FEATURES

DRIVING THE DREAM

Allan Winn is used to driving the Napier-Railton, so he could not pass up the opportunity for a dream drive in its closest rival, the Barnato-Hassan Special. Here are his impressions of this Bentley-powered racing car.

Words: Allan Winn Photos: Fiona Pracht/Akomos, Brooklands Museum Collection

The Barnato-Hassan Special must rank as one of the greatest Brooklands racing cars. An Outer Circuit laprecord holder, regular race winner and place-holder, and with a successful post-Brooklands racing career. It is also a car with a somewhat convoluted history, which has only recently emerged from a prolonged and massive restoration which has taken it back to the specification of its pomp in the late 1930s.

The Barnato-Hassan was conceived by Woolf Barnato in 1934 as a car for Mountain Circuit races and he initially envisaged it being fitted with twin wheels front and rear for extra grip. Wally Hassan, who was commissioned by Barnato to build the car, dissuaded him of the twin front wheel idea. By the time the car was completed, the notion of using it on the Mountain Circuit had been dropped and it was never fitted with the twin rears either.

The basis of the car was the original 6½-litre engine from Barnato’s Bentley ‘Old Number One’, which in 8-litre form had been fatally crashed by Clive Dunfee in 1932, with Bentley axles and a new Hassan-designed chassis with underslung rear suspension. It was fitted with four-wheel Lockheed

hydraulic brakes, an Armstrong-Siddeley pre-selector gearbox, and a single-seat body with a faired-in oval radiator grille. The completed cost was said to be £1000.

First race

The Barnato-Hassan’s first race was the

1934 British Racing Drivers’ Club (BRDC) 500 miles that was run in the rain. Although driver Dudley Froy lapped at over 130mph, he retired when the engine broke a connecting rod, which was a failure to dog the car repeatedly throughout its career.

When it re-emerged for the 1935 season, it had been fitted with a brand-new

8-litre engine and conventional gearbox, and the front brakes removed. Now driven by London solicitor Oliver Bertram, it was said to have lapped the Outer Circuit at more than 140mph in practice for the Easter meeting, where it won its first short handicap race and was unplaced in

The freshly reconstructed BarnatoHassan Special on the banking of Millbrook’s Bowl that gives some idea of what it was like to drive this 8-litre race car at Brooklands.

Mimicking the famous shot of its rival, the Napier-Railton, as it passes over the bump on the Members’ Banking, the Barnato-Hassan is seen here with the rear wheel disc covers used during its drive to 142.7mph in 1935.

another. After the last race at the August Bank Holiday meeting, Bertram took it out for an attempt on the lap record, then held by John Cobb in the Napier-Railton. Aided by disc covers on the Barnato’s rear wheels to improve streamlining, he took the record at 142.7mph. Success eluded the car for the rest of the 1935 season, with its fuel tank splitting in the BRDC 500 and on 7 October Cobb re-took the Outer Circuit lap record in the Napier-Railton at the ultimate 143.44mph which still stands.

For 1936, Hassan substantially reengineered the car, moving the driver’s seat to the centre above the transmission, with offset steering and a new ultra-slim body by the Gray Brothers, but although it now had a significantly reduced frontal area it seemed no quicker. The car suffered retirements from tyre failures and two broken connecting rods in the season. It returned to winning ways in the Second Long Handicap at the Brooklands Automobile Racing Club (BARC) October meeting and placed in two other races, but Barnato and Hassan still thought it could do more. So, for 1938 it was modified with

twin magnetos instead of one coil and one magneto on the engine, a bigger oil tank and new 20-inch wheels with balloon tyres, in which form it weighed 1.45-tons. It was definitely quicker, regularly setting lap speeds of more than 141mph in races, setting its best-ever lap of 143.11mph during the Dunlop Jubilee Race on 17 September. As this was set during a race, it was not recognised as a record, but it remains the second-fastest lap ever recorded and the fastest by an 8-litre car on the Brooklands Outer Circuit. However, the Barnato-Hassan was never to win another Brooklands race and this was its last season at the track.

Post-war life

Post-war, Barnato sold the car to garage proprietor Ian Metcalfe, who employed renowned Bentley engineer Fred Hoffman to substantially rebuild it. He moved the steering back to the right, refitted the front-wheel brakes and had a huge new two-seat body with cycle wings fitted. In this rather inelegant form, it acquired the nickname of ‘The Whale’.

Metcalfe and Lance Macklin entered it as a Bentley 8-litre in the 1948 24-hour race at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, where it retired after multiple clutch problems, and then Metcalfe rolled it during the 12-hour race at Montlhéry a few weeks later. Metcalfe then sold the Barnato-Hassan to Gerry Crozier, who had some success with it. In 1951, he

Gear lever, handbrake and hand throttle are all placed outside of the cockpit on the right-hand side to help create more space for the driver inside the snug confines of the Barnato-Hassan Special.

The Barnato-Hassan pictured in 1936 at the Brooklands 500 driven by Oliver Bertram, where the car retired with engine trouble. The presence of a tow rope suggests this picture was taken after the engine expired.

beat a field of Jaguar XK120s in a race at Silverstone and later beat Roy Salvadori, also Jaguar-mounted, in a BARC race at Goodwood.

