Willie Green cut his teeth driving Spitfires, Ginettas and saloons, but made his name at the wheel of the historic racing machines he drove with skill and finesse
WORDS SIMON HUCKNALL PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN BRADSHAW/WILLIE GREEN ARCHIVE
I must admit to some apprehension as I pull up outside Willie Greenʼs house, overlooking the Derbyshire Peaks. Willie has lived here since 1976, which is around the time I used to watch him at Silverstone, wrangling Maserati 250Fs around the old Woodcote bend at 130mph as he chased down 246 Dinos and Cooper-Bristols. To my young eyes, he was the most enthralling of all the historic drivers: seemingly fearless and the only one able to exploit the full potential of his Bamfordowned Formula One car in the way Fangio, Moss and Schell would have done back in the ʼ50s. That hackneyed – though sometimes true – expression ʻnever meet your heroesʼ does run through my mind as Willie greets me.
I shouldnʼt have worried. Instantly friendly and accommodating, with a quick, agile gait that belies his 80 years (and one serious racing accident that nearly crippled him), Willie is on top form as he reminds me that he, too, wrote for C&SC, as the magazineʼs official track-tester, back in the day. Now retired from racing – although only relatively recently – Willieʼs near 60-year competition legacy is astonishing. By his own modest estimation, he has entered around 1500 races, winning 6-700 of them. That he has done so for the most part in historic racing machines illustrates not only his aforementioned courage behind the wheel, but also the innate finesse needed to extract the most from what were still ferociously quick, but also immensely fragile and sometimes dynamically challenging, competition cars.
Willie was born in 1943, not far from where he now lives. He inherited his love of cars and racing from his father, WH (Wilfred) Green, who competed during the 1920s at Brooklands, Dublinʼs Phoenix Park and in the TT, collecting a notable third place at the 1928 Irish Grand Prix. But asthma, made worse by working in the cotton dust of the familyʼs textile business, put paid to Green Snrʼs future ambitions, and by the 1930s he had retired from motorsport. However, his passion remained and, working with Freddie Craner, he played a key role in establishing Donington Park circuit b
