Centenary of the First Spanish Grand Prix

The Rolls Royce which was driven by Salamanca is present in India and has been restored a few years back. It recently was at the Cartier event in Hyderabad.

Eric Platford was actually winning the race but pulled over to let The Marquis of Salamanca through as were the Rolls Royce team orders. Unfortunately this meant another car passed through too. I understand he was winning by some margin prior to this.

.... I owned RF87 a P1 built for Alphonso
X111.. body by Hooper.. by the time it was ready for delivery Alphonso it Ce had more pressing things on their minds..
it was bought on to Melbourne and exhibited there at the Motor Show and sold... I still have the original tail light, and other odds and ends.. with a warm motor it would drive away in top gear..my how times change..John Ryder..

The Marquis of Salamanca was the Rolls Royce importer in Spain (and indeed, the current importer is still "Carlos de Salamanca" company), with a great friendship with Sir Henry. Probably its main purpose was to give publicity to the kind of cars he sold. The Pattford´s car owner was the Marquis of Salamanca too, and his copit was the Marquis of Llanos. Clearly this type of racing were primarily aimed at the very rich, who were also the main buyers of such cars. Our King Alfonso XIII was also an assiduous sports car driver of this era, and was present in most of this type of racing. Everyone knows that when trade issues through ... the results of the classifications may be questionable ....
I have read that Rolls Royce has made ​​a few months ago a Wraith painted in blue; this blue is called Salamanca in honor of this race.
cheers!

By 1930 at least, Don Carlos de Salamanca, a relative of the King of Spain, was the RR agent in Madrid. Spanish nobility were apparently great patrons of RR cars.

I think it quite likely that it was never the Rolls Royce companys intention to win this event with a company-entered car.Indeed,I would not be surprised if the factory was actually asked by the Spanish organising club to enter the event.Certainly,it would have been seen as a very useful way of showing the car to many wealthy & influential people.You will notice that Eric Platford finished third,behind the two Marquises!This was probably intentional!A factory car with a good driver could probably have come first-but this would not have been very good politics!It would have meant a great deal to Rolls Royce to have Don Carlos de Salamanca as a customer.

I always thought that Bentleys were the racing Rolls Royces ! ! :-)
stuart

I think Rolls Royce wanted to promote their products as excellent luxury road going motors, and not foster the 'racing' connection. Their engineering philosophy of over-complication was in direct contrast to the more basic press-on
thinking of the racing fraternity.

The Flying Lady mascot might be ok, but I think Rolls-Royce would struggle to make a GP car with an aerodynamically feasible grille, Peter!

Even at the time, I don't think this was considered a "real" race - it was really much more of a reliability and fuel economy run which happened to cover the same course three times rather than the usual point-to-point. This is the brief report which appeared in The Motor:

"Favoured by the royal patronage of King Alphonso, the Spanish grand prix race was run over a 64-mile course on June 15 and won by Don Carlos de Salamanca in a Rolls-Royce car. The victor covered three laps or 192 miles in 3 h 34 min and 12 sec. The race was a handicap contest. There was a minimum weight for each car according to its horsepower, which was arrived at by a formula which included the revolutions per minute of the engine at its maximum power. The competitors had to drive fully equipped four-seated touring cars with hood, lamps and two spare tires. All bonnets were sealed before the start, the gasoline carried being measured previously, and drivers were not allowed to take on water during the race."

I wonder why RR don't make more of their early racing successes rather than their reliability alone ? London to Edinburgh in top gear pales by comparison with 1st and 3rd in the Spanish GP. When will they get back to GP racing, I wonder ?

I have a photo from Pebble Beach 2004 where the Rolls-Royce Salamanca was shown. Can I upload it for your viewers to enjoy?
Robert

Editor Rutger Booy: Please do Robert, start here: http://www.prewarcar.com/prewar-spot-a-pre-war-car.html