THE B.M.R.O.A
THE B.M.R.O.A.
newly formed British Motor Race Organisers’ .Association is one of the most important bodies having to do with motoring sport. Its formation is particularly opportune at a period when British races need every bit of publicity and success that they can achieve. The B.M.R.O.A. was formed early this year following a suggestion by D. J. Scannell, Secretary of the B.R.D.C. At present the Association is composed of seven race-promoting bodies, which represent the leading organisations promoting classic contests in this country. These seven bodies are : the B.A.R.C., which controls Brooklands and rims its own short handicap meetings there ; the B.R.D.C., which annually runs the Empire Trophy Handicap and a longdistance Brooklands handicap ; the Derby & District M.C., which controls Donington road-circuit and holds our great Grand Prix there, amongst other races ; the J.C.C., which is responsible for the International Trophy and 200 Miles Race at Brooklands and almost everything that is best in other forms of contest of a kind appealing to expert and amateur alike ; the Midland A.C., which runs the Shelsley-Walsh hill climbs ; the R.A.C., as controlling body of the Sport in this country, and the R.R.C., which holds International road-race meetings at the Crystal Palace circuit. That is a very strong team, and doubtless the Southport M.C., Bugatti Owners’ Club, the Irish Motor Racing Club, Ulster A.C. and other promoting bodies will join in the fullness of time. It is not difficult to appreciate the fine work which the B.M.R.O.A. should be able to do by getting rival race-promoters together and working for, and making them work themselves, for the common good. The Association has Lord Howe as its chairman and meets at the B.R.D.C. offices at Queen’s Gate Terrace, in London. The only reason we did not refer to it in a leading article on clubs and bodies and rules and things last April, when we attempted to discuss in a breezy and interesting way the divers organisations which promote and control motoring sport, while at the same time cataloguing their relative values, was solely due to the modesty or lack of push of the Association’s atm. sponsors. This month we discuss elsewhere some factors affecting the future, and it is to marshal and control just such factors that the B.M.R.O.A has come into being. Its first season’s activities have embraced the following good work :— (a) It promoted the Bonus Scheme, whereby popular Percy Maclure received .6250 towards his 1938 racing expenses, Cuddon-Fletcher i80 and Arthur Dobson
50. This Bonus Scheme helped materially towards good and numerous entries for our classic races.
(b) It has sent out Press publicity of all kinds and started a racing inquiry bureau on which puzzled Pressmen— both scaremonger and technical—can depend for reliable facts and figures.
(c) It has introduced inter-change advertising between the leading promoters in their programmes and started the Forecast Prize Scheme.
(d) It is now organising a gigantic Boy Scouts’ Soap-Box Derby, the value of which is less obvious, though the resultant pedal publicity may possibly do real racing some little good.
Apart from which, the Association has encouraged rival organisers to meet for the purpose of discussing common problems and reaching mutual agreement on many topics, notably that of appearance money for ‘Continental drivers. It rather :agrees with the J.C.C. that classic races should be reduced in number and clearly, only by getting all the leading promoters together to discuss this matter, as the B.M.R.O.A. does, can action be taken. The Association is to be congratulated on so representative a membership. We wish the B.M.R.O.A. very well indeed, especially in its publicity campaigns—,61,000,000 to spend on a British G.P. Team may well be a dream which will overshadow ordinary racing problems so that we shall wake to find that we have neither the G.P. team nor healthy British racing as we now know it. But we pray that those who Support the Association and those who do its work will never fail to distinguish the essential difference betWeen a body which exists to further the racing drivers’ interests and an association which seeks to ease the path of the racepromoter.