Eventually, the car was bought by Keith Schellenberg, who in the early 1970s returned it to single-seater form once more, with a body loosely based on the pre-war one. Still bearing the Metcalfeera road registration number MPE 10, it often appeared in Vintage Sports Car Club and Bentley Drivers Club races. In more recent times, it was bought by Georg Limberg, who commissioned a complete reconstruction that was completed early in 2019 by David Ayre.

Driving the Barnato-Hassan

For somebody whose principal experience of driving Brooklands racing cars has been with the greatest of them all, the twotonne, 24-litre, 535bhp Napier-Railton, the opportunity to drive its most consistent challenger for the outright Outer Circuit Lap Record, the Barnato-Hassan, was one to be leapt at. To have that opportunity realised on a high-speed banked circuit like the magnificent two-mile circular Bowl at Millbrook in Bedfordshire and to compare the two cars back-to-back on that circuit on the same day was the stuff of dreams for me and the only lady ever to have driven the Napier-Railton, Museum Trustee Georgina Wood. So, what is the BarnatoHassan actually like to drive? The first impression is how tiny the cockpit is and how contorted the access is into the car. You slide in through the open side and fold your legs in after you. The backrest of the seat is vertical and the steering wheel is really close to you, so you sit bolt upright with your elbows out in the breeze and with your legs pretty much straight out in front of you.

The steering column is angled to the right to get the steering box outside the line of the engine, but the driver sits on top of the transmission in the centre of the car. The rather surprising result is that all of the Barnato’s foot pedals are sited to the left of the steering column, but arranged in classic Bentley order, with the throttle pedal between the clutch and brake. Although the angling of the steering column is visually obvious, it is not noticeable once you’re driving the car.

The narrowness of the Barnato cockpit is such that most of the controls other than the pedals, starter button positioned almost under your left buttock, fuel-pressure pump and ignition switches are outside. This means the gear lever, handbrake and hand-throttle are outside on the right, while ignition advance and retard are in the wind on the left. The Victorian-domestic-style ignition switches are tucked up under the cowling on the right and are best approached through the spokes of the steering wheel. The wooden-handled fuel pump is on the other side, close to the driver’s left hand.

Preparations for starting are relatively simple. You have to pump up fuel pressure (a little propeller-powered pump in the radiator cowl should maintain pressure once the car is moving fast enough), retard the ignition and engage second gear if you’re bump-starting. The engine fires pretty much instantly when you release the progressive clutch, but you have to remember to advance the ignition as soon as it has started. With no dynamo to recharge it, the electric starter is reserved for when there isn’t a handy pit crew around for a push-start.

The Barnato’s Bentley ‘six’ is smooth, mechanically quiet and very responsive, with seemingly very little flywheel inertia and a lovely bark to the exhaust. In all of its manners other than power output, the engine feels much lighter than its 8-litres.

The slimline single-seat body created by the Gray Brothers is evident in this picture taken in the Thomson and Taylor workshop.

With its current relatively low overall gearing, it really leaps off the line. The car is on 6.75/7.00 x 21 Blockley tyres and its 3.0:1 final drive ratio gives it a mere 35mph/1,000rpm in top gear. With its light flywheel, you can change up through the close-ratio four-speed Bentley D-Type gearbox almost as quickly as you can move the lever. The only difficulty on first acquaintance with the gearbox is in synchronising down-changes because of the light flywheel and snappy throttle response. Even that becomes quite natural after a few attempts, though I didn’t master heel-and-toe changes on this fairly brief drive.

Out on the open track, the car has an impressively smooth ride thanks to its long wheelbase, and the combination of modest gearing, small frontal area and comparatively light weight of less than 1500kg gives it phenomenal top-gear performance. As the speed rises, you are quickly reminded, however, that this is a classic narrow pre-war single-seater: your head and face are well protected by the aero-screen, yet you can feel the wind tearing at your arms and clothing. The steering is beautifully smooth and accurate thanks to that Bentley steering box and manageably light once it’s rolling. The four big drum brakes give the driver great confidence that it will stop really well, which it does, straight and true.

Overall, the Barnato-Hassan is thrilling and satisfying to drive on a modern, smooth circuit, though it must have been a demanding car in long races on the Brooklands bumps. In notes he wrote which were quoted by Bill Boddy in Motorsport in 1983, Oliver Bertram found the Barnato-Hassan Special a contrast to his previous mount, the V12 Delage Land Speed Record car with its smooth twelvecylinder engine and precise handling. Initially, the Barnato-Hassan felt ponderous, almost primitive, docile admittedly at a crawl with the exhaust note a rumble, but becoming alive at speed, and although giving a sense of working well within its potential, being hard on the arms due to the front-end weight and big wheels. But it ‘really sat down on the bumpy concrete surprisingly well’ and never gave Bertram a bad moment. The Barnato was, in turn,

a contrast to the Napier-Railton, which Bertram shared with John Cobb in winning the 1937 BRDC 500. He said that while it

The sheer size of the 8-litre Barnato-Hassan can be gauged in this photo as it moves past the MG of Klemantaski.

was ‘not particularly exciting’ to drive, the Railton was the most comfortable racing car he had driven.