The Chicane

I haven’t been able to confirm this anywhere online – which is surprising given the number of ‘Save the Banking‘ sites and petitions that exist online – but Vintage Racecar Journal reports in their March issue that a deal has been struck between Monza’s ruling body the SIAS and the Monza city council that will guarantee the survival of the Monza banking. According to the article, the deal stipulates that the raised sections of the autodrome must be rebuilt within 5 years; not just preserving them, but restoring the banking to it’s former glory. Will we see race action on the banking again?

I sure hope so.

Following up on our last classic track piece on the Bridgehampton road circuit, let’s look at another track featured in the Last Open Road series of books. The Brynfan Tyddn road course saw action from 1952-56. “Brynfan Tyddn” is Welsh for “Large Farm on the Hilltop”, and consisted of a winding road around T. Nowell Wood’s 690 acre lake house estate. The race was an offshoot of a long running hillclimb event, the “Giant’s Despair”.
The running gag about the course in the book is how dangerous and tight the course is, despite it’s 3.5 mile track length. Looking at photos from the era, it’s not hard to see why. The road surface looked like crumbling asphalt barely a lane and a half wide, and looks more like a golf-cart track than a racing circuit – even in the days of back country racing of the early ’50s. Despite these shortcomings, the track drew huge numbers of fans and some interesting racers and cars. Carrol Shelby won this race in 1956 driving a Ferrari 500 Testa Rossa in what would be the last race for the course due to a track fatality.

But the 2.5 liter Ferrari’s win seems to have been an exception at Brynfan Tyddn as the course was historically dominated by smaller displacement racers: Keifts, Porsches, MGs, Siatas, and OSCAs. In fact, in the earliest years of the race, cars were limited to 1900cc engines. Perhaps maintaining the lower displacement rules would have kept the ’56 race safer and would have seen many more years circling Mr. Wood’s property.

Like the bulk of the road courses of the ’50s, the roads are still there, here’s a link to a Google map of the roads that made up the course, along with an approximate location of the start finish line. If you head out there, send me a photo.

Further Reading:

Also worth checking out is this scan of a 1952 Road & Track report from that summer’s outing.
You can buy prints of Carrol Shelby’s race and a brace of MGs from Wheels on Walls. Lots of great racing prints available there to cover your garage with.
Finally, here’s a lovely history of the races, complete with several records and other race results.

In the first of what I hope to make a long series here on the Chicane, let’s take a look at the sadly defunct track at Bridgehampton.

I’ve recently been plowing through the marvelous Last Open Road series of books by B.S. Levy. The series follows a young small-town auto mechanic as he throws himself headlong into the burgeoning sportscar racing scene of the early 1950s. We get to see through Buddy’s eyes the first race he attends at the street course in Bridgehampton, New York.

Bridgehampton hosted auto races on its streets since 1915. Following a fatal crash at Watkin’s Glen in 1952, the state of New York put a quick end to street racing on state highways. A group of enthusiasts, however, came together in 1953 and purchased a 550 acre plot of land that would ultimately house the 13 turn, 2.85 mile course.
A parcel of land that is now a golf course.

Here’s a Google maps screen grab of the current golf course with the track map laid over it; they’ve actually preserved a few turns and part of the main straight. Here are some photos of the site as it exists today. Follow that link to see some shots of the main straight, the blind 1st turn, and the Chevron bridge over the track. At least they didn’t make the whole thing a damn putting green.

Photos of the track in it’s heyday abound online, here are just a few:

Alfa discussion forum member Lowmileage collected a few in this thread.
Here’s a set on fotki. (lots of Can-Am era shots here).
Here’s pbraun’s set on Flickr.
On the bright side, there was some effort to maintain the track as late as 1999, as this New York Times article points out. It’s a good read for a quick introduction to the track and some of the legal wrangling that happens when people move to a neighborhood that has a long-established race track and then decide that race tracks are too loud.