Yes, it is a very good event with a great variety of cars from different eras and a nice relaxed atmosphere especially on a sunny weekend. The Crystal Palace park setting with race cars in the grass paddock parked up amongst the trees makes you forget you are in London....and it still feels strange to me to be driving into London for a weekend of motorsport! 
Memories of Crystal Palace Motor Racing
It’s been three decades since the last wheel turned in anger at Crystal Palace, but the scream of racing engines lives on in the memories of those party to the action. In the following interviews, ex-racers offer a rare insight into the challenges posed by this tricky, undulating course, and spectators recall the excitement of having a race track in the heart of south London.
If you raced or spectated at Crystal Palace why not put your memories down in an email and send them to
[email protected].
We'll add them to this archive to remind people what a significant track the Palace really was.
http://motorsportatt...palace-memories
John Aley memories of Crystal Palace
In 1961, the National meeting was a round of the British Touring Car Championship. This was the year when so many Minis were battling each other in the 1000cc class; two such cars were the Don Moore-prepared Minis, raced by John Whitmore and myself.
John’s car had half a horsepower more than mine which, together with John’s spectacular driving, usually carried the day. However, on the occasion of the National meeting at Crystal Palace, I seemed to have the legs of him and finally, on the last lap, he overdid things and spun. Alas, I was too close to overtake and ran into him, letting a widely grinning Doc Shepherd pass us both and win the day.
While I did achieve a new class lap record and beat John, I still didn’t win the class. Worse was yet to come a year later when I was driving Mini Coopers. My car was set up for long races at the Nürburgring and other places on the Continent and I couldn’t even qualify on the short Crystal Palace circuit!
Perhaps the Palace and I were not made for each other.
Barrie ‘Whizzo’ Williams…
one of the UK’s most prolific racers, Barrie ‘Whizzo’ Williams raced only once at Crystal Palace, in 1972 in Ford Escort Mexico (he was scheduled to race in ‘71 but engine problems put paid to his weekend after practice). The Mexico race, then part of a single-make series, was won by Scheckter and in typically self-deprecating style, Barrie maintains he has no idea where he ended up. He does however, remember the tricky, fast nature of the circuit in the park. “It was bloody dangerous,” he says, half in jest, but partly in the manner of someone who simply accepted that his sport at that time took no prisoners. “It was a hell of a challenge because it was quite narrow and it didn’t suffer fools gladly. You didn’t dare make a mistake because you were into the barriers or the wall and those railway sleepers didn’t give way easily!
“The circuit itself was quite smooth,” says Whizzo, “and, coupled with it being very narrow, this led to real door-handle racing. You had to have big balls to make a lunging overtaking manoeuvre there and it didn’t suit the big cars much at all.”
Despite the great wheel-to-wheel racing that went on amongst the big saloons and little Minis, Barrie feels Crystal Palace actually suited the smaller single-seaters better: “They take up a lot less space [on track] and there were some very good F2 races there.”
Barrie recalls the peculiarities of a circuit located in the heart of the capital ensured a special kind of atmosphere. “It was always fun, and it had a real garden party type feel to it. But it was always a difficult circuit to race at because, if I remember rightly, there was only really one real entrance. There was a back entrance, that was supposed to be a paddock entrance, but everybody got it mixed up, so once you were inside you were stuck there!”
This May, Whizzo will be returning to Crystal Palace driving a Mini, last campaigned by Richard Longman at Goodwood in 2009. Barrie will be demonstrating the car on the Sunday and racing it on the Monday (this time without fear of the infamous railway sleepers!).
“I don’t know how good the car is,” admits Barrie, “in fact I’ve not driven it yet. All I know is it’s red, which has got to be worth a few bhp in itself!”
Gordon Spice…
Gordon Spice has a long and extremely successful history in international motorsport, racing all manner of vehicles, from Minis to sports cars. He’s raced to victory all over the world but it was at Crystal Palace in 1969 that, as a relative newcomer to the sport, Gordon won his first race. Driving a Britax-Cooper-Downton Mini, Gordon was able to exploit the nimble car’s terrific handling to clinch a memorable victory, made all the more satisfying as it was one of few motor racing events of the time to be televised (commentated on by a young Murray Walker no less!).
“I hold Crystal Palace in great affection,” says Gordon. “It was a very technical track, very narrow and you had to be very precise. But it was ideal for the Minis. We’d get blown away by the likes of the Escorts on some other tracks, but Crystal Palace really suited them. They [the Minis] used to understeer quite badly and the only way you could get them round the corners was to really chuck them in; we could do that at the Palace and it was very satisfying.”
While Gordon has gone on to achieve tremendous success in various formulas, he retains a clear respect for those legendary names he raced against in his early years at the Palace. “Just being in the same race as Jim Clark, Jack Brabham and Peter Arunel for example was a real privilege,” he says. “I didn’t know them that well but they were legends; competing against them was an honour.”
Clive Cooke…
“I remember when the Mini’s first raced at Crystal Palace – these funny little cars that everyone laughed at. Then they started everything!” Clive Cooke attended many events at Crystal Palace through the 50s, 60, and 70s, but it’s the arrival of the little Mini’s that stand out in particular. “No one had ever seen them race before,” says Clive “and watching the drivers trying to man-handle these cars around on their skinny tyres was quite sensational.”
Of course, as time went on, those skinny tyres became fatter, and in combination with some impressive engineering developments, the Mini’s soon became everyone’s favourite giant-slaying track-tool.
But the Palace didn’t only host saloon car races, motorbikes and sidecars also made regular appearances, with the likes of John Surtees cutting his teeth at the tricky little course in south London. “One of my abiding memories was watching the sidecars, because back then, they were uprights, not like today’s machines where the passenger kneels down; they were just like the motorbikes and sidecars on the road,” says Clive.
And that made for some incredibly exciting, and pretty dangerous racing. “Watching them trying to muscle those machines into South Tower bend, with them juddering across the track, was extraordinary.”
It’s a sign of the popularity of Crystal Palace as a venue that so many different categories of racing took place there. Indeed, Clive was present in 1959 when the final leg of the Rally of Great Britain was held at the Palace.
“My dad and I used to go down to Crystal palace on the Good Friday, then over to Brands Hatch on Easter Monday, it was a great long weekend of racing. Crystal Palace was so different to anywhere else because once you left the venue, you were right back in suburbia again.”
It was an extremely sad day therefore when the last race – won by Gerry Marshall – was held at the Palace in 1972. A Motoring News article of the time captured the sombre mood well: “After the last champagne cork had settled on the grid, it was sad to look into the fading light and reflect that never again would these white washed sleepers and golden trees echo to the roar of un-channelled exhausts”.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom though, as the Honourable Gerald Lascelles, president of BRDC at the time sounded a more upbeat note: “Within the next decade….the public may be clamouring for a new motor racing circuit within the conurbation of London. The sport is not dead and if we fail to find a new site, it’s certainly conceivable that the Palace will resound once more to the sound of race-tuned engines.”
It may be slightly more than a decade on, but that prophetic statement is about to become reality.
Edited by mab01uk, 20 May 2014 - 10:20 PM.
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