The Value of Motor Racing

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 302, 13 March 1928, Page 8

The Value of Motor Racing

Costly Business but Increases Efficiency

The modest motorist to-day, who ambles serenely about the country in a natty little 10 h.p. car that has cost him about £2OO, is very apt to say, “This racing: is all tosh. What good has it ever done me?’*

The question is a natural one, and the answer simplicity itself. If it had not been for racing there would be no such thing as the sort of car he drives at anything like the price he paid for it, and with anything like such admirable qualities of reliability, pace and economy.

When the early light cars (as opposed to cycle-cars) were first introduced, they were largely scorned as unpractical, but the racing policy, which by that time, makers of big cars had mostly dropped, soon brought them to the stage of reasonable perfection, since when they have become the essentially British type of car which every day is gaining more patronage in all parts of the world.

Take racing from the tyre point of view. Those who “cannot see the sense’* in motor racing might do worse than realise the 12,000 or 15.000 miles’ life which we now habitually get from a set of quite ordinary pneumatics is purely and simply a result of racing, for racing has forced tyre makers into improving their product far more quickly than would otherwise have been the case. From a technical point of view, as well, indeed, as from that of public interest in racing as a spectacle, the road event is superior to any other, and it is only because it is banned by the law that it has not

come into prominence In Britain and America. On the Continent a spirit of greater enlightenment prevails, and the big road races in France, Italy, Belgium and Spain havo thus commonly borne an international aspect. The expense of participating in these races, which means the building of special cars for the purpose, is considerable, and this fact, combined with the disturbance of production of ordinary models which the “specials” imply, has tended to attentuate the entry lists. It is frequently said that motor firms race for the purpose of obtaining advertisement. Doubtless they are not unmindful of the value which belongs to a conspicuous victory—it is, after all, largely the quest of fame that makes people try to do better than has ever been before—but they would be foolish to regard advertisement as the main object. It is just a.s easy to destroy a reputation as to build it up. Racing may be a costly business, but it enables experimental work that would otherwise take years to be compressed into a few weeks, if not hours. And, singularly enough, it is one of those things from which even more is learned by failure than by success.