THE WAY WE WERE
GOODWOOD CIRCUIT, WEST SUSSEX
Following our coverage from last weekend’s 80th Members’ Meeting, we head back to the third – the year that Jim Mayers became the first winner of the Motor Sport Brooklands Memorial Trophy
T he third British Automobile Racing Club (BARC) Goodwood Members’ Meeting was held at the Sussex circuit on 12 August 1950, with a selection of five-lap scratch and handicap races.
Following the opening of the Goodwood motor racing circuit by Freddie March, the Ninth Duke of Richmond, on 19 September 1948, the first of the BARC meetings was held there and a total of 71 such events took place until 2 July 1966, after which the course closed for competitive motor racing.
Members’ Meetings were revived in 2014, keeping alive the spirit of the original racing with some of the historic cars from this 1950 scene continuing to race at the Goodwood Revival weekend each autumn.
In our atmospheric image, the flag is raised for the start of the second fiv-elap scratch race of the day, for sports cars 1101-1500cc. MG T-types are well represented, and note the headgear among the drivers – or lack of.
The car to watch in this race proved to be the 22 car in the second row – aHarry Lester-prepared MG TAC, KJH114, driven by relative newcomer and wealthy amateur driver, Jim Mayers. Jim had originally raced the MG with its 1250cc engine in April 1950, but by the following month Lester had swapped it for the first 1466cc XPAG power plant.
In his fascinating book, Harry Lester and the Monkey Stable, Stewart Penfound tells how Lester had shrunk the cylinder heads to fit by putting them in his butcher friend’s freezer for a few days!
Lester was a garage owner well known for tuning and racing MG cars. He came second in the opening race at the August 1950 Goodwood BARC meeting driving one of his self-prepared MGs, but after making a good start in the five-lap scratch race for sports cars up to 1100cc, he gave way to R. Jacobs in his MG at Woodcote Corner and never regained sufficient momentum to overtake. Jacobs went on to win by two seconds.
Mayers had arrived at the Goodwood meeting that day with ten points under his belt towards the Motor Sport Brooklands Memorial Trophy. As the flag fell, Mayers made his move towards the front and soon found himself behind John Cooper’s MG-engined Cooper T14. Mayers hung on in there, even though his car’s performance was down. Cooper won the race by 9.8 seconds.
Ken Downing should have taken part in the race in his 1949 L2 2.5-litre Connaught, OPC3, but was a non-starter following radiator trouble.
T FOR TRACK DAYS
MG T-type sports cars were very popular for racing, and preparing them became an art for
