Handicapping.

Handicapping.

Great Britain holds the World’s speed records for land, air and

water and I am not alone in believing that this speed supremacy is of immense value to our motor and engineering trade. If we are to expand this trade, however —and expansion is the only hope for the motor industry—I consider motor racing essential for all sizes of cars. We are practically the only big nation in the world which is prohibited from holding road-races almost whenever it likes, and the result is that we have only one real road race—the T.T. in Ulster. Even this, I am afraid, is of little benefit to the industry because it is run on a handicap basis. It is obviously impossible for the organisers to evolve a handicap which will be fair for a huge Bentley, a “

baby” Austin and all the intermediate sizes. Last year, for instance, three Italian Alfa-Romeo cars beat the fourth car, a British-made Alvis, by a narrow margin, but the cars were in different classes and the handicap=unintentionally, of course, but quite obviously.— favoured the foreigner. Handicapping fails to bring out the best points of a car ; it merely incites the manufacturers to beat the handicapper and, with their much greater knowledge of the wiles of racing, the foreigners can usually do it better than we can ! The T.T. in Ulster is the only road-race of

real benefit to our industry, and I appeal to the organisers and to all who can use their influence to cut out the absurd handicap (which amuses the crowd alone) and run this important race on a straightforward basis. I hear, at any rate, that the Alvis Company, who last year saved the British bacon, have decided to withhold their support this year unless some different system is adopted, and I am afraid that other manufacturers will follow suit.

Edgbaston Frank Hallam.