Collectors\' Motor Cars and Automobilia

MOTOR CARS | 93

Sadly, economic times were hard. Following the cancellation of Le Mans,

Aston Martin withdrew indefinitely from active competition. The two

prototype 2-litre cars were to be sold. However, they had aroused such

interest that two further machines were laid down, with pure two-seater

bodies. Two entries were then made in the 1936 RAC Tourist Trophy

race at Ards in Northern Ireland, one a deadly serious fully factory-

backed effort and the other a relatively light-hearted entry for Alan

Phipps and his wife (nee Doreen Evans).

So it was that this very special machine made its racing debut in the

last of the RAC TT races run on Northern Ireland’s fabulous Ards

circuit. Its driver on the 13.6-mile loop of rural roads linking the towns

of Dundonald, Newtownards and Comber, was the then 23-year-old

Dick Seaman.

He was then just completing the sensational Voiturette racing season in

which he won on the Isle of Man, and at Pescara, Berne and Donington

Park in his modified nine-year old straight-eight Delage ¶ humbling

the strongest ERA and Maserati opposition. He had caught the eye of

Daimler-Benz racing manager Alfred Neubauer who offered a works

Mercedes-Benz test-drive at Monza. From 1937-1939 Dick Seaman

would become the first British driver to command a place in a maQor

Continental factory Grand Prix team ¶ winning the 193 German GP

before crashing fatally while dominating the 1939 Belgian Grand Prix...

At Ards in 193, driving ºH711<’ offered here, Dick Seaman had been

engaged to resist the German-design threat of the latest Frazer Nash-

BMW 32s, which Aston Martin was clearly desperate to beat. Aston

technical head ‘Bert’ Bertelli and new owner Gordon Sutherland fully

appreciated how valuable a TT victory could be over their German foe.

But during practice, to the team’s dismay, the Seaman car lost its

oil pressure due probably to a wrongly fitted dry-sump suction pipe,

and the engine bearings ran. By working through the night, chief

mechanic Joe Bestente and his crew re-assembled the engine in time

for the race, but it could not be run in. Seaman could race Åat out

and attempt to break the BMWs before wrecking his own engine....or

nurse the new Aston Martin throughout, hoping for misfortune to befall

the German cars.

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Dick Seaman in H6/711/U (No. 21)
at the start of the 1936 TT. © LAT

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Seaman powering round the Ards TT course, 1936.
© Ecurie Bertelli Archive

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