Peter Ashdown

Peter Hawthorn Ashdown was one of the leading lights in British Formula Junior and a number of good results in Lotus sports cars between 1955 and 1957 brought him a works drive. He took three consecutive Autosport Sports Car Championships in 1959, 1960 and 1961 plus had wins at Sebring and the Nurburgring and there was a single World Championship GP, with a Cooper at Aintree in 1959. He was lucky to avoid serious injury at one race meeting, which was shown in a sequence of photographs in the Sunday Express newspaper. He had the offer of a SuperSpeed Lotus 20 and recalled “after trying it and the Lola in practice, I told Eric that I’d be driving the Lotus. John Hine, my team-mate therefore moved up into my place for that race and Eric fitted, for the first time, an 1100 cc Ford engine in the car. On the second lap, Hine went by me on the straight, left his braking late and spun. My car collected his and went into several rolls. The Sunday Express had the incident as a 12 photograph sequence, the last picture showing me scampering away from the car.”

Born on the 16th October 1934 in Danbury, Essex, before he started racing he had trained as a vehicle mechanic, then served three years in the Royal Air Force. While stationed in East Anglia, not too far from home, he managed to get himself on a mechanics’ course, “I was keen on cars but frankly didn’t know very much about them. The 16 week course was very intensive and I learned enough on it to be able later to prepare my own racing cars. I became pretty keen on that and always like to have the assurance of knowing I’d been over the car thoroughly.” He first started competing with a Ford 10 engined Dellow, which was used for trials, hill climbs and driving tests and then, with his parents assistance, he began to buy the bits and pieces to make a Lotus IX. However, “it was supposed to be ready for the start of the 1955 season but dealing with Chapman at the time was impossible. You’d arrive at the lock-up in Hornsey to collect a part only to find it had been sold to someone else. It took ages to get everything together and it was mid season before I was able to get out in it. The RAF had been very good to me, I’d been allowed leave at weekends to compete with the Dellow and when the Lotus came along, I was given the use of a nissen hut at Wattisham where I was stationed. From a Dellow to a Lotus IX was a bit of lump but I got used to it by driving it on the roads; it was my only means of transport. Mark you, it could be a bit hairy on the roads because saloon cars were much slower and taller than they are now and there was no 70 mph limit. I soon had to allow for the fact that neither drivers nor pedestrians would see me. I was demobbed from the RAF in 1955 and went to work as a driver for my father who ran a coach company. A lot of his work involved school bus contracts so I was able to work in the mornings and spend the rest of my time preparing the car.”

Races in 1955 with the Lotus saw a victory and three third place finishes at Silverstone then, “during the winter of 1955/6 I had it uprated to top specification, throwing out the live rear aide and fitting a de Dion system, changing the gearbox and so on. I also took the cylinder head of my Coventry Climax FWA engine to Don Moore and kept it for the next four years, fitting it to every engine I had.”

Continuing with the Mk1X in 1956, results included second at Oulton Park, second and third at Aintree, second and fourth at Snetterton, third and fifth at Brands Hatch, third, fourth and tenth at Goodwood plus twelfth in the Aintree 200 though he retired at the Daily Express Silverstone meeting. Following these there was a fourth at Snetterton, third, fourth and fifth at Brands Hatch, victory and two fifth places at Goodwood, three seconds, two thirds, fourth and fifth plus sixth in a 6 Hour Relay at Silverstone. He also raced on the continent and he and a friend drove the Lotus to Karlskoga, in Sweden, where he won his class and was third overall, and then drove home again to the UK. His final race was the Coupe du Salon at Monthlery in October but unfortunately he rolled the car and although lucky enough to escape uninjured he didn’t have the finances to repair it. He recalled how he was offered money to enter a race at Imola and, having accepted “I discovered there was another race at Montlhery the week before so arranged my schedule to take in that as well. That race was very wet and I lost the car, hit a bale and had a leisurely roll. The car had scrubbed off most of its speed and I just plopped over, being saved from injury by the height of the tail fins. Unfortunately the incident twisted the chassis and I simply had insufficient money to continue. It looked like the end of the road and I was ready to say ‘I’ve had my chance, I’ve enjoyed myself, and I’ve been luckier than many others’.” Regarding the season, he told how “I had no difficulty at all with the Elevens; one reason was that my 1X had drum brakes and the Elevens generally had discs and these often tended to snatch. More than once Colin Chapman came up to me after I’d beaten him and mutter half jokingly, ‘You really ought not be beating me, its bad for business.” His performances as the marque’s best privateer during the year were recognised with the John Coombs Trophy and had attracted interest from Colin Chapman. A couple of days after his Monthlery accident he received a call from Chapman inviting him to drive for him, “the deal was that Colin would provide the car and I would supply the engine. The IX proved repairable, I bought a new Climax engine for it keeping my Don Moore unit, and it was sold to Chris Williams who had quite a successful season with it.”

