine as much as they do now, but I knew Stirling\u2019s request would not be denied. \u201cGood idea, boy,\u201d said Stirling. \u201cI\u2019ll talk to Jenks.\u201d <\/p>\n

Next morning he was on the phone. \u201cJenks says he did the real thing, and why should he want to ponce around with rich old men in their shiny red Ferraris. You\u2019d better come instead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which is how I came to spend three days sitting in Jenks\u2019s seat beside Stirling, in burning sun, in drenching rain, in darkness as well as day, as he hurled the 300SLR up steep mountain passes, through towns and villages, and along straight, narrow roads at 150mph between solid walls of waving people. And when we paused I got Stirling to tell me tales of those 10 full-throttle hours on May 1, 1955. The trip into the straw bales approaching Pescara, which dented the front but still dealt with an obstructive Gordini. The comfort stop Stirling had planned at the Rome control, not realising that since the recce a huge grandstand had been built and he had to perform in front of several hundred people. Passing a competing Isetta bubble car on the final flat-out run into Brescia, with a speed differential of 130mph. And many more. <\/p>\n

Before Stirling and I caught the plane to Malpensa I called Jenks, to ask him for some guidance. Grudgingly he agreed to meet me at his local pub, the Derby Inn in Bartley Heath, \u201cJust for 30 minutes. I\u2019m very busy.\u201d (Maybe he was doing a gasket change on the Fiat 500 engine he\u2019d bolted to the floor in the front passage of his ramshackle cottage, to power the electric light.) As instructed I arrived at 5.30pm, just as his little bearded figure drew up in his regular transport, an ancient Morris Minor. This had all the seats removed, apart from the driver\u2019s, so that he could more easily carry a Duesenberg engine block or an Alta cylinder head when required. He\u2019d brought the famous \u2018bog roll\u2019, the neat little metal box with a perspex window through which he read the detailed pace notes made during their pre-race recce. He generously took me through the whole route, embroidered with many tales, and he was still in full flow when the landlord chucked us out at closing time.<\/p>\n

\u2756<\/p>\n

So to Italy and the start at Brescia. As Stirling and I drive over the starting ramp on Thursday evening, the crowds seem as large as in all the contemporary photographs of the event itself, and of course Stirling and the 300SLR merit a special cheer. The little passenger seat is narrower than the driver\u2019s, with much reduced legroom, but I feel ecstatic at the prospect of spending three days and much of two nights there. The engine lies almost on its side, which means that the transmission is towards the left, and Stirling sits with his legs wide apart straddling the clutch housing. Level with my right ear are the two mighty, unsilenced pipes from that glorious straight-eight. <\/p>\n

The route is more or less the same as the 1955 original, but punctuated with regularity sections and secret checks, which are timed to 0.01sec. So if you are a hundredth early or late, that\u2019s a penalty point. My job is serious: the ultra-competitive Stirling always wants to win anything he attempts, even if it\u2019s a game of tiddly-winks. Modern electronic aids are forbidden, so on my knee I have a board with four old-fashioned stop watches, plus the road book and the extra notes I scribbled down listening to Jenks in the pub. <\/p>\n

I would never have made a competent rally navigator, and almost at once it\u2019s all a blur anyway, because I\u2019m too busy revelling in the throaty urge of the big 300SLR and watching the 65-year-old on my left, totally relaxed, arms and feet moving in lightning-quick harmony over the narrow, twisting, bumpy roads. <\/p>\n

Day two, and we\u2019re running into heavy rain now. We\u2019re loping along at a steady 90mph: my roadbook is turning into a sodden pulp, my notes are running off the page. The stopwatches on my knee are ticking away, measuring the overall time since this morning\u2019s dawn start and the time in our current series of sections and checks.<\/p>\n

An hour ago I told Stirling that, thanks to his relentless progress, we were going to be disgracefully early for the next time check. <\/p>\n

So we bumped the 300SLR onto the pavement outside a village bar and went in for a coffee, to the astonishment and delight of the regulars. Now we\u2019re back in the cockpit, turning inland from the Adriatic coast and climbing into the Abruzzi mountains \u2013 a wonderfully tortuous, narrow road of tight hairpins and steep diving curves across sudden valleys, still with winter snow piled beside the asphalt.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s now that I realise, checking the watches and prising apart the dripping pages of the roadbook, that somewhere in my calculations I\u2019ve got into a comprehensive muddle. We shouldn\u2019t have stopped for that coffee. I put my mouth close to Stirling\u2019s helmet and shout the awful truth: we have 14 minutes to do the next 16 miles. Up here in the mountains. In the rain.<\/p>\n

