Biffo`s Book Review

[Biffo]

Biffo`s Book Review - The Thrill of the Century by Pete Tucker

 

 

Found this one, second hand, on Ebay last December, cost me about £14 inc. P&P but does have authors signiture inside.

 

Pete Tucker raced stock cars from the very first meeting in the UK, Good Friday 1954 at New Cross Stadium.

He continued his racing career through to 1964, finishing up racing in, the then new, formula two stock cars as national points champion.

We can all look up records and dates to see who won what in this era but thanks to Pete Tuckers detailed memory this book actually takes you back there.

He wrote the book around 1993 , as he puts it ," while I can still remember ".

 

Pete`s first job was at Ford`s Dagenham Plant getting Ford American Army trucks ready for D-Day.

He took over the familys second hand car sales and scrap yard business in Wembley, when his father died.

A couple of years later he met with the ex boxer, ex Speedway rider and Circus Promoter, Digger Pugh.

Digger was a kind of Austrailian Danny De Vito, standing five feet nothing, and usually wearing a bright Hawiian shirt.

What he lacked height he made up for with his huge enthusiasm and ideas.

 

After seeing some stock car films of the US racing and seeing an actual Stock Car ready to race, that Digger had got built and painted, he went back to the Wembley yard and took the For Sale sign off a 1930`s Ford V8 on the forecourt and set about building a stock car.

The car was towed across London to New Cross Stadium for the practice day and he was stopped from going onto the track when it was noted he wasn`t wearing a crash helmet.

" I`m not planning to crash so I dont need one" came his reply, needless to say he had to get his mechanic to go down to road and buy one.

 

 

Well the big day came and the stadium was full 4 hours before start time (7.45 pm).

The crowds loved it and the drivers loved it and of course the promoter loved it.

Spins, roll overs, wrecks galore and if you could survive a race, some decent prize money up for grabs.

After 3 New Cross meetings, filling the stadium with 30,000 people each time, the promoter switched to Harringay Stadium which could hold 40.000

He was able to fill this too on race nights, throughout the rest of the year.

 

Digger Pugh was now opening tracks as far south as Plymouth and as far North as Newcastle and wanted a team of drivers to sign up full time.

This would give them up to 5 meetings a week and adding together start money, prize money and travelling expenses could net you £400 per week.

Pete Tucker signed up, after all £400 in those days is closer to £4000 today.

Amongst the travelling Barnstormers as they were called, a Woman driver , Mrs Tanya Crouch.

Petes initial response to meeting her at the first practice day at New Cross was that if they couldn`t drive properly on the road what did women think they could do on the track ?

However Tanya had other ideas and Pete soon changed his mind when he saw her throwing the car sideways round the bends at speed, and was to go on to beat the men on several occassions.

 

 

Pete Tucker travelled to as many meetings as possible covering thousands of miles, of course the UK roads at that time resembled the B roads of today with no Motorways and very few by-passes .

Long distance trips were taken during the night when there was little traffic and very few cops around.

There were no all night petrol stations either so for a long trip extra fuel cans were carried and some small bore rubber tubing so if you got real low you had to go "Milking" to get some more, and of course cows were not involved in the process.

The only beacons of light on the road in the early hours were the series of all night transport cafes doted around the country.

Here you could park up amongst the lorries, vans and other stockers and get a big breakfast for a shilling ( 5p ) while the juke box played the latest Rock and Roll.

At some establishments you could even dance to the music with the girls that were attracted to the place, most were hookers on the game but pleasent enough to dance with.

 

 

Repairs could be a problem on the move but loads of spares were carried, even engine changes were possible if you found a lay by and a large tree with an over hanging branch.

Gas bottles also came along for repairs and heating up bent axles.

Sometimes the unexpected happens, like one night, on a trip down the A30 they got so many punctures that they had to abandon the tow vehicle and throw as much as possible into the Stock Car . Then, after attaching a torch to the front bumper to light up the cats eyes, both Pete and his mechanic, known as Sprogg, drove the race car through the night from near Salisbury, Wiltshire until daybreak when they reached an all night Cafe near Exeter. After a phone call to the Stadium at Plymouth a car and trailer was sent out to get them.

 

Of course it wasnt all fame and fortune, Pete drove down the A3 once to visit Portsmouth Stadium which he described as a right dump with not many spectators.

