It sounded quite amazingly like a wounded beast, hurt beyond endurance but still lethally dangerous as it surged dramatically close to the lip of the banked track. It would go over, they were convinced, leaping up into the air, hurtling beyond its own seeming ability to fly but when the driver of the sleek-nosed motor car pulled it skilfully back on to its true path, the soft sighing from more than a thousand throats could almost be heard over the ferocious sound of the racing cars’ engines. It was 1910. Since 1907, when it was built, Brooklands had been the Mecca for all driving and flying enthusiasts. It was created in the private grounds of the home of a gentleman named H. F. Locke-King, built by private enterprise and was the world’s first real motor course. Apart from racing it was meant to provide a ground for the testing of motor cars since the speed limit on the public roads was twenty miles an hour and the police were enthusiastic in their enforcing of the law. The first ‘meet’ was run like a horse race with the drivers dressed in ‘silks’ in the colours of their choice like jockeys and it was not until later that numbers were used to differentiate between drivers.