Racing a Lotus Eleven in 1957, he took victory at Snetterton, was second at a Stapleford Hillclimb plus second (twice), fourth and fifth at Brands Hatch, third at Goodwood, eleventh at the Aintree International and thirteenth in the British Empire Trophy. He was a member of the Lotus factory team for Le Mans but didn’t start the race then in August he and Alan Stacey retired from the Sverige GP 6 Hours. A highlight came later that month with victory at the Kanonloppet race at Karlskoga, sharing with Stacey and Bill Frost. He had become friends with Stacey, who had been racing a Lotus VI, and said “Alan and his brothers were a mad bunch who farmed near Chelmsford and each morning he’d pass by my workshop on the way to his own so naturally we got to know each other and became very close friends. You know that Alan had lost most of his right leg in a motorcycle accident but that did not stop him from racing cars, playing cricket or tennis or anything. He was always cheerful about it saying that it had given him his big chance-it was the compensation money which had allowed him to go racing. You’d normally never have guessed that Alan had an artificial leg except you’d be in a hotel or bar and he’d quietly undo some of the screws so his foot would slowly revolve around 360 degrees. Or else had suddenly drive a fork into it. We had great times. When the racing season was over we’d ride motor bikes in trials, every weekend. We got to know John Whitmore whose family estates were nearby. Alan, my-self, John and a friend of his Steve McQueen, would be out on our bikes over the Whitmore estate. It was before Steve became a big star and he was more or less penniless, living in one of John’s cottages. He was an excellent rider.” “For 1957 I was a member of the Lotus works ‘B’ team along with Alan Stacey and Keith Hall. Chapman arranged the entries and told us where we were to race. We received a small retainer and, if we won, one pound per mile of the race, with 10 shillings a mile for a second. With trade bonuses this would be doubled. Now bear in mind that you might do two race meetings a weekend and you could enter for the 1100cc race, the Unlimited Sports Car race and, perhaps, a Formula Libre race, so you could be looking at three or four hundred pounds for a successful weekend. That was a lot of money in those days. I’d had a furniture van converted to act as a transporter and living accommodation and would arrive at a circuit with some unpaid mechanics friends of mine, and we’d race and have a good time. There wasn’t much to choose between Alan, Keith and myself until we suddenly noticed that Keith had an edge and kept his bonnet firmly closed. We eventually tumbled to the fact he’d bought some Weber carburetters which were then about £150 but we’d soon sent someone over to Italy to buy some more. Keith, Alan and I had a good season, more or less sharing the honours between us though I think its fair to say that Colin thought most highly of Keith. Alan and I were down to drive at Le Mans in the 1,100 cc class but when the 1,500 cc Eleven of the Americans Mackay, Fraser and US importer Jay Chamberlain, gave up in practice, we were asked to stand down. They’d come a long way to race and the American market was important. They won the class and came second in the Index of Performance, yet a couple of weeks later, Jay had a bad crash in practice for Reims and ‘Mac’ was killed in the race. Racing does have its changes of fortune.” Alan Stacey was sadly killed in the 1960 Belgian GP while Keith Hall retired from racing at the end of 1958.

He had impressed Colin Chapman enough to become a works Lotus driver for 1958 but the opportunity was halted when he sustained a broken collarbone in a crash during practice for a sports car race at Rouen-Les-Essarts. “I lost the car on the twisting downhill section, crashed it and broke my collarbone. They sent an ambulance out for me and my mechanic cut across to be with me. The ambulance set back up the hill and against the flow of traffic. Ron Flockart in his Lotus Eleven merit, crashed into it and the car caught alight with Ron in it. My mechanic broke out the back of the ambulance and saved him. When word got back that I was in hospital, a friend of mine, Gerald Smith, flew over in his Auster and took me back home. Gerald, with the Hagan brothers who are well known in the bike world, had developed a dohc head for the FWA engine. Even in 1100 cc form it gave as much power as the later 1500 cc unit but there were problems with the casting. He later built an utterly diabolical single-seater to act as a test bed for the engine. The engine was laid on its side and a thin transmission shaft went alongside the driver to a motorcycle gearbox at the back. Alan Stacey and I did a lot of testing with this device and, later, Eric Broadley built a mirror-image FJ car (with the driver off set to the right, not left) to accommodate this engine but nothing much came of it. It took some time for me to get better and it took even longer for the car to be put back again. Even then it wasn’t right and I’d keep returning my shockers to Armstrong’s who kept assuring me that they were okay. Eventually I went out and bought another set and the car was perfect.” In other races that year he retired at Silverstone’s Daily Express meeting and the British GP meeting, while finishes included second (twice), third and fourth at Brands Hatch, fifth at Snetterton and the Oulton Park International, seventh in the Tourist Trophy (alongside Gordon Jones) plus victory at Mallory Park.

