MOTOR CARS | 10510“It rained heavily and continuously which is bad enough anywhere but
worse at Spa. During the night there was all sorts of mayhem...and by
04.00 on Sunday morning the only two really competitive cars left on
the track were the works Aston Martin” – co-driven by St John ‘Jock’
Horsfall and Leslie Johnson – “...and our own, running first and second
and on the same lap.
“At about 07.00 John Eason-Gibson came to me and said that David
Brown wanted us to stop racing against each other and to have an
arranged finish. I said ‘Does that mean we win and you are second?’,
and he said, ‘No, it means that we win and you are second’. I said I
would discuss it with Dudley. It was still raining hard and very slippery
and Joy Folland was all in favour of the arrangement. Finally Dudley
agreed that we would have a moratorium and maintain position at
reduced speed until 12.00 when we would think again.
“At one point during the Sunday morning I noticed that the works Aston
Martin had speeded up and was increasing its lead. I protested to
Eason-Gibson who professed ignorance and slowed his car down, but
of course he knew exactly what was going on.“At 12.00 we came in for our last stop and for Ian to replace Dudley. I
knew the works car would have to stop again whereas we would not.
Moreover, it would be driven by Leslie Johnson and while Jock Horsfall
was slightly faster than Dudley, Ian was certainly faster than Leslie. We
were less than half a lap behind and our car seemed better than at the
start. I was fairly confident we could win in the last four hours. But at
that last pit stop I noticed that the car took an extra churn of fuel, about
20 litres. Then, as Ian left the pit and accelerated up the hill from the
Eau Rouge we saw the car spin, it seemed quite slowly, and slide down
the steep slope on the right of the road.