Warwick Wright
Warwick J. Wright (* 1875 in Birmingham , † 1945 in Westminster ) was a British motorboat and automobile racing driver .
Career
Warwick Wright came from the West Midlands and was the son of iron founder Joseph Wright, who was involved in the construction of the first railway line in India and who later co-founded the Head and Wright company . Wright was an automobile and aviation pioneer at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. He contested his first automobile races on the Isle of Man and in Blackpool . When the Brooklands -Bahn opened in 1907, he took part in a Darracq in the opening race, the Montagu Cup , which he had to give up after ten of eleven laps while in the lead.
The following year Wright took part in an Austin at the French Grand Prix at the Circuit de Dieppe near Dieppe . He retired after four of the ten laps with engine failure.
At the Olympic Games in London in 1908 , Wright and Thomas Weston took part on the Sea Dog in the first ever Olympic motor boating competition in the C-class , which ran over 40 nautical miles. Of six boats that started in one of the three classes, in addition to the Sea Dog, despite four reports, only one more competed in the C class, the Gyrinus by Thomas Thornycroft and the crew members Bernard Redwood and John Field-Richards .
In this class, the boats were only allowed to be seven meters long and weigh a maximum of 800 kilograms. The Gyrinus , the previous day's competition winner in the B-Class, didn't look superior at first, but because the engine in Warwick's Sea Dog had overheated, it had to give up. Warwick could not prevent the double triumph of the Gyrinus, which in the C-class came to the finish after 2 hours 28 minutes 26 seconds. Warwick and Weston did not start in the other two classes.
Motor boating never became Olympic again after 1908, so that Warwick Wright remains one of probably only 13 motor boating athletes who took part in the Olympic Games to this day.
Web links
- Warwick Wright in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wright, Warwick |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wright, Warwick J. |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British motorboat and automobile racer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1875 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Birmingham |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1945 |
| Place of death | Westminster |