He was approached by Frank Nichols of Elva with a view to driving for 1959. However, “the car, a MkIV, wasn’t quite right but Frank was so enthusiastic that I felt we could possibly work together over the winter and put together a good package. I told Frank that I’d be in touch and, at the moment he and the Elva left the circuit, I was ready to drive for him. I decided to hang around and see out the rest of the day when Eric Broadley appeared with his car.” He had built a Coventry Climax-powered special, which was to be for his own use, but after Peter proved so quick in testing the car he instead asked him to drive it. “I was convinced from the start. The car was superb on the track and, more, I liked the thought which had gone into it. Eric had designed it for strength and safety as well as speed, the wishbones were properly made and gusseted, for instance, and Eric’s own attitude was so different to Colin’s. We agreed there and then that I should drive for him and over the next few seasons I often had to shake down a new car in a race which was intended for a customer overseas. In that way I drove a lot of the Lola Mk 1s produced and often raced them without having previously seen them, and every one of them felt exactly the same, sweet and true. I’d just left my father’s business and had opened a garage of my own at Ingatestone. Every weekend, though, I was down at Eric’s workshop helping to put together the cars for the following season.” His first two races in 1959 were F2 outings though he retired Alan Brown’s Cooper T45 at the Aintree 200 and did not qualify with a privately entered Smith-Climax at Crystal Palace’s London Trophy. There was a fourth place finish in a later F2 outing in the T45 at Brands Hatch’s John Davy Trophy and the year saw his single Championship appearance in the British GP at Aintree and he finished twelfth (and third of the F2 cars). As a works Lola driver he took his first Autosport Sports Car Championship with the Mk1, winning at Snetterton (despite being penalised a minute for allegedly jumping the start), Silverstone and Aintree plus the Wrotham Trophy at Brands Hatch and the Trophy de Auvergne at Clermont Ferrand (ahead of Jean Behra’s RS Porsche). There was victory in the Chichester Cup at Goodwood, where he, Mike Taylor and Peter Gammon (all in Lola Mk1s) were involved in a tight battle at the front and “any one of us could have won and I happened to be in the lead at the flag It was a wonderful season and I experienced something I’d never known before or ever knew afterwards, utter confidence in the car and myself. My race used to begin the previous Wednesday when I’d gel myself into the right frame of mind. I used to make sure that we were the first to the circuit, the first through scrutineering and the first on the track for practice. Then I set pole and, in my mind, had already won the race. When we lined up for the ‘off’ I knew, positively knew, that nobody was going to beat me to the first corner and because I felt that way, nobody ever did. Later in FJunior, Peter Arundell and Trevor Taylor had exactly the same frame of mind and they’d won before the rest of us even started.”

There were second place finishes at Crystal Palace, Snetterton, the Rochester Trophy at Brands Hatch, the Empire Trophy at Oulton Park and at a John Davy Trophy FJunior on Boxing Day at Brands Hatch, behind Peter Arundell, despite having an ‘off’. He was third at Snetterton, fourth in the Coupe Delamere Debouteteville at Rouen and the Roskilde Grand International while in shared drives was sixth overall, with a class win, (alongside Alan Ross) at the Tourist Trophy. He and Eric Broadley did not finish at the Nurburgring 1000kms and he told how “two weeks beforehand I went out to prepare myself. I met up with Keith Greene who had this little Alfa Romeo and so, for a fortnight, we hammered around in it learning the circuit. Eventually the day came when the doors on the Alfa would not shut, we’d completely wrung the car out. The Nurburgring remained my favourite circuit and I always did well there. At the start of that race I’d put the Lola in eighth place on the grid. If you see photographs of the line-up-we had a Le Mans-type start-you will see Ferraris, Maseratis, Astons, Jags and in place number eight you don’t see anything. Our little car was completely dwarfed.” They comfortably led the 1100 cc class until Broadley crashed into a ditch but Peter managed to take a minute off the old class lap record. “The Lola was superb and Eric and I had a tremendous rapport, we were a real team. I’d talk about the car with him and he’d set it up for any circuit with a few adjustments to the front roll bar. Everything was done properly, so unlike Lotus where we might still be building our cars in the paddock at the start of a new season.”

