What else to do with an abandoned airfield but make a world-class GP circuit or test track?
Why are the British so good at making sports cars?
It’s a question put to me in an interview recently, to which a previous interviewee had said that, in times gone by (maybe even now), only the British would be barmy enough to stand in a small, cold shed and decide that a world-class small sports or racing car might roll out of the doorway.
I think there’s a bit more to it than that, and that in creating what is today a world-leading array of companies, from niche sports car or component makers employing a handful of people to top-level racing conglomerates (10 of the 11 Formula 1 teams have their headquarters or significant operations in Britain), opportunities played their part too.
Weather is one of those opportunities. It’s not so cold here in winter that standing in a shed with a little heater in the corner is beyond us; if it snowed consistently for six months of the year, we would go skiing. And it’s not so warm that in summer you can’t stand or drive around a disused airfield without melting; if it were, we would nap more.
Then there are those airfields. Since an Australian friend of mine once noted that “you guys are obsessed with the war” and I thought she might have had a point, I’m wary about how often I bring it up. But when it comes to the question ‘what makes Britain a leading car racing nation?’, World War II is impossible to ignore. Britain liked motorsport and sports cars before 1939, but it was afterwards that our global dominance became really established, because the war left plenty of facilities for use.
Pick a British race circuit or test track and I’d say there is as good a chance as not that it was once a wartime RAF base, later turned into a motorsport centre. As the launch site for the liberation of Europe, Britain had dozens of airfields which, when later disused, had inviting runways and perimeter roads.
In 2020, I wrote a feature about former RAF bases that could have become race circuits but didn’t – and barely scratched the surface of it. In the late ’40s, it wasn’t always easy to get ministry permission to go racing but airfield perimeter roads and runways weren’t in short supply.
When prospective racers first arrived at RAF Silverstone in 1947, having gained the land-owning farmer’s permission for a weekend race meet, a man from the Air Ministry, which still technically ran the place, came and turfed them off. They quickly arranged to go to nearby Towcester race course instead, but within touching distance they could have also tried their luck at RAFs Bicester, Finmere, Upper Heyford, Croughton and more – and since then, three of those have hosted car testing. The racers returned to Silverstone – permission in hand – in 1948, and by 1950 it was hosting an F1 grand prix.
Post-war, aluminium was also plentiful, with an excess of it from scrap military aircraft (and a steel shortage) the primary reason that the Land Rover was developed with an aluminium body. Being light, available and easy to manipulate with hand tools, aluminium was the perfect material to introduce to a shed and plonk on top of, say, an Austin 7 chassis.
And yes, the Austin 7: let’s not understate its importance either. It popularised motoring in the ’20s and ’30s and was winning races even then. As early as 1939, the 750 Motor Club was established “to promote sporting use of the Austin 7”.
Being small, cheap, light and built in large numbers, there was ample supply of its simple, A-shaped chassis. It’s what Lotus founder Colin Chapman first used to make racing specials (without the Austin, there would today be no Caterham). And 7 Specials are still a big part of the ‘750’ scene today. I’ve had as much fun racing a 7 as I have anything, and many of the biggest names in motorsport history cut their teeth on 7s.
Just barmy people in sheds, then? Maybe, but you can find those the world over. Every species needs a habitat in which to thrive – and for the fast car enthusiast, Britain has had plenty of it.
