Quote:
Originally Posted by D-Type
Sorry Don, I missed the "No anecdotes please" in your first post.
But where do you draw the line? Do you classify Denis Jenkinson's contemporary report of a visit to the Vandervall factory as 'anecdotal', or record?
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You begin to see the problems the occur when you begin to dig a bit into the past of automobile racing. The anecdote concerning Vandervell and the CSI seems to be absent from the Jenkinson/Posthumus Vanwall book -- at least I could not find it a few minutes ago, so draw your own conclusions.
As it has been said, the "truth" is out there somewhere, only that it is often not what it was thought to be.
One can, with some difficulty, pull together the various bits of information that are available and, by interpretation of that data, have an idea as to what may have actually happened and offer that "truth" for others to consider. However, it should be kept in mind that new information or reconsideration of existing data may change that "truth." This happens quite frequently and historians understand this much better than non-historians. As Gordon Craig put it, “What we consider as such [historical truth] is only an estimation, based upon what the best available evidence tells us. It must constantly be tested against new information and new interpretations that appear, however implausible they may be, or it will lose its vitality and degenerate into dogma or shibboleth.” (Gordon Craig, “The Devil in the Details,” The New York Review of Books, 19 September 1996)
The history of automobile racing has been, is, and will continue to be a shambles. This is due to many reasons, some major, some trivial. It is also due, it must be said, to the bald fact that few really care about it. However, this is nothing new and I doubt that it will change any time soon.
Which brings me back to the issue of AvGas.
From what I have gathered, both from the chronicles of the time and subsequent information, the commonly accepted story about it being suddenly thrust upon the racing community seems to be less and less true and more and more of a wives tale. Piecing it together has been slow and often frustrating, but that is what it appears to be at the moment.