Pendine Sands

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Malcolm Campbell in Pendine in 1927
JG Parry-Thomas and Babs set the land speed record on April 28, 1926

Pendine Sands is a stretch of shore on the Welsh coast that was used as a track for record attempts with racing cars in the 1920s .

Initially, the Brooklands course , located in the woods of the county of Surrey, was seen as ideal for attempting a record, but the inclined road surface on its section of the “Wey Bridge” became increasingly disadvantageous. The search for an alternative, which mainly provide a long, flat sheet had started, and the American venue Daytona Beach already pointed the way. One of the first users was racing driver Malcolm Campbell in 1924 after he learned that the beach in Carmarthenshire between Pendine and Laugharne had been selected by the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) for the six-day “Speed ​​Trials” of that year. The length of eleven kilometers of the straight section provided enough space to accelerate the vehicles to the specified kilometer and mile distances. However, the transitions between hard and soft sand were problematic, the latter causing the wheels to spin and subsequent rolling of the vehicle. Nevertheless, Campbell was able to set a new record for the land speed record on September 24, 1924 with 235.215 km / h . One of the peculiarities of the route was that if the sand was damp from the rain, the wagons could sink in. The local flood conditions did not allow record attempts until February. If you wanted to drive on a dry runway, you sometimes had to first dig drainage ditches in the sand with a plow .

Campbell broke the land speed record three times on Pendine Sands, twice it was JG Parry-Thomas . He paid for his third attempt with his life when his car overturned on March 3, 1927. The debris of the bab was buried in the sand on the spot. Campbell first chose Daytona Beach for further record attempts, then the Bonneville Flats . Parry-Thomas' tragedy hit the press again when the wreckage of the car was excavated and restored in 1969. The car is now in the Pendiner Museum of Speed .

Web links

Commons : Pendine Sands  - 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. 104 f.
  2. ↑ P. Clifton: The fastest men at the wheel. Stuttgart 1968, p. 115
  3. ↑ John Godfrey Parry Thomas - BABS , Internet portal "archive.is" ( Memento from September 10, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )

Coordinates: 51 ° 44 ′ 29.5 "  N , 4 ° 33 ′ 20.4"  W.