Peter started 1960 with a class victory at the Sebring 12 Hours, finishing seventeenth in a Mk1 with Charles Vogele and later in the year the pair scored a class victory at the Nurburgring 1000 kms. In June he contested his first Le Mans 24 Hours race but he and Vogele retired after 148 laps due to a broken engine. Vogoele “had wanted to get into motor racing and had been pestering Eric to buy a car at any price. Eventually a deal was struck and Charles had his car with me as a co-driver for the World Sportscar Championship. That was the way to go racing; Vogele would send me an airline ticket and give me my expenses, I’d turn up at his hotel and we’d generally win our class.” He took his second Autosport Sports Car Championship with a Mk1, with victories at Crystal Palace, Brands Hatch and Silverstone (twice), second at Oulton Park and the Brands Hatch International plus third at Silverstone’s Empire Trophy and GP meeting. The Championship saw a Lola 1-2 result, with Peter heading Alan Rees. Contesting FJunior with a Mk2 he won the Western Counties 100 Miles at Snetterton, was second at Monaco, Nurburgring, and Brands Hatch’s Silver City Trophy (to Jim Clark, plus they shared the fastest lap). He was third in the Vanwall Trophy Junior at Snetterton, fifth at Goodwood and fourth in his final outing at Brands Hatch on Boxing Day (with a Chequered Flag car). There were retirements at Brands Hatch, the International Trophy Junior at Silverstone, Innsbruck (in a Fitzwilliam Racing Team car), the Anerley Trophy at Crystal Palace plus a GP Junior race at Silverstone while in F2 races with the car he was seventh in the Crystal Palace Trophy but retired from the Vanwall Trophy at Snetterton.

His third Autosport Sports Car Championship followed in 1963 in his Lola, in which he and Vogele finished nineteenth (and third in class) at the Nurburgring 1000kms. Contesting FJunior with a Mk3, there was a third place result in Goodwood’s Chichester Cup, plus third and eighth in John Davy Trophy rounds at Brands Hatch in June and August. He was third in a Chequered Flag Gemini Mk3 at Snetterton while in outings with a Lotus he retired at Monaco and Reims though was second at Mallory Park, third, fourth, eighth and ninth at Brands Hatch and fourth in a John Law Trophy race at Snetterton.

1962 would be his final year in racing and in his first outing in May at the Nurburgring 1000kms he and Bruce Johnstone were eighth (plus took a class win) with Ian Walker Racing’s Lotus 23. July saw the first of three French FJunior races though he did not qualify for the Coupe International de Vitesse des Juniors at Reims with a Superspeed Conversions Lola Mk5. In the following two weeks there were retirements with a privately entered Mk5 at both the Grand Prix de Rouen Junior and the Trophées d´Auvergne Junior at Charade then in August he was twelfth at Brands Hatch. “After that I drifted apart from Eric; we had had no written contract. That shunt had anyway made me start to think about racing. I’d had ten years, was married and had two kids, and was thinking I’d gone about as far as I could go.” There were also drives in a SuperSpeed Ford Anglia with Chris Craft though he retired after racing for the last time in a Boxing Day meeting at Brands Hatch. “I accepted some drives in John Young’s SuperSpeed Anglia, racing alongside Chris Craft. John Young had been developing a Cortina for saloon car racing and at the Boxing Day Brands Hatch meeting, I started with it from the back of the grid and brought it home second. What we didn’t know was that the Lotus-Cortina was on the stocks. The SuperSpeed effort fizzled out; the Cortina had been a waste of time from the moment the Lotus Cortina came along and we were halfway through 1963 before it came home that I hadn’t got a drive. I had a few offers later for long distance events and was tempted because there’s nothing like a long distance event to involve you, the tactics, the working out of margins and so on, but I resisted temptation.”

He retired to concentrate on running the family businesses in Essex that included a local Vauxhall dealership plus he had a mail order motor accessories company, a ‘Candy Apple’ garage, video hire shops and video production and was involved in renovating timber framed cottages. Later on, he was a guiding force behind Perry McCarthy’s early career. With bases in England, France and America, he spent his time between them and one of his children, Ian, went on be a designer and was involved with Reynard, Dallara and a number of IRL teams.

“Motor racing drifted away from me and I turned to other things but have never found the excitement and fulfilment that I had in racing. I’ve been to a few meetings with Perry McCarthy, the Formula Ford driver whom I’ve helped a little, but I’ve looked around and wondered what happened to all the spectators we used to have. I don’t think I was up to adapting to rear-engined single seaters. I did a couple of F2 races with Ken Tyrrell’s Coopers and found I was getting to grips with the problem but wasn’t quite up to it. I look back now and I realise just how many of my contemporaries were killed. It was all such fun that we never thought of that, we never very much even considered safety. Jay brought me over a Bell helmet with full side panels and I used this but everybody else was content to stick to the old ‘pudding basin’ type so my wearing what we would now think as a moped rider’s helmet became something of a personal trademark.”