How I was hooked
I was fascinated to read Damien Smith’s column on the continuation BRM P15 (9 March). As a 15-yearold schoolboy attending my first race meeting – the National Trophy in August 1952 at the short-lived Turnberry circuit in south-west Scotland – I was hooked for life on Formula 1 by the banshee howl of the V16, reputedly audible 15 miles away.
The P15s were driven, if memory serves me right after 70 years, by Reg Parnell and Ken Wharton, and they were obviously a real handful. Stirling Moss drove an ERA G-type and Mike Hawthorn drove Tony Vandervell’s Thinwall Special.
The circuit (now buried under one of Donald Trump’s golf courses) used the runways and perimeter roads of a World War II aerodrome and the to-modern-eyes-horrendous device of cars running in opposite directions on either side of the main runway separated by straw bales. It was used only a few times, then superseded by Charterhall in the Borders. Alan Sneddon
Via email
The record shows Moss as entering for ERA but never arriving – KC