Stirling Moss, Jim Clark, Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren, Jackie Stewart and other famous Grand Prix racers won at Wigram — these days it’s as though the race never existed. Eoin talks to one of the founders of the Lady Wigram races — Frank Brewer
Visit the RNZAF museum at Wigram and ask about the international Lady Wigram Trophy motor races that roared around the airfield one weekend every January for 25 years, and you will be rewarded with a blank stare. “The what? Car racing at Wigram?”
In March this year there was a Wings & Wheels display at Wigram. Vintage cars were on static show, but no mention was made of the famous motor races that had been staged there.
Fame first came to Wigram when Charles Kingsford Smith — Smithy — made history by arriving from Australia in his Fokker Tri-Motor in 1928, completing the first trans-Tasman flight. Ongoing fame came with motor racing through the 1950s and 1960s, and yet the RNZAF Museum seems anxious to ignore this sector of the airfield’s alternative international reputation.
Maybe this shortfall in the Wigram information department is because the Prime Minister of the day wished the race upon the Wigram aviation top brass, and they had to accept it reluctantly.
Founding father
Jack Brewer, one of the founding fathers of the Motor Racing Club, remembers setting up a street race on public roads near Harewood in 1948. They had arranged for the local RSA to man the many spectator access points, and take a substantial share of the gate to fund their new clubhouse at Papanui.
Residents around the roads that would make up the track looked forward to the race — but the committee of the Russley Golf Club didn’t. At the last minute they threatened to slap an injunction on the race, which looked like inconveniencing its members wanting to get in the gates for a game while the race was on.
Jack Brewer, one of the founding fathers of the Motor Racing Club, remembers setting up a street race on public roads near Harewood in 1948
Racing driver Pat Hoare and ‘Shotgun Charlie’ McIvor went to Wellington to run their motor racing problem past Howard Kippenberger in the hope he would help for the sake of the RSA. Kippenberger was writing a war history, and had an office in parliament buildings. He was also a solicitor, and said that in his opinion the golf club would win with its injunction. Perhaps the Prime Minister could help? ‘Kip’ arranged an instant appointment with Peter Fraser and did all the talking, said Brewer.
The Prime Minister suggested a circuit round the aircraft taxi strips at the Harewood airfield, but they felt it would be impossible to close a commercial airfield for two days. “What about Wigram?” suggested Fraser. “There won’t be any public to inconvenience there¦”
Brewer laughs now. “The boys tried to sit up straight and not fall out of their chairs when Fraser said he would get Fred Jones, Minister of Defence, on the job. They approached the whole thing from the point of view of the RSA fund-raising. I don’t think any of them up there could have given a horse’s arse about the race¦
“Jones said the public of New Zealand had an awful lot of money invested in Wigram, and he didn’t see why the public shouldn’t have a weekend’s sport once a year. He had no objection at all. He said he’d get in touch with his Chief of Air Force to see if he had any objections from a service point of view.”
Burglars
The following Monday they went out to Wigram and met with Wing Commander Hank Greenaway. Brewer recounts that Greenaway personally wasn’t very happy about it. He reckoned it was about as logical as lending the flight deck of a moored aircraft carrier for a tennis tournament, but he’d had a signal from his superiors in Wellington to make the place available to us, so he would.
Greenaway told Brewer, “We’ll get together and discuss the things you may do and what you may not do. It won’t be up for discussion. We’ll be telling you what you can do, but within those parameters, it’s yours.”
All the top drivers and cars came out from Britain and Europe. Everyone in Christchurch remembers that weekend 50 years ago
They were allowed on to the base at 4pm on the Thursday. “When the last plane was put away in the hangar and the doors were shut, they fired a Verey pistol flare from the control tower and then we were in — like bloody burglars,” Brewer said. They worked until midnight laying out the circuit. Practice was on the Friday afternoon and the races were on Saturday. Everything was dismantled again as soon as the last race ended.
“Jim Clark once told me over a beer that in his opinion, Wigram was the best short circuit he had ever raced on — and that the facilities were the worst!” Brewer smiles at the memory. “And then he congratulated us on what we had been able to do within the time constraint of the weekend.”
Lady Wigram Trophy
Morrie Proctor won the first Lady Wigram Trophy race in 1949 driving a Riley. Hec Green won in 1950 in the RA-Wolseley that he built himself. Les Moore would win in 1951 and 1952 driving a 1930s P3 Alfa Romeo Grand Prix car originally raced in Europe by the great Tazio Nuvolari. English gentleman racer Peter Whitehead won three years in a row with Ferraris, and in 1958 Archie Scott-Brown, born with a deformed arm, won a heroic race in a Lister-Jaguar sports-racer, literally single-handed.
It was like having a world championship Grand Prix in Christchurch every January. All the top drivers and cars came out from Britain and Europe. Everyone in Christchurch remembers that weekend 50 years ago when Ken Wharton led the race in the amazing supercharged 16-cylinder 1500cc BRM. The incredible scream of the exhaust could be heard all over the city that afternoon! Wharton pitted for oil late in the race, and eventually pushed the car over the line to claim third place. Ron Flockhart won in another, quieter, BRM P25 in 1959, Jack Brabham won in 1960 and 1961 in Coopers, Stirling Moss won in a Lotus in 1962, and Bruce McLaren won for Cooper in 1963 and 1964. In 1960, the engine blew in Bruce McLaren’s Cooper during practice and he borrowed the Auckland-built aero-engined Lycoming Special, driving the unusual car to fourth place in the trophy race.
