Doug Nye: Archie Scott Brown – master of sideways and fast at Goodwood

Back in the January 1958 issue of ‘Motor Racing’ magazine an interesting feature article was published on little Archie Scott Brown, the physically handicapped British racing driver whose story I have previously touched upon here. He was a great Goodwood favourite of the 1950s and what made this magazine story different was not only its inclusion of some notes upon his driving technique – which he would have modestly sub-titled “Or lack of one” – but a thought-provoking diagram which he had penned, showing his works Lister-Maserati and Lister-Jaguar sportscar’s cornering attitude around the 2.4-miles of the Goodwood Motor Circuit.

I once reproduced this illustration in an old issue of some other magazine, I think during the 1980s, and it was received with great enthusiasm by one particular reader. He wrote to me saying that the outrageous attack angles demonstrated on that Goodwood circuit plan were nothing like extreme enough for the reality of Archie’s driving style, because he had been spectating right there at St Mary’s and Lavant and other corners, and he could assure me that the little man had been much more sideways than that…

In a relatively low-powered car like the 2-litre Lister-Maserati, most properly wired-up drivers would have been seeking to keep the car tracking in line, to minimise its lap-time extending tyre scrub to an absolute minimum. This is certainly conventional wisdom today, but for some exceptional talents – such as Scott Brown’s – this wasn’t necessarily so, it seems, in the mid-1950s.

How could this be? Well, for a start it’s a telling commentary upon the dubious grip providing by the racing tyres of the time. We are talking of a period here in which most teams and drivers used Dunlop Racing tyres, and Dunlop developed their tyres essentially around one parameter and one alone. Would their latest racing tyre sustain a one-and-a-bit-ton motor car – like a Jaguar C-Type or D-Type or Aston Martin – around Le Mans for a worthwhile chunk of the 24-Hour race duration? If the rubber ware would do just that, then it was a case of OK chaps, this is what we have available for you – like it or lump it.

So, when fitted in appropriate size to a half-ton, 160-horsepower (if one was lucky) medium-class sportscar, the Dunlop Racing tyre of 1956-57 was not being asked to do anything it couldn’t handle, but then neither was it generating anything like what would be regarded today as acceptable grip. 

In fact, Phil Hill once spelled it out to me like this: “You’ve got to remember that while mid-’50s suspension design left a lot to be desired, so did race tyre technology. We were trying to do our best with what were really only modestly powerful cars on absolutely iron tyres – engineered for a different objective… So, we learned an awful lot about understeer and oversteer – and we lived in a world of low-grip slip angles…”

Indeed, they did, as Archie’s Goodwood plan demonstrates. With so little grip from his Lister-Maserati’s narrow-section tyres – or from even the later wider-tread Dunlops on his prototype (and more powerful) Lister-Jaguar – the extra scrub of broadsiding into, through and away from the turns would have been relatively negligible. Indeed, the stopwatch – in Scott Brown’s case – told another tale, as he was lapping so darned fast, thank you nicely.

Many years later – in an early Revival Meeting – I remember Damon Hill gasping “How did my dad and his mates race these things? They’ve got no power, and no grip!”. Yes mate – welcome to historic reality when motor racing was a very different activity to what even 1990s technology had made it.

The ‘Motor Racing’ caption to Archie Scott Brown’s self-penned 1957-58 Goodwood diagram reads in part: “… at Woodcote… the Lister is drifting long before the corner is reached; Archie goes very wide out of the second part of this corner to establish the best line for the chicane at Paddock Bend. He uses the full width of the road at Madgwick, and comes out of the corner right on the verge. The inset shot of the Lister-Maserati shows that his technique for this corner is not confined to the Jaguar-powered car. Archie also uses all the road at Fordwater and St Mary’s and slides through Lavant Corner in most spectacular fashion. Even on Lavant Straight with its pronounced ‘kink’, it is some time before the car is actually going straight…”

Archie himself professed to have “… no particular technique”. He considered sliding to be the quickest method of cornering and thus disliked cars which understeered. Most other drivers who spent time following him – as long as they could keep him in sight – was that “… Archie spends less time travelling with all wheels pointing straight ahead than any other driver”. This view was certainly borne out by his own estimation of his progress, his illustrations telling more about his methods than any written description could ever impart.

Interestingly, the ‘Motor Racing’ article also describes how: “Archie is really happiest when driving large sportscars. He finds the Lister-Jaguar very comfortable and has complete confidence in it. He is also attracted by the fact that it can be driven on public roads, and likes to be able to open fetes with it”. Open fetes? A topline racing driver? Goodness me – here’s a blast from the past… 

“Customary road transport is, however, a Ford Zephyr (Alexander-modified) with which he continues the practice of winning Driving Tests and puts up a most spirited display in heavy traffic.

“On the subject of rallies, he is nowadays less decided. Following regular participation in Club rallies from 1950 to ’54 he agreed to take part in the 1957 Mont Carlo Rally. Quite happy while driving (though his companions – a crew of three – insist he was drifting the straights as well as the corners) Archie became terrified when off duty and lay in the back seat covered with a blanket. Every stop he imagined to be an accident, and it was with immense relief that he eventually disembarked at Monte Carlo…”.

Archie had been a travelling sales rep for Dobie’s 4-Square tobacco. By the time he had become Brian Lister’s formal works driver in the Lister-Jaguars, he had also become the tenant in a partnership running the small Autodel garage and service station some five miles from Cambridge, on the Huntingdon road. He maintained that the business “…loses trade through being situated on a stretch of road which is much too straight and fast. Repair business is good, however, as telegraph poles seem to have an especial fascination for drivers in this area…”. 

“Much too straight and fast…” – one can sense from his Goodwood drawing how that would seem anathema indeed to Archie Scott Brown. Fresh then from winning 11 of 14 races in the prototype works Lister-Jaguar’s 1957 racing season – and breaking the unlimited sportscar lap record – either during the race or in practice – on every circuit upon which the combination competed, the Scott Brown method certainly demanded consideration.

After all, it worked for him. But then he was Special. And memories of him provide just one bygone superstar’s fine example for next weekend’s MM drivers.

Photography courtesy of The GP Library