The incredible life of John Duff, stunt man, record breaker and Le Mans winner

John Francis Duff’s greatest claim to fame is that he co-drove a 3-litre Bentley with Frank Clement to win the second Le Mans 24-Hour race, on the Sarthe circuit in France, in 1924.

John Duff was effectively a Canadian, born to Canadian parents at Kuling (present-day Giuling), some 300 miles into China from Hong Kong. His parents came from Hamilton, Ontario, but they had established a trading company base in Kuling where their son was born on 17^thJanuary 1895. He was despatched to school in Hamilton where he lived until he was an energetic, daring and rather wild sixteen year-old. 

In 1912 he was back in China, but once ‘the mother country’ – the United Kingdom – declared war on Imperial Germany in 1914 he was keen to join the fray. He travelled clear across Russia, sailed to England, and joined the Army. In 1917, fighting at Passchendaele in the Third Battle of Ypres, he was badly wounded. During his recovery and convalescence in England he met and married his nurse.

He was quite well-heeled, he liked cars – especially quick ones – and opened a car dealership in London. Not long after, in 1920, he began racing at Brooklands, driving a 10.0-litre chain-driven 1908 Fiat S.61. He won the May 1921 ‘75 Long Handicap’ race there, averaging over 104mph around the bumpy bankings, and then proved it was no fluke by winning the ‘100 Long Handicap’ that mid-summer, this time at 104.85 mph. Such success attracted a penalty from the handicappers, and while always very quick John Duff was denied further tangible success in the S61.

Seeking a faster challenge he bought the 18.0-litre airship-engined Fiat ‘Mephistopheles’ and after shipping both Fiats to Denmark’s Fanoe beach speed trials he set FTD with a run at 165.9 km/h (103mph) on the soggy sand. He also set the third-fastest time there in the S.61, before concentrating upon improving ‘Mephistopheles’… unsuccessfully, as the old engine exploded into a zillion incandescent pieces back at Brooklands, blowing off the car’s bonnet which nearly decapitated its intrepid driver.

John Duff was an early supporter of W.O. Bentley’s new motor company.His own venture, Duff & Aldington, would become a Bentley dealer. Seeking to publicise the new marque he took a stock 3.0-litre model record breaking at Brooklands. Twenty-four hour running was not permitted at the Weybridge track to allow the locals a decent night’s sleep, but Duff subsequently raised the double-12-hour record to 86.52mph, covering 2,082 miles (3,351 km) during the split stint. Overall, he set 38 international class records, a massive deal for the time, and especially for Bentley.

His Brooklands racing career continued, initially at the wheel of J.L. Dunne’s humungous 21.0-litre Blitzen Benz, in which he lapped at 114.49mph before crashing over the top of the banking, and clattering down the far side through trees and bushes. He emerged unscathed.

Meanwhile, Duff had read of a new 24-hour Grand Prix d’Endurance race to be run at Le Mans. He promptly made an entry and commissioned Bentley Motors, despite W.O.’s caution, to prepare him a car. Works test driver Frank Clement partnered the Canadian but they had a troubled race, including having the fuel tank punctured by a flying stone, therefore running out of fuel. The Anglo-Canadian duo still finished fourth overall, and W.O. was sufficiently impressed to run works cars at Le Mans as long as his enterprise could survive. 

Duff also drove his Bentley in the Spanish Touring Car GP at Lasarte, San Sebastian. He was hit in the face by a flying stone when leading with only two laps to run, crashing into a wall, and yet still winning the 3.0-litre class as its only finisher.

While Bentley ran works cars at Le Mans in 1924, Duff again entered his own as a privateer. His 3.0-litre was still works prepared, and Duff co-drove it again with Frank Clement. Finally the pair won outright.

Back again for the 1925 24-Hours, Duff’s race was ended by a fire, but later that year, running a special single-seater Bentley at Montlhery Autodrome, he and Dr Dudley Benjafield broke both the World’s 1,000 Kilometres and 1,000 miles speed records. With Woolf Barnato co-driving, they completed 2,280 miles in 24 hours, at 95.02 mph. No fewer than 21 other World records were also broken along the way.

John Duff sailed to America early in 1926. Driving the Elcar Automobile Company’s Miller in the Indy ‘500’ he finished 9^th, followed by a fine third place on the mile-and-a-quarter board speedway at Altoona, Pennsylvania. But next time out on the boards at Rockingham, New Hampshire, he crashed heavily following a puncture. He broke his collarbone and was quite badly knocked about, suffering soft-tissue damage and a concussion which affected his sight. He had always promised his wife he would stop racing “if it bit him”. It just had, so he did. 

John Duff enjoyed life in America, and settled with his wife and family in gracious Santa Monica, California. There he opened, of all things, a fencing academy in which he trained numerous Hollywood movie stars. He also began working as a stunt-double on screen. One actor friend for whom he doubled was Gary Cooper, acting out sword fights before the camera. He also taught fencing at UCLA, and helped coach the 1932 U.S. Olympic team. 

The Depression years of 1932-34 saw him re-settle in China, where the family’s interests in Kuling were doing well, before returning to England for 1935. He continued fencing and dealing, and did well as a horseman, steeplechasing and show-jumping. He remained successful and quite prominent, as a well-respected ‘Bentley Boy’ and of course as Bentley’s first Le Mans-winning driver, in partnership with Frank Clement. While he was not out of contemporary society’s mega-wealthy or aristocratic top drawer like Woolf Barnato, Bernard Rubin or ‘Tim’ Birkin, he was comfortably off, thank you, a successful businessman in his own right. But he had always enjoyed speed and sport, and he had always performed competitively to the outermost limit of his abilities. And eventually one’s luck really can run out. It did so for 62-year-old John Duff while he was out riding in Epping Forest, on 8^thJanuary 1958. He was thrown from his horse, and suffered a fatal injury… 

At the Goodwood Members’ Meeting, we will remember him – the first Bentley Le Mans winner, and the first Canadian to win Le Mans.

Photography courtesy of The GP Library.