He gives me a brief look of annoyance, and then his eyes go hard, like pebbles. He changes down a gear, and the racket of the straight-eight becomes a shriek. He leans back in the cockpit, head slightly on one side, in that serene position familiar from a thousand Grand Prix action shots from the 1950s. His gloves are light on the steering wheel as it shuffles rapidly through his hands, back and forth. His right foot just by my left is flashing from throttle to brake, brake to throttle, his right hand snicking the big gearlever across its open gate. <\/p>\n

We\u2019re twisting downhill now, the Mercedes squirming like a wild animal as he teases it into a front-wheel slide, catches it, holds it on the throttle, pushes it onward. There are of course no seatbelts. I\u2019m being flung around by the g-forces, my stomach and leg muscles taut with the effort of keeping out of Stirling\u2019s lap. The rev-counter tell-tale is up to 7100rpm \u2013 that\u2019s 84mph in second, 101mph in third. I have absolutely no fear, except of Stirling\u2019s ire at my mistake: only a bubble of joy and delight rising in my throat as he summons back his superhuman skills of four decades before. <\/p>\n

We burst into a mountain village, and Stirling\u2019s foot spans throttle and brake as he double-declutches down the gearbox. His thumb is on the button that simultaneously sounds the horn and flashes the lights. We fishtail across a cobbled square that is lined with cheering, waving locals, and I glimpse a priest on the steps of his little church raising his arm in blessing. Then we\u2019re back in lush green country again.<\/p>\n

Over a brow, and suddenly here\u2019s the control. We slither to a stop, neatly astride the line. The watches tell the story: we\u2019ve made up all but 37 seconds of the lost time. Stirling has averaged 66mph over those wet, steep mountain lanes. But, thanks to my foolish clanger, we\u2019ve earned a bundle of penalty points. Stirling switches off the engine, and in trepidation I pull off my helmet. I\u2019m for it now. But all I get is a reassuring grin: \u201cI rather enjoyed that, boy.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is more of the same as we encircle Italy: the Futa Pass, the Raticosa, the historic piazzas of Siena and Florence, flat out along the arrow-straight stretches of the Via Emilia. And always the cheering crowds: it seems the whole of Italy is out to see us. The welcome Moss receives at every halt is extraordinary. Flowers are thrown into the cockpit, and gifts we have no room for: cheese, toys, a picture of a local beauty queen, a cake. Old men push through the crowd to shake his hand and tell him how they watched the 1955 race. Girls want their photo taken with him, which Stirling permits with undisguised enjoyment. Small boys who learned the legend at their grandfather\u2019s knee queue up for his autograph: one, evidently well-informed, notes my lack of beard and says, \u201cDov\u2019\u00e8 Jenkinson?\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is late on Saturday evening when we reach the finish back at Brescia. More crowds, more interviews, more pictures. We\u2019ve spent 32 of the past 48 hours in the car. Our grimy overalls have been repeatedly drenched with rain and dried in the cockpit\u2019s oily heat. But we go as we are into a restaurant for our first square meal since Thursday. As we walk in the other diners, recognising Stirling, stand and clap. I fall a few paces behind him, and I clap too. I\u2019ve been privileged to watch an old master practise his art again, and he\u2019s given me three days I shall never forget.<\/p>\n

\u2756<\/p>\n

All that was 20 years ago. Stirling still appears at the Mille Miglia with 722: he doesn\u2019t do the full route any more, but the adulation of the crowd is undiminished. <\/p>\n

It seems there isn\u2019t a person in Italy who hasn\u2019t heard about what that young man did on May 1, 1955, and how, helped by a little bearded chap with a roll of paper in a box, he made motor racing history and set a record that will never be broken.<\/p>\n

Footnote: Jenks told me that, back in Italy a few months after the race, he was in a village bar and heard an old man say: \u201cThat young Moss, you know why he won the Mille Miglia? He had a priest in the car with him, a bearded priest, and all through the race the priest was reading to him from a bible on his knee. I saw it with my own eyes!\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":733,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"tags":[167,213],"issue_decade":[121600],"issue_year":[121672],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/51904"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/733"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/51904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225917,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/51904\/revisions\/225917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51904"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=51904"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=51904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}