More details on the Hailwood crash story

Regarding Douglas Begg’s letter in the last issue of OBM and the Hailwood/Ago tumble in the 1966 Senior TT in the Laurel Bank area; indeed, there are some photos of Mike restarting the Honda and resuming his leading position in the race. They were taken by the young man (an acquaintance of mine) sitting next to Douglas who had the camera he mentions in his letter. The photographer was a certain Andy – I can’t remember his surname – who ‘sat’ on the photos for some time because Mike had restarted the Honda downhill against the flow of the traffic and he would have been disqualified if it had been witnessed by an official.

The photos appeared in Classic Racer magazine some years later. We were at Glen Helen that race in 1966 and heard the crashes and the engines come back to life as they both restarted, but there were no marshals near enough to witness it. Douglas and his partner were privy to a unique bit of TT history.

OBM gets better and better.

We are pleased to be able to tell you that the photographer of the Classic Racer feature was Andy Vaughan-Jones and it is indeed a very interesting article. Ed.