"A Gentleman's Motor Racing Diary"

I have just finished watching 15 hours (though not consecutively!) of some of the most enjoyable racing footage that I have ever seen on film. "A Gentleman's Motor Racing Diary" is rare and valuable footage from a "golden age" that will never return, for better or for worse.

The series basically consists of the "home movies" of a fellow named John Tate, of Britain's Tate & Lyle sugar dynasty, who flew Spitfires during WW II and then got involved in motor racing. The footage is color, 8mm and 16mm, silent but with sound added for effect (a bit monotonously so in some cases.) The words are John's but are read on the programs by his son Chris (who briefly appears in one clip as an eight-year-old!).

The series consists on 10 ninety-minute DVDs that cover a variety of events from 1953 to 1973, though the footage becomes more spread out after about 1960. Venues visited include Goodwood, Aintree, Silverstone, Le Mans, Sebring (once) and many of the great Grand Prix courses of Europe. Many of these are now lost to history, such as Reims, Rouen, Lisbon and Casablanca. A neat feature, on those tracks made up of public roads (like Le Mans, Spa and Reims), is Tate touring the circuit the day before the race with his camera shooting in-car footage!

Tate was affiliated with, respectively, the Connaught, Aston Martin and Rob Walker teams, and there is naturally more footage of those teams at the time. There is particularly good footage of Aston Martin's abortive Formula 1 car in action. There is also some unique footage of some vintage racing Bentleys trying to set speed records on the banked oval tracks at Monza and Montlhery.

The ten DVDs are available individually, but the first six were also issued in three-disc sets; unfortunately the last four are only available individually. Note that these are in PAL format only, so you need a player capable of playing PAL. (To me, no racing enthusiast should be without a PAL deck, since there are a ton of great DVDs available in the UK that have never been issued in our NTSC format, and undoubtedly never will be.) Check them out at Amazon.co.uk; the prices are reasonable.

 

The last disc is a bit different: it is only 55 minutes (as compared to 90) and covers a full six years (1967-1973), as Mr. Tate’s race-going diminished to about one event a year.

It appears that he got disillusioned over the increasing commercialism in racing, as well as the decreasing ability of privateers to be competitive. At his last race – Silverstone 1973 – he decided to leave after the major second-lap wreck precipitated by Jody Scheckter, and that was that!

That’s funny – he complained about the relative restrictiveness of racing in the ‘70s compared to the ‘50s; I decry the relative restrictiveness of racing today compared to my first race in the ‘70s! I guess it’s all a matter of relativity.