Jim Clark won the race three times for Lotus (1965-’67-’68) and Jackie Stewart (BRM, 1966) and Jochen Rindt (Lotus, 1969) won the Lady Wigram Trophy once each.
American driver Phil Hill, 1961 world champion for Ferrari, drove a Cooper in the McLaren team in 1965, and would always remember his Christchurch visit because he was arrested! An American tourist had been robbed of several US$20 bills, and when Phil, unwittingly, visited a bank to change some American 20s for local currency, the police were called. The teller stalled for time, and finally the impatient Phil grabbed the cash from her startled grasp, storming out of the bank. The police arrived to see him leaving and gave chase. Phil thought he was being followed by race fans for autographs, but soon discovered otherwise when the policemen suggested he accompany them to the station. The driver of the squad car leaned round and asked who they had picked up.
Phil takes up the tale: “The cop beside me told him, ‘He says he’s Phil Hill the racing driver¦’ Then he commented on my chronometer wrist watch and asked where I’d bought it. I told him I’d been given it when I won the Le Mans 24-hours race, and he said he guessed it would be engraved by way of proof. I said ‘Of course it is!’ and I ripped it off my wrist to show him¦ There wasn’t a mark on the back!” In Phil’s defence, he had won Le Mans twice. He was eventually let off with an apology, and delivered back for a late lunch at the Occidental Hotel, where the team was staying.
“Jim Clark once told me over a beer that in his opinion, Wigram was the best short circuit he had ever raced on”
We asked him where he had been. “Where have I been? I’ve been in jail, for God’s sake!” His colourful description of his morning left the other diners, mostly farmers and their wives in town for the day, open-mouthed.
Commercialism
The international fields waned at Wigram in the late 1960s, coinciding with the arrival of sponsorship and huge commercialism in Formula 1 which meant the top drivers were not allowed time off for winter sunshine in the colonies. In fact Christchurch featured in the advent of sponsorship in Formula 1 that evening before Wigram in 1968 when Jim Clark’s Lotus, green with a yellow stripe, went into a local paint shop and came out decked in the garish red, white and gold colours of Gold Leaf cigarettes.
The motor racing world was changed for ever that night in Christchurch. Racing continued at Wigram for the ‘Big Banger’ 5.0-litre single-seaters powered by American V8 engines, but the series finally ended in 1976 when the evergreen Ken Smith (still racing in Formula Ford in his 60s!) won in a Lola-Chevrolet.
Jack Brewer RIP
Jack Brewer, one of the men behind the first Lady Wigram races, and partner to Hec Green, died in August at the age of 91
Jack was my bridge to the racing past in Canterbury, and I valued chats with him when he came to modern motor races at Ruapuna as a VIP guest with his son Garth and daughter Rossi. Jack worked with Hec Green on the pedigree line of RA Specials, and he also had a pivotal role in the establishment of the Lady Wigram Trophy.
He had studied technical topics at school in Christchurch, and with two friends he established an engineering business that became an important source of the line of racing cars that carried the RA prefix. I asked him what the letters stood for and he said, “Rong Again,” laughed, and then said, “Racing Automobiles.”
Early days
Jack started his competition activities on a motorcycle, and applied himself in a professional manner with a racing manager, winning races and setting hill climb and sprint records in the 1930s. “The last bike I had was a Rudge Ulster, and I got all the TT Replica gear out for it — cams, pistons, close-ratio gears. Before that I had a Sunbeam and I worked on that with Len Harrington, who was also my racing manager.”
A racing leg injury prompted Jack to switch to cars, and with Hec Green he built the RA series of cars, the final RA-Vanguard being the best, with the engine based on a Standard Vanguard but modified almost to Grand Prix standards. “I’d learned a lot about getting more power from motors and Hec knew nothing about that side of it, so when we got the Vanguard the motor was my part of the project, and Hec did the chassis. The thing handled bloody beautifully! Hec had started out as a shearer. He learned engineering as Air Force ground crew in the war, and that was all he knew about engineering, but he was one of the cleverest men I’ve ever known and his ability for lateral thinking was uncanny¦”
As fate would have it, Hec died in Australia a few weeks before Jack.
Memories
During my last talk with Jack at Ruapuna, we eased back half a century to talk about the racing exploits of Les Moore and his speedway champion son, Ronnie. Les had been a deep sea diver, wall-of-death motorcycle daredevil, speedway rider, and car racer with his vintage GP Alfa Romeo P3 winning the Lady Wigram Trophy in 1951 and 1952. Les was killed in an accident at the Timaru track in the RA-Vanguard — a car which Jack had helped build.
That was the way it was when you were in the coveted company of Jack Brewer. He was a wonderful raconteur if he felt your company warranted his memories, and I was always proud to be included in his circle. Another of our motor racing pioneers has passed.
Words: Eoin Young
