Old Race Tracks

[khyndart in CA]

February 26 1914. Vanderbilt Cup Race. Santa Monica.

Starting in front of the large crowd.
Gil Anderson in his Stutz # 3 ( This was the first Stutz ever built )
in front of Fiat # 9 driven by Frank Verbeck.







( Ken H ..)

[khyndart in CA]

1914 February 26th.
As seen in my earlier post. the LHD Mason # 10 of William Carlson was still leading the RHD Mercedes #12 of Ralph DePalma further around the course.


But at the end the Mercedes had come through to win easily as shown in this scene from a Mercedes brochure.
" Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday "



For the first time on TRS. A short clip of Charlie Chaplin at the 1914 Santa Monica races.



Some slapping shown that would not be tolerated in any filming today !


(Ken H..)

[khyndart in CA]

More photo identification.
"Two Cars and Crowd."
Is actually Harry Grant in his Isotta # 1 waiting to start alongside the # 2 Mercer of Spencer Wishart before the 1914 event.



The number 12 Mercedes was a two year old car in 1914 but with the skillful driving of Ralph DePalma made it a winner here at Santa Monica and a year later the same car and driver won the 1915 Indianapolis 500.





It was surprising to find that a Mercedes powered Mercedes would not win a Grand Prix event in the US for 100 years when Lewis Hamilton won the 2014 US Grand Prix at Austin, Texas.




( Ken H)

[khyndart in CA]

Another fast Mercedes at that time was known as the "Blitzen Benz" driven in 1911 by Bob Burman who sadly lost his life at the at the 1916 Corona race as told in the Post # 395.
A good description of the car and it's history can be found in this article.

http://www.autospeed.com/cms/article...zenBenz&A=2745






(Ken H...)

[Oldfart]

I purchased the Klemantski book on Blitzen Benzes, interesting how much muddied "history" there is. I didn't realize there was more than one. Muddied like NZ history is becoming

[Ray Bell]

While Benz and Mercedes were close at that time, they weren't to merge until 1926.

[khyndart in CA]

When one sees how little crowd control there was at early Vanderbilt races, it is surprising there were not more incidents like the one that happened at Santa Monica in November 1916 that hastened the end of road racing at this site.

Vanderbilt road racing and lack of crowd control, 1904
https://www.loc.gov/item/00564552


This peaceful present day photo of the place in Santa Monica where in 1916 a Marmon racer driven by Lewis Jackson, had steering failure on this slight curve and jumped the curb across about where that white vehicle is parked.
Although there were 4 fatalities and others injured and it happened on the 13th lap, the race carried on and finished as scheduled on the 48th lap !



A graphic of when things go horribly wrong.






(Ken H)

[jellywrestler]

Plenty of Old Race Tracks in this new NZ book on Road Racing Circuits, 160 of them actually. http://www.theroaringseason.com/show...-on-the-market