Malcolm Campbell (racing driver, 1885)

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Sir Malcolm Campbell

Sir Malcolm Campbell MBE (born March 11, 1885 in Chislehurst , Kent , † December 31, 1948 in Reigate , Surrey ) was an English racing driver and motorsport journalist . He was also a multiple speed record holder on land and water. He was the father of Donald Campbell .

Early life

Campbell was a "scion of old Scottish knights" and made fortune working with Lloyd's as an insurance broker . He already showed as a youngster his courage and enthusiasm for high speed, when he and about 45  h km / on the bike went down a mountain. The following noticeable fine was partly due to the fact that he had kept his hands in his pockets. He learned German after finishing school, and despite anti-British resentment in those days of the Boer War , he stuck to one principle: show the flag. The Union Jack hung on the mast of his sailing boat and was later regularly hoisted by his crew after a successful record run. He said that the world public not only had an eye on him, but also on the quality of his vehicles and thus British products in general, which gave him the chance to contribute to the reputation of his country. He developed his command of fast equipment further as a pilot in the Royal Air Force during World War I , after which he spent almost every Saturday in Brooklands to compete in vehicles from Peugeot or Darracq against racing greats like Lord Howe or Kenelm Lee Guinness . The speeds at which he was soon en route gave shape to a goal: to set the land speed record .

Title of a play as a car name

Acquired by Campbell in Bluebird renamed Sunbeam .

At Povey Cross, in the workshop behind Campbell's Elizabethan country house, the four to five racing cars that took several mechanics to work were accompanied by a car specially prepared for the attack on the world record. Number one was a 350- hp - Sunbeam - V12 to him by Louis Coatalen, chief designer of this work, by any stretch of persuasion loan made available. Although Campbell reached so on 17 June 1922 at Saltburn in one direction 216 km / h and was on average of two runs over the existing record, but only handgestoppt what the recognition by those in Paris (located international motor sports authority AIACR Association of Automobile Clubs Reconnus, forerunner of the FIA ). At least he was able to buy the Sunbeam afterwards and have it injected in his favorite color blue. While his first cars, which he called Flapper , were as unsuccessful as the racehorse that was named after him, a Darracq named after Maeterlinck's play The Blue Bird brought success, and a slight superstition led Campbell to keep that name for his other cars and boats.

Services

Between 1924 and 1935 Campbell broke the speed record nine times with his "Bluebird" with a land vehicle , the last time on September 3, 1935 at a speed of 301.129  mph (484.62  km / h ).

He won the Grand Prix de Boulogne in 1927 and 1928 in a Bugatti Type 39 A and Delage Type 15 S 8 .

After Campbell had set the flying kilometer record of 396 km / h in Daytona in February 1931, and thus for the first time more than four miles per minute had been covered with a land vehicle, this fifth record was met with a triumphant reception in London and the survey into the nobility ( Knight Bachelor ) by King George V. Campbell presented the race car with a 2500 hp engine that was used for the record and was celebrated by the press as an overhead vehicle on January 12, 1933 in Berlin .

After returning from Daytona, given the military threat from Germany, Campbell saw it as his civic duty to enter politics. An upgrade was his opinion, urgently needed and he joined in 1935 as a candidate of the conservatives in the operational area of Deptford , but lost to the candidate of the Labor Party .

On September 17, 1938, he set a world record on Lake Hallwil with his self-constructed racing boat (Bluebird K3) with a speed of 210.67 km / h . On August 19, 1939, he reached 141.740 mph (228.108 km / h) with the Bluebird K4, which was the fourth and last time in his life that he set a new water speed record .

He died in 1948 at the age of 63 in Reigate , Surrey , after a series of strokes, making him one of the few high-speed drivers of his time who died of natural causes rather than being killed in an accident.

Web links

Commons : Malcolm Campbell  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Clifton: The fastest men at the wheel. The history of the world speed records in the automobile , ( The fastest men on earth, New York 1964, German), trans. by Günther Görtz, Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1968, p. 89.
  2. ↑ Geoff Dawes: Bluebird Blasts the Bush , Australian Classic Car Monthly, June 1997, on "archive.is" ( Memento from September 7, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  3. ^ Paul Clifton: The fastest men at the wheel. Stuttgart 1968, p. 91.
  4. ^ Paul Clifton: The fastest men at the wheel. Stuttgart 1968, p. 93
  5. ^ Paul Clifton: The fastest men at the wheel. Stuttgart 1968, p. 152 f.
  6. ↑ Berlin Calendar, 1998 , Verlag Haude and Spener / Edition Luisenstadt, 1998, p. 32, ISBN 3-7759-0417-4 .
  7. ↑ Scott AGM Crawford: Campbell, Sir Malcolm (1885-1948) , in: HCG Matthew / Brian Harrison (eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Volume 9 , Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, p. 847.
  8. ↑ Entry on FreeBMD. Accessed January 4, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Campbell, Malcolm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English racing car driver and motorsport journalist
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Chislehurst , Kent
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1948
Place of death Reigate , Surrey