How Jersey became a race track one day a year | Thank Frankel it's Friday
Andrew Frankel
When I was child, I grew up on the island of Jersey which is about as poor a place to drive interesting cars as you could imagine. Some would be worse, I guess, like Guernsey, or even Sark where there are no cars, but it was still pretty miserable. Everyone who liked driving and could afford it owned a cottage just over the water in France, simply so they could let loose on the quiet, open, fast and flowing roads of Brittany.
Jersey? Not so much. The island has a speed limit of 40mph, but in fact even when I lived there, such freedom was rapidly becoming the exception rather than the rule. Today country lanes are often restricted to 15mph. Yes, really.
And yet the island was home to a quite astonishing number of really fast cars. I knew someone who’s Dad kept not one, but two Ferrari Daytonas at home. I remember seeing Boxers and Aston Vantages and even a Lamborghini Countach growl past, though how they got it off the ferry I will never know. In a lorry I expect.
Of course Jersey does have a rich racing heritage from the non-championship F1 road race that used to attract the likes of Reg Parnell, Duncan Hamilton, Tony Rolt and Louis Chiron, to the Bouley Bay hillclimb that has been part of the British Hillclimb championship since its inauguration in 1947 and remains so to this day. But to me, driving fast on Jersey only ever meant one thing: Boxing Day.
The start of the 1948 Jersey International Road Race. Red Parnell leads away in his Maserati 4CL, second is George Abecassis in a Maserati 6CM, third is Bob Gerard in an ERA B, followed by Prince Bira and Gordon Bennett.
Allow me to explain. When I was a kid, December 25th was day in which we ate a large meal and opened some presents. Christmas was all about Boxing Day. For it was on December 26th that the Jersey Old Motor Club held its annual Boxing Day Run and so far as I am aware, still does. I did my first aged five in 1970, my first as a driver 12 days after I passed my driving test in 1982 and my last in 1996, six months before my father unexpectedly died, somewhat spoiling the fun.
And what was fabulous about it was this was the one day of the year in which Jersey’s usually viciously enforced traffic laws went entirely unenforced. There was never a formal arrangement, nor even a nudge and a wink so far as I was aware, but the fact is I drove on the run 15 times in succession, always as fast as I thought remotely prudent outside the towns and villages and never go so much as a talking to from the authorities.
Nor was this because the cars I was driving were exactly slow. I did it in an Aston Martin Le Mans, an Alvis Speed 20 hotrod with a 4.3-litre engine, a Speed Six Bentley and a stripped out, cut and shut Derby Bentley special with a supercharged engine that went like the clappers. And on the 3.5-mile long, wide open and almost entirely straight road that cuts straight down the west coast of the island, I’d reach ludicrous speeds, usually pursued by my brothers and all of us trying to keep up with my father. We’d end up at the posh hotel where the gala lunch was held and chuck bread rolls at each other until we were told to desist or leave. They were happy, happy days.
Once or twice over the years some very kind people have asked me back, offered to provide me with a qualifying pre-war car and do it again. But I have always resisted and will always do so. To me it was always a family event and without multiple Frankels all behaving badly, none more so than my father who was the lynchpin of the entire operation, it just wouldn’t be the same. But this Boxing Day as on every Boxing Day I still think about it and still miss it, or what it once was. And I know I always will.
Thank Frankel it's Friday
