The extraordinary life of Le Mans winner Duncan Hamilton | GRR
One hundred years ago on April 30th, Duncan Hamilton was born in Cork, Ireland. On his death in 1994, Motor Sport magazine wrote, “When people trot out the old cliche ‘they don’t make them like that anymore’, it is the Hamiltons of the world for whom the expression was originally coined”.
Hamilton’s victory in the 1953 Le Mans 24 Hours alongside Tony Rolt, and the 1956 Reims 12 Hours with Ivor Bueb, are perhaps his best-known racing accolades. However, as Motor Sport alluded to, much of the action in Hamilton’s life took place away from the track.
Perhaps most famously, while transporting his ex-Malcolm Campbell R-Type MG to Brighton Speed Trials, he spotted a Bugatti radiator in his rear-view mirror. Moving over and waving it by did little, until the bottom of the hill when it sped past without a driver. The Bugatti was his, and should have been neatly placed behind the MG. "The awful truth dawned on me,” he admitted later, “it was my own car, gathering speed fast".
In the early 1950s, alongside his sports car successes, he was also an avid campaigner of a Talbot Lago – a car he used to finish second in a very wet 1951 International Trophy at Silverstone. It was a fantastic drive, but financial strain meant that he had to store the car in a Belgian cellar rather than ship it home after continental races. On one occasion he returned to find that the new owner of the house had accidentally buried it in coal.
The second-place finish in the 1951 International Trophy was no surprise as José Froilán González, the man who scored Ferrari's first win in the Formula 1 world championship, described Hamilton as “the world’s fastest wet weather driver”. The pair went head to head in the 1954 Le Mans 24 Hours and during the closing stages, the heavens opened. Hamilton more than halved the gap to the leading Ferrari 375 of González and Maurice Trintignant. It was only with the track drying that the Argentinian managed to pull away again and win the race by a single lap.
He knocked himself out aged two after crashing down 38 steps in his pram, he also crashed a master’s car through a wall at school and suffered a bird strike during his drive to victory at Le Mans in 1953. Calamity seemed to follow Hamilton, but he thankfully survived a terrible crash later that year at the Portuguese Grand Prix. Leading into the first corner, he hit an electricity pylon – which cut off the power supply to Oporto for several hours – and after being thrown from the car, he ended up in a tree, hanging there for some time before falling down and nearly being run over by another car. He survived that, and latterly, the embarrassment of being caught speeding on the way to participating in a TV programme about road safety.
The bird strike on the Mulsanne Straight perhaps could have been worse – both Hamilton and team-mate Rolt were initially disqualified from the race for practising in a car with the same number as another. Reinstated, the pair was found in a local bar. Jaguar Team Manger Lofty England didn’t realise quite how much they had imbibed. “Of course I would never have let them race under the influence,” Lofty said afterwards. “I had enough trouble when they were sober!” The team tried to ply Hamilton with coffee during pit stops, but he refused it – it made his arms twitch – and had brandy instead.
After retiring in 1959, he concentrated on sailing and expanding his car dealership – now called Duncan Hamilton ROFGO, which has been run by his son Adrian for the past 45 years. “I am fiercely proud of all he achieved and am sure I won’t be alone in raising a glass to him on April 30th, the centenary of his birth,” he said.
Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.