Fifties Friday: 1959 Whitchurch Racing Circuit
This club has run motorsport events at dozens of locations around Bristol and on this day in 1959, we ran a Formula 2 race at Whitchurch Airfield. The airfield had been recently decommissioned as Bristol’s airport with today’s airport at Lulsgate now operating as Bristol Airport. Whilst that had lost us a clubhouse and a race circuit, the move also opened up a large piece of tarmac in the city. After running some quarter mile races in 1957 we went all-in for 1959 and hosted an F2 race.
The start finish line was on the main runway, not far from the skate park. The cars headed off through the skate park, avoiding the jumps because they’d not been built yet, and turned right off the runway at Dundry Corner towards McDonald’s and KFC before heading into the very fast Hangar Corner. I wonder if those fast food restaurants deliberately chose the location on the fastest corner of the circuit? If they did, was it because it was fast or because people like to Hangar-ound McDonald’s car park? Bursting through the middle of The Wessex Flyer, they headed down the perimeter road you can still see towards the right hander of Knowle Corner. On approach to the runway, a little left kink and a cheeky wave to the other drivers in the paddock on the left before turning right at Goram Corner and heading back to the start line with the pits on the right.
Not only did we run an F2 race that day, but we also ran 5 other races, starting off with a race for 500cc racing cars at 13:30, which could almost have been a one-make Cooper race. Grand Touring Cars were next up, featuring a Porsche, Wolseley, three MGAs, a Frazer Nash, two AC Bristols and an AC Aceca. Third race of the day was for under 1500cc Sports Cars and featured a plethora of Lotus (Lotuses, Lotii, whatever!), that Porsche again, a few Coopers and the Waddup Special. The F2 race was next with 25 laps of racing between the Coooper and Lotus stables. All the cars were green, except for Chris Summers, who decided to paint his car blue. He clearly didn’t get the memo.
Race 5 was as eclectic a mix as you could hope for, given they were all 1950s Sports Cars of over 1500cc. Jaguar, Aston Martin, AC Bristol, Lister, Connaught, Lotus and Frazer Nash all being represented. The big finale for the day was the Production Saloon Cars, split into classes of up to 1600cc and over 1600cc. With such top cars as the Triumph Herald on the start line, one can only assume they were trying to encourage spectators to leave early and avoid the traffic, given it was slated to start at 16:50 and mother would have the tea on the table at 17:30. Of course, with housing sprawling out to the airport, many were able to walk home from the races and thousands did.
Unfortunately, the August weather wasn’t quite the sunshine we had hoped and the track was wet, with News of the West describing it as “a steady downpour to a part-dried track with the sun winking in the puddles.” You don’t get AI writing prose like that these days. It was a short column, so here’s the whole thing for you, noting the lap record set at an average of 72.17mph, a speed you’d struggle to match today given the queue at the KFC.
