Page 106 - Bespoke Issue

MOTOR MOUTH
Today I’m at the RAC club, that beautiful old building on Pall Mall that is home to the historic Royal Automobile Club, which long since separated itself from those guys in vans that provide roadside rescue, although that is where it started.
The club is still very much a motoring club and the trophy room holds some of the most legendary silverware available to any racing driver and there is still a different racing car inside the clubs ‘rotunda’ just opposite the very formal reception, every couple of weeks. This is a proper old boys club, which is why today I have donned jacket, shirt and tie to meet one of the motorsports genuine ‘old boys’ David ‘Hobbo’ Hobbs. I am met at reception and taken up the grand staircase to sunny private room at the rear of the vast building where David is waiting.
As I enter through the oak panelled door I am greeted by a very healthy looking elderly gentleman with a sun tan. David Hobbs. He has a very relaxed demeanour about him as he rises from his seat to great me. The large table is almost covered in copies of the new hardback coffee table book “Hobbo”, David’s autobiography, all of which he has to sign in time for this evening cocktail party.
David acquired a Lambretta scooter at the age of 16 which he would ride everywhere at out, which still wasn’t very fast, so he quickly upgraded to a 500cc Triumph Speed Twin, he found he had a natural balance for speed. It was on the Triumph he and his girlfriend Mags (still his wife today) took themselves to Mallery Park to watch the motor racing and this is when David decided that racing cars was what he was going to do. He entered his rst race in his moms 7 year old Morris Oxford, moving up quickly to Jaguars (his dads) and nally his rst real racing car, a Lotus Elite. He got the attention of the racing world.
David Hobbs became “Hobbo” the racing driver. As a young man and racing fan the race he most wanted to drive was Le Mans, this was a real race, it had a certain glamour and mystique about it. In 1963 he achieved that goal and started his rst Le Mans in a Lola Mk6 GT, then followed drives in the Lola T70 until nally the big break happened. He raced piloted the Ford GT40, still today one of
his all time cars. He did two seasons in the famous Gulf Wyer cars bringing them a win at Monza and a third place at Le Mans in 1969.
Hobbo is the perfect story teller, whilst we are talking about the GT40’s and Le Mans he tells me of an incident at Le Mans in 1968, following two Porsche 908’s who had been battling in front of him, both factory cars that had passed him as the 908 was fractionally quicker than the GT40 around the track, they were pulling away but he kept them in sight for about half an hour racing side by side, they went round the kink together and there was suddenly a blinding ash of light and huge ball of ame “when I arrived on the scene, still doing 180 mph, braking hard the whole track was completely obscured by smoke, dust and ames, I just went in thinking what am I going to do, I’m braking hard, I can’t swerve as I don’t know where to swerve to. When I came out of the smoke the other side there was this half a Porsche stuck to the guard rail blazing away and the other half was bouncing down the road in front of me, then out popped the
driver and he started to bounce down the road as well” This was an ‘in lap’ so when he came in he warned Mike Hailwood his co driver “you’ll be behind a safety car forever because some blokes just been killed down the kink”, this was a driver called Udo Shütz, he goes on to tell me he saw him about four years ago at Daytona, he said I thought I saw you die, but Shütz was very much alive.
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