Pete,

First, congratulations on what promises to be an interesting and informative e-magazine.

Second, I read the piece on Bob Said. First, a correction to the spelling of the Tec-Mec grand prix car. Second, the "Who Said, etc." piece corrected the bit about Bob driving a grand prix car but never said what he drove. I was an invincible 18 year old in December of 1959 and was one of the very small handful of fools who braved the abysmal cold and wet weather to attend the 1959 U. S. Grand Prix. In the contemporary English reports of the event, the blokes even complained about the "fresh" weather. If the English are compelled to comment about the cold, it must be bad!

Anyhow, Bob Said drove a Connaught F1 car at that now long forgotten F1 race at Sebring. While researching an article for the now defunct Historic Motor Racing magazine, I talked with Bob about his experiences at Sebring in his one and only F1 outing. Sebring organizer Alec Ulmann was a good friend of Bob's mother, and he offered Bob some starting money and chance to drive, but the car he was to drive was crashed at Oulton Park in England. Bob was able to arrange a drive in a car called the "Toothpaste Tube" Connaught grand prix car. It was a specially bodied car that was the prototype for the C-type Connaught. It later got a supercharged engine and attempted to qualify for the Indy 500 (which it didn't). It does, in fact, look like a tube of toothpaste (and it appears to have performed as one as well!). After a miserable qualifying session, including being t-boned by Alan Stacey in a Lotus 16-Climax during practice, Bob was placed at the back of the rather motley grid with the redoubtable Stirling Moss at the point. Said recalled, "At the start, I put my boot in it and the thing took off like a rocket. It was going like an SOB, and I was up to sixth or seventh all of a sudden. I remember passing Harry Schell in his Cooper-Climax on the long back straight that was the main runway for the Sebring airport, and I'll never forget the surprised look on his face. When I turned into the corner at the end of the straight, the wheels just locked up, the back came around and I spun it all by myself. I couldn't break them loose so I parked it. I didn't even make it around to complete one lap!"

Thus, ended Bob Said's very short F1 career. Does anyone out there know that Bob went on to participate in three Olympics in the bob sled. The bob sled was probably faster than that old Connaught!

-Jeff Allison
Feb. 2002