The 1921 '500'
An article from the Brooklands Gazette by Brooklands Society founder and regular contributor William Boddy, which appeared in Vol. 31 No. 1 of the Gazette.
The end-of-season BRDC 500-mile races round Brooklands outer-circuit are remembered as highly exciting, very fast events, the first of which was held in 1929. Earl Howe welcomed the race as a change from those for sports-type cars. The astonishing thing is that a 500-mile motorcycle race had been held at the Track in 1921, when Brooklands was only just emerging from wartime closure.
This remarkable race was that of the British Motor Cycle Racing Club, the 'British' used to distinguish it from the BARC, not implying that it held races outside Weybridge fixtures. It was a brave undertaking and interesting that, whereas the 1929 car race attracted 36 entries, that for this pioneer bike race pulled in 64 with no room for three reserves. It was divided into engine-capacity classes, of from 250cc to unlimited, riders wearing different colour smocks to proclaim in which category they were riding. The field ran from Kershaw's little New Imperial to the big twins, which included Freddie Dixon's Harley-Davidson and the Indians of Le Vack, Davidson and Ruben Harveyson, and the big Zeniths. Thus early the cinema cameras were there, focused especially on the Douglas ridden by S. E. Wood for HRH the Duke of York. A surprising number of the riders had ridden at Brooklands before the war, many probably having survived Military, Naval or RFC active service.
Deafening
At 7.00am the start took place, all the riders being flagged-off at once. The noise was described as more deafening than anything heard at Brooklands pre-war and, as the last to finish came in after 6.00pm, I imagine this helped to start again the objection to noise, which long before had nearly caused the Track to be closed. It began after S. F. Edge had driven the Napier car, with two more, for a day and night round and round the outer-circuit in 1907; but then there were fewer residents to object. By 1921, think of what the position was with those living on St George's Hill in fine new houses or elegant older ones and being subjected to this day-long disturbance! It was this, perhaps, which led to official silencers and that temporary strike by the bike riding fraternity.
It had been predicted that this ambitious race would see only five per cent of riders finishing, but 50 per cent did so. Nor did the anticipated serious accidents occur. Experts thought the big-twins would lap at around 70mph but from the time of Mr. Ebblewhite flagging them away they were crossing the Fork at some 85mph. They were battling for the top prize, a Sydney Garrard 200gns gold cup presented by Alastair Miller (later Sir A. G. Miller, Bt), who had raced bikes at Brooklands from 1912 and who was competing on a Martin which retired with a seized engine.
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