Tony Crook
| Nation: |
 United Kingdom
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| Automobile world championship | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First start: | 1952 British Grand Prix | ||||||||
| Last start: | 1953 British Grand Prix | ||||||||
| Constructors | |||||||||
| 1952 Frazer-Nash 1953 Cooper | |||||||||
| statistics | |||||||||
| World Cup balance: | no World Cup placement | ||||||||
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| World Cup points : | - | ||||||||
| Podiums : | - | ||||||||
| Leadership laps : | - | ||||||||
Thomas Anthony Donald "Tony" Crook (born February 16, 1920 in Manchester ; † January 21, 2014 ) was a racing car driver and long-time owner of the English small-series car manufacturer Bristol Cars Ltd. During World War II he was a pilot in the Royal Air Force .
Life
Crook was born in Manchester in 1920 to wealthy parents. When he was six years old, his father died. When his nanny took him to Southport for some time to distract him, he saw his first car race. According to his own account, Crook developed the desire to become an automobile racing driver himself. Crook was educated in Bristol and studied at Cambridge University in the late 1930s .
During World War II, Crook served in the Royal Air Force. He flew missions in Africa and took part in the Battle of Britain . Crook began trading automobiles during the war. During this time he procured vehicles that he sold to the Air Force at a profit. He expanded this business into a flourishing company after the end of the war. As early as 1946 he was in contact with the Bristol Airplane Company and their newly founded automobile division, whose first dealer he became.
Crook had been married since 1943. He had a daughter (Carole Crook) who worked for Bristol Cars in the 1960s.
Tony Crook as a racing driver
"The talented amateur"
Crook started racing as early as 1946. With a Frazer-Nash he won the first circuit race at Gransden Lodge in June 1946, which was held on English soil after the Second World War. By 1955 he had contested a total of around 400 automobile races and at that time was considered one of the most active British amateur drivers. From 1950 he preferred to start with six-cylinder Bristol engines, which were replicas of BMW units. With such a vehicle, he placed in 1951 at the prestigious invitation race of Goodwood in second place behind the much higher rated Mike Hawthorn . This may have moved him to try his hand at Formula 1 like Hawthorn .
Formula 1 trials and the end of a racing career
Crook pursued his racing career only semi-professionally, as his business and family obligations were paramount to him. He therefore only took part in individual races in the drivers' world championship. Amédée Gordini offered him a cockpit in the Gordini factory team in 1952 ; However, Crook declined due to scheduling reasons.
In the 1952 Formula 1 season he started at the British Grand Prix in Silverstone in his own Frazer-Nash -Bristol and in the following season in the same place with a Cooper - Alta T 24. In both races he started from 25th position Run. As he only finished 21st in the very large field of drivers at his first start, ten laps behind, and retired on the first lap in 1953 due to a technical defect in the injection pump, he decided to turn back to the lower formula classes and bought one Cooper Mk II, with which he duels in sports car races with his friend Roy Salvadori , among others . In an accident at the Goodwood 9 Hours of 1955, Crook was so badly injured that he was in hospital for two weeks. After that, he stopped taking part in races .
Bristol Cars
Tony Crook had been a full-time car dealer since 1946. The company was initially based in Caterham , a parish in the county of Surrey , later Anthony Crook Motors Ltd. also a branch in London. Crook started out with a Ford dealership; brands like Bristol, Aston Martin and Simca were soon added. In the 1950s, Crook was the largest Bristol dealer in Great Britain and regularly influenced the development of future Bristol models. At this time he also took over the British Zagato agency. This resulted in some exclusive special models from Bristol such as the 406 GT Zagato and later the Bristol 412 .
1960 sparked Crook with Sir George White, a grandson of the founder of the aircraft manufacturer Bristol Aircraft, the automotive division of the group out and established her as Bristol Cars Ltd . White, who had a serious accident in 1969 when his Bristol 411 collided with a laundry van, sold his shares in the company to Crook in 1973, who became the sole owner of the company.
Crook ran Bristol Cars alone for the next 28 years. In 2001, he sold the company to Toby Silverton and the Tavistock Group , a private investment company owned by British billionaire Joe Lewis, who was Silverton's father-in-law at the time. Tony Crook stayed with the company in an executive role. Silverton's entry enabled the company, which had been financially troubled since the 1990s, to develop new models, including a. the Bristol Blenheim Series 3 and the Bristol Fighter high-performance sports car . In mid-2007, Crook was dismissed "because of irreconcilable differences regarding the future of Bristol Cars". Three and a half years later, Bristol Cars went into bankruptcy.
statistics
Statistics in the automobile world championship
general overview
| season | team | chassis | engine | run | Victories | Second | Third | Poles | nice Race laps |
Points | WM-Pos. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1952 | Tony Crook | Frazer-Nash | BMW 2.0 L6 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | NC |
| 1953 | Tony Crook | Cooper T20 | Bristol 2.0 L6 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | - | NC |
| total | 2 | - | - | - | - | - | - | ||||
Single results
| season | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4th | 5 | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9 |
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| 1952 |
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| 21st | |||||||||
| 1953 |
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| Legend | ||
|---|---|---|
| colour | abbreviation | meaning |
| gold | - | victory |
| silver | - | 2nd place |
| bronze | - | 3rd place |
| green | - | Placement in the points |
| blue | - | Classified outside the point ranks |
| violet | DNF | Race not finished (did not finish) |
| NC | not classified | |
| red | DNQ | did not qualify |
| DNPQ | failed in pre-qualification (did not pre-qualify) | |
| black | DSQ | disqualified |
| White | DNS | not at the start (did not start) |
| WD | withdrawn | |
| Light Blue | PO | only participated in the training (practiced only) |
| TD | Friday test driver | |
| without | DNP | did not participate in the training (did not practice) |
| INJ | injured or sick | |
| EX | excluded | |
| DNA | did not arrive | |
| C. | Race canceled | |
| no participation in the World Cup | ||
| other | P / bold | Pole position |
| SR / italic | Fastest race lap | |
| * | not at the finish, but counted due to the distance covered |
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| () | Streak results | |
| underlined | Leader in the overall standings | |
literature
- Christopher Balfour: Bristol Cars. A very British story . 2009 (Haynes Publishing) ISBN 978-1-84425-407-1 .
- Richard Heseltine: Tony Crook 1920-2014 . Obituary in: Octane Classic and Performance Cars, issue 4/2014, p. 20 f.
Web links
- Obituary for Tony Crook on the website www.classicandsportscar.com
- Anthony Crook - obituary. In: The Daily Telegraph of February 24, 2014 (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g Richard Heseltine: Tony Crook 1920-2014 . Obituary in: Octane Classic and Performance Cars, issue 4/2014, p. 20 f.
- ^ Obituary for Tony Crook on the British Racing Drivers' Club website (accessed March 26, 2014).
- ^ A b c Christopher Balfour: Bristol Cars. A very British story . 2009 (Haynes Publishing) ISBN 978-1-84425-407-1 , p. 61.
- ^ Bristol Cars and Engines , p. 144
- ↑ The Wondrous World of Bristol Auto Bild, 2008
- ↑ Cars for Connoisseurs ( Memento from November 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), September 2008 newsletter
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Crook, Tony |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Crook, Thomas Anthony Donald |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British racing driver, entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 16, 1920 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Manchester , England |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 21, 2014 |