04-02-2019, 06:28 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-02-2019, 01:06 PM by Nick Salmon.)
Many will be familiar with the name of Kay Petre who, among many other wonderful motoring and racing exploits, drove the Jamieson twin-cam for the Austin works racing team in the mid 1930s.
I have just been reading S.C.H. (Sammy) Davis' 'Rallies and Trials', published in 1951 by Iliffe & Sons Ltd. He is describing his entry to the 1935 Monte Carlo Rally in an open four-seat Railton, and he gives an interesting description of Kay Petre that goes some way towards explaining her character. Thought I would share it with you, just for interest.
"The crew consisted, besides myself, of Charles Brackenbury, who was tough, and Mrs Kay Petre who had been of the crew the previous year. Kay, whom I had met earlier on and had helped when she began racing, was one of those puzzles that seriously upset elderly, ultra-conservative people to the point where they break blood vessels.
Small, amusing and decorative, she looks the last person who could stand hours and hours of driving, lap Brooklands at 130 and tackle any difficulty with the tenacity of a small cinnamon bear, especially when wearing the 'butter-won't-melt-in-my-mouth' expression. As a co-driver she is as tough as you can make them; nobody takes the job more seriously, nobody can last longer when really tired.
Henry Petre, her husband, I had met right away back in 1912-13 when we were all interested in the apparently insane idea that a thing that looked like a box kite made of odd wood, canvas and a weird rotary engine, could be made to fly. At this Henry was the cat's whiskers, his method of coming in to low over the roof of the Blue Bird Cafe at Brooklands with a Deperdussin monoplane in a high wind making strong men dive for cover below the stoutest tables saying altogether unprintable things. Anyhow, in the many years I have raced, or become involved in this or that competition, there is nobody I know better than Kay for the job and with whom one can have such frightful disagreements which arise like lightning from a clear sky and assume the proportions of an atomic explosion, only to die down in seconds leaving peace and friendship still unbroken. It is all most odd."
IMG_0001.jpg (Size: 195.91 KB / Downloads: 1,226)
I have just been reading S.C.H. (Sammy) Davis' 'Rallies and Trials', published in 1951 by Iliffe & Sons Ltd. He is describing his entry to the 1935 Monte Carlo Rally in an open four-seat Railton, and he gives an interesting description of Kay Petre that goes some way towards explaining her character. Thought I would share it with you, just for interest.
"The crew consisted, besides myself, of Charles Brackenbury, who was tough, and Mrs Kay Petre who had been of the crew the previous year. Kay, whom I had met earlier on and had helped when she began racing, was one of those puzzles that seriously upset elderly, ultra-conservative people to the point where they break blood vessels.
Small, amusing and decorative, she looks the last person who could stand hours and hours of driving, lap Brooklands at 130 and tackle any difficulty with the tenacity of a small cinnamon bear, especially when wearing the 'butter-won't-melt-in-my-mouth' expression. As a co-driver she is as tough as you can make them; nobody takes the job more seriously, nobody can last longer when really tired.
Henry Petre, her husband, I had met right away back in 1912-13 when we were all interested in the apparently insane idea that a thing that looked like a box kite made of odd wood, canvas and a weird rotary engine, could be made to fly. At this Henry was the cat's whiskers, his method of coming in to low over the roof of the Blue Bird Cafe at Brooklands with a Deperdussin monoplane in a high wind making strong men dive for cover below the stoutest tables saying altogether unprintable things. Anyhow, in the many years I have raced, or become involved in this or that competition, there is nobody I know better than Kay for the job and with whom one can have such frightful disagreements which arise like lightning from a clear sky and assume the proportions of an atomic explosion, only to die down in seconds leaving peace and friendship still unbroken. It is all most odd."
IMG_0001.jpg (Size: 195.91 KB / Downloads: 1,226)