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Gerard, the Brooklands track is a sorry fragment of what it once was these days. There is perhaps half a kilometre of banked track left, and this is indeed where they filmed the programme.
On the positive side, the Brooklands clubhouse has been immaculately restored, and filled with memorabilia and cars of the period, and the pits and "tuning sheds" are also used for exhibitions.
The old track is a great place for a pilgrimage if you ever find yourself in England, and there is a very real sense of being in the presence of drivers who went before....
Once a year, usually at the start of July, the Brooklands Society turn out their favourite cars, and take to the banking for a nostalgic day of gentlemanly hooliganism. supercharged Bentleys, Vauxhall 30/98s, SSK Mercedes, Talbots, Lagondas and 3 wheeled Morgans are hammered around the banking in a display of either colossal joie de vivre or acute masochism.
Needless to say, I am a member of the Brooklands Society, and I can hardly wait for this year's event. A couple of years back, Stanley Mann took his Blower Bentley so close to the top of the banking that he had to remove large quantities of shrubbery, bushes and the occasional small branch from the radiator afterwards. In order not to fall off the top of the banking, you have to be doing at least 90mph to stay up....
The cars for the programme are pretty accurate, and mostly privately owned. No museum pieces these, many of them are frequent competitors in VSCC meetings each summer. The Tripoli GP entrants did look a little odd, as I certainly can't remember a Frazer-Nash in a Grande Epreuve, but the Maserati they gave to Rowan Atkinson to drive is a real ex-GP car, and I believe it has a history with "B.Bira".
I've seen the yellow Dodge that Rowan uses in the Brooklands sequence, and a wonderfully disreputable looking car it is too. Restored only as far as is necessary to make it run, it has a lovely scruffiness about it. Incidentally, Birkin never drove one of these, but the DFP that he actually raced when he met W.O. Bentley is, I think, an extinct species now.
Finally, how bumpy is the Brooklands track? Well, that little Tamplin cyclecar which loses a spotlamp in the race sequence, really did lose a lamp. It was not planned in the script, but the sheer vibration shook the mounting bracket apart. And the track surface wasn't a whole lot better when the circuit was in use.
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