They put on the usual good racing although he managed to brake the gearbox before the final.

After the meeting the promoters presented the Final winner with a shiney trophy for his lap of honour but later took it back, he couldnt keep it, it was just for show.

Then the promoters pleaded poverty and for his travelling expenses, start and prize money he received the grand sum of £1 and 10 shillings.

He didnt bother going back there again.

The season finished in October by which time tracks had opened all over the place with plenty of different Promoters, some good and some not so.

 

 

PORTSMOUTH STADIUM 2011 NOW DISUSED , VIEW FROM THE M275

 

Closed season was a bit of an anti-climax but there was an AGM to attend which consisted of a lot of talk and ideas but not much changed , then finished up with a good Pub crawl.

Then there was the Dinner Dance that was allways well attended where you would dress up, have a good meal then dance the night away or just prop up the bar and chat " racing ".

Then, when everyone was nicely boozed up, the Ballroom floor was made into an oval track and drivers would be able to take part in races on tri-cycles.

The whole thing sounded hilarious with people falling off and crashing . Then you just drove home, remember no breathalysers back then.

 

Same again in 1955 except there was a short lived alliance between Nascar in the US and the UK being called Bascar.

This allowed a team of drivers from the USA to come over here and race against the UK.

The USA team had to drive all the way up from the Carolinas in the South to New York, where their cars were put aboard the Queen Mary and then transported across the Atlantic to Southampton.

They were promised travelling expenses, appearence money and prize money .

The American cars from Nascar looked very much the same as the UK Stock Cars but thats where the similarities finished because they were six seasons ahead of us and under the bodywork were basically racing parts, from engines to suspension.

Needless to say in the team racing they walked all over us, sometimes laps ahead and in the normal racing they were getting most of the prize money.

During the season the team racing faded out , partly due to the Good `ol boys getting homesick and partly due to some greedy promoters not paying out the money that was promised.

 

As the 1955 season faded out so did the name Bascar, although it was reserected some years later as the promoters association, BRISCA

 

Same again in 1956 except Digger Pugh moved on and dissappeared from the scene and then Petrol Rationing arrived after the Suez Crisis.

Pete and another driver couldn`t get around the country on rations so they had to come up with a brainwave between them.

There saviour was Paraffin not rationed and cheap too and of course illegal if used on the roads but only if you got caught.

By putting the fuel line across the exhaust and tweaking back the ignition timing it worked, except for the smell of Paraffin !

Then they found if you put a handful of moth balls into the tank when filling it - no more smell.

This little wheeze took them around the country the whole season.

 

 

FORD WRECKED AFTER FOLLOW IN BY 2 TONS OF PACKARD

 

Another problem in the early days were cars that were too heavy so a weight limit was brought in but nothing got weighed at the track so some cars were still overweight.

A 1930`s Ford V8 coupe when prepared for the track would weigh roughly 1 ton but a big Packard well ironed up could weigh twice that.

In one incident a driver came down from Bristol to one of the London tracks and was told his car was overweight and he couldnt race.

He wasnt having any of it and started to cause trouble in the pits.

So the Londoners, not wishing to cause any more unpleasentness, walked away, then returned and set fire to his stock car, and no he didnt race that night !

 

 

To cut a long story short thoughout the remainer 1950`s things went downhill.

The bubble had burst, crowds were dwindlling, tracks were closing and there was a shortage of cars and they were now allowing Specials to race.

These were less stock production cars , more homemade hybrids on ladder frame chassis and a cut down body stuck on top , the forerunners of todays F1 stock cars.

Specials cost far more money to race and build while the prize money was going down and Specials were loathed by the original pure Stock Car drivers and fans.

 

On the up side during this period the British Stock Car Drivers Association ( B.S.C.D.A.) was formed to regulate the cars and protect the drivers from some of the poorer promoters.

The BSCDA made one of the best moves to improve the racing in 1957, the grading system , white roofs, yellow roofs, blue roofs and then the star red roofs at the back.

This became the way forward with the best drivers at the back and having to get through the pack , just as we know it today.

Seems strange now that it took until the 4th season to implement such a simple rule, this was because some people thought, wrongly, that it just wouldnt work and the best drivers wouldnt get through to the front without being wrecked.

 

 

Something had to happen if the sport wasnt going to continue to downsize , then in 1961 came a new breed of Stock Car, Formula 2 ( labelled Junior Stock Cars).

The idea was that due to the shortage of cars and the expense to start racing one of the F1 cars ( labelled Senior Stock Cars ) a stepping stone , smaller 10 horse power, cheaper version of car would bring the newer drivers into the sport who would then step up to the bigger F1 cars.

Did this work, well yes and no.

The F2 cars were a throw back to the idea of cheap stock car racing and boomed within a couple of seasons.

This brought the crowds back in to watch the little cars bouncing around and causing chaos again.

Only problem was they were so popular that even the F1 drivers wanted to race them and many abandoned the ranks of F1, as did Pete Tucker and his brother Tommy Tucker.

 

This brought about a big rift amongst the promoters because some decided to forget F1 cars and just run meetings for the F2 cars which brought in the crowds.

One such promoter was Les Eaton ( Paramount Promotions ) and its thought that to teach this newcomer a lesson they refused him a licence to race at Arlington Raceway at the 11th hour and then withdrew his Aldershot licence as well , and of course that back fired on them, in the long run, when he started up in competition as Spedeworth promotions.

This split the drivers as well , some stayed loyal to the BSCDA, like Pete Tucker while others had had enough of the politics and joined up to Spedeworth, like his brother Tommy Tucker.

 

Theres one more piece to finish this jig-saw , a young Stock Car driver called Gerry Dommett from Fordingbridge, who turned to Promoting back in 1957 at Matchams Park Raceway, Ringwood. Matchams had been running Stock Cars from the first season in 1954 but was one of the first to close untill 1957 when Gerry swept away the speedway track and had one of the first all tarmac tracks.

Some drivers said it would be impossible to race on anything other than shale `cos their locked diffs couldnt go round the bends and besides the tyres would grip too much and fall off of the rims. But of course everything was fine and it became a very popular venue.

Gerry dommett also promoted tracks at Southampton and Swindon but best known today for his Mendips Raceway , near Bristol.

 

 

The most popular F2 car to be raced in the early 1960`s was the old 1930`s Ford Y Popular with its 1172cc engine and, believe it or not, they had a thermo-syphon cooling system.

Basically heat went round the engine and was cooled through the rad as normal but without the need of a water pump !

If, as often happened at the old Southampton track, they over did the watering of the shale track , the cars radiator would get sprayed with shale and cake up causing over heating.

So you risked seizing the engine or just gave up and parked in the centre.

 

Pete Tucker arrived at the Southampton track in 1964 after it had been raining and there was the water truck going through the puddles watering the track.

He`d had enough explaining about the problems of over watering before and after a quick meeting with the other drivers, went straight to the promoter and told him they werent going to drive on that soup that was now the track, but Gerry Dommett insisted they would.

The spectators arrived and still no racing while tempers fraid until Pete Tucker drove his stock car onto the track, knocking over every marker barrel around the inside and came back again to many boos from the crowd.

As he got out of the car Gerry Dommett came up to him looking angry and within seconds the two of them were having a right old punch up in front of the crowd.

They got dragged apart and then the meeting started as normal except for Pete Tucker who loaded up, went home and never raced again.

 

Pete Tucker then followed his interest in buying , selling and exhibiting American cars but kept in touch with many drivers until joining the Vetern Stock Car Drivers Club.

It was at an AGM for the V.S.C.D.C. that the guest of honour was none other than Gerry Dommett.

The two men walked up to each other, shook hands and then spent the rest of the evening talking Stock Cars.

 

Well if you stayed the course and read all of that, well done but believe me thats only a brief outline of the book which is cram packed with far too many stories and incidents that happened back then to include here.

I`d certainly recommend it and someone should read it then write a screen play, after all if they can make a film hit from just 4 weddings and a funeral, this would be so easy.

 

I did some checking and it seems Pete Tucker is still around `cos recently ( 2010 ) Radio 4 interviewed him on the early years of Stock Car racing in the UK .

He says that you`ve still got Oval racing today in various forms but that those days were the best and after reading his book I cant disagree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ryano]

Rated Stuff, Biffo, reporting on stuff almost as old as yourself!

[Biffo]

Almost....lol