Bob Hanna, Canadian Racer, Part 2

Story by John R. Wright

Read Part 1

JW: Let’s talk about your own career in racing, Bob. You started racing at almost the very beginning of the sport at the old air force track at Edenvale, just south of Georgian Bay.
Bob Hanna: That’s correct. I raced Jack Wheeler’s MGTD at Edenvale and here’s how lax crowd control was in those days. Carol, my wife, was there with our baby standing on the edge of the circuit while I was out there racing. Jack’s wife got a new Morris Minor and I bought her old Morris Minor with a sidevalve engine. I ported and polished the head, put two SU carburetors on it and balanced it. I raced it at the Carp racetrack in eastern Ontario, driving it to and from the track as was the fashion those days. It then became Carol’s daily driver.

JW: You also built one of the first Canada Class racecars back in the day too, didn’t you? For those readers who don’t know what that class was, we should point out that for an engine you could use a 750cc all out racing engine, a 1000 cc OHV engine or a 1500cc flathead engine. Most of the rest of the car was free and it could either have cycle fenders, full fenders or be an open wheeled car.
Bob Hanna: We built our first Canada Class car in 1955-56 and raced it during those two seasons. We won Canada Class in every race. There was a heated discussion at the next CASC meeting with some drivers complaining that amateur builders should not have to compete with professional builders, but the class remained and became very popular. Some rule changes were made over time, but for other reasons. In the meantime, I co-drove with a bunch of guys at Harewood Acres in an AC Bristol with Paul Sullivan and I raced Bill Klink’s Lotus 6 as well. I also entered the Holland Hillclimb in a Lotus 9 with Tommy Gilmour. Holland Landing was a small community north and west of Toronto.

JW: You were busy all year round as at this time, you were also in the business of preparing rally cars for Triumph of Canada.
Bob Hanna: We prepared TR2s and TR3s from 1954 to 1957 for the Canadian Winter Rally. Not many people remember that rally these days, but in the time, it was a prestigious rally with international entries, including, at one time, the full Comstock team.

JW: Let’s get back to your racing career. In between preparing Triumphs for winter rallying, you entered Sebring for the first time in 1959.
Bob Hanna: In the 1959 Sebring Twelve Hours, we ran a Lotus 15 sportscar with Harry Entwistle. At Sebring, everything went wrong that could go wrong. Harry said he’d take the first stint in the car. He did a couple of hours as I remember and then I got in the cockpit. He had told me the car was okay, but when I shifted into third, it sounded as if there were marbles in the transmission. However, that car was so light it was okay as there wasn’t too much strain in the drivetrain. Then, we only had first and top gear. Even so, you could slow the car down and use first gear and then shift into top. As if that weren’t enough, it started to pour, and it poured. There was at least two inches of water on the track and the car was floating, skating on the water.

JW: But, you had to drive at night in those appalling conditions, didn’t you?
Bob Hanna: Yes, and you need lights. We had no lights working in the car. We checked the fuse box – which was conveniently located in the door sill! There was water sloshing up and down in the doorsill… Of course, all the fuses had blown. Chapman was in the next pits with the first Lotus Elites and so we went to him and told him we couldn’t keep fuses from blowing. His solution – put a bolt in the fuse box! Then, things got worse. Our crew, Tommy Gilmour among them, gave up after three laps of rain. They walked away. I sent someone to Timing to get some idea of where we were, with two hours remaining. We decided to soldier on. But we decided we were nowhere, not even on the charts. We DNF’d. Two years later, I got my hands on the lap charts for the 1959 race and found we had been first in the two -liter class at the time and 10th overall. Moral, never quit!
I should say that Harry Entwistle was a good driver who got himself into trouble with drugs and alcohol but he turned himself around. Near the end of his life he would visit prisons and speak to inmates about how he brought himself back up again and turned his life around.

JW: That was your only time at Sebring?
Bob Hanna: That’s correct. We did prep cars for the Glen races for various people. Older Canadian race drivers may remember Ray Little who drove a Triumph and Jim Duncan who drove an MGA at Sebring and took a third at the Queen Catherine Cup at the Glen.

JW: You had quite a bit to do with Peter Ryan and entered him in some races.
Bob Hanna: I knew Peter fairly well. He purchased a Lotus 19 and got Comstock Engineering to sponsor it for him. We got a one-year-old F1 Lotus in 1960 and entered it in the 1961 Glen F1 GP. In a way, I felt I was his sponsor because he never had any cash. At one time, he said “I think I’m going to race in Europe – and can you buy me some cigarettes?” Colin Chapman told me he was very impressed with his abilities but he did not believe the Formula III car he was asked to race was a real racing car. As a result, he got in over his head and as you know he died.

JW: Tell me about some of the other drivers you met over the years.
Bob Hanna: Well, for one, there was Erwin Goldschmidt. He raced a Ferrari 375 MM at Edenvale and won. But we had to stop him from driving up Highway 400 at 150 plus miles per hour. We told him the Ontario Provincial Police would not look favourably on that … Then there was Allan Miller who had a shop where Tommy Gilmour worked. Miller had the special Austin Healey which actor Jackie Cooper drove at Edenvale. Both the Hayes brothers, Peter and Fred, were good drivers. There was Jim Fergusson who was Ed Leavens’ mentor. Jim had a TD powered Minor with a special TD engine. Jim then had a TD with a GMC six -cylinder engine in it. One of the weird cars that Jim Fergusson had was a Citroen DS with the pneumatic suspension. He cut the Citroen in half – took 18 inches out of it. He and his wife Alice went on the first Cannonball Rally in it with an Irish wolfhound. Then there was Grant Clark, a racer who ran a number of cars including a Mark I Lola and one of the Comstock cars. He ran a number of businesses some of which unfortunately got him on the wrong side of the law.

JW: You were associated with Bill Sadler, creator of the Sadler Specials, weren’t you?
Bob Hanna: Bill was so talented. He could do anything he could turn his hand to. When Bill went away to England to work for John Tojeiro, we built a new aluminum front end for his car. Bill Steadman did the work. When Bill built his Formula Juniors, they were unique. He had a feel for design. One time I watched him as he was making a plexiglass screen for on of his Juniors. He held the piece of plexiglass in his had and pressed it on his leg as he played a torch on it. The plexiglass just fell into the shape he wanted and then he stopped. He just knew how to do it. Then there was Denny Coad who had such a battle with Eppie Weitzes, both of them in Sunbeam Alpines, for the sportscar championship. We had a lot to do with Denny. He was a winner right off the bat, a talented driver.

JW: Let’s talk briefly about one of the unsung drivers of those early days, someone who drove at the Glen in the late 1940s and who won there and all over Ontario before he gave it all up: Tommy Hoan, for example.
Bob Hanna: He was a natural and was very talented. At Edenvale, he was in a TC and I was watching him at the outside of a fast corner. He would set the car up for the turn, and I could see two inches of red Dunlop inner tube, he was driving that hard! At the Glen, he ran against Roger Barlow in the Simca special and other cars with Offenhauser engines in them. He finished 4th at that time. Afterwards, he said he was going to get out of racing as he couldn’t afford the equipment, an old story. I was surprised at the time that someone didn’t snap him up. He was that good. Down at the Big Bend at the Glen, they tracked him at 119 miles per hour in his TC. He told me if he had hit a pebble, he would have ended up in Lake Seneca.

JW: Bob, tell us some more about the personalities you came into contact with in the early days of racing, and can you tell us some more about the tracks?
Bob Hanna: Well, there was Stan Williams, the president of the London Autosport Club and later president of the Canadian Autosports Clubs. He was a Welshman and a great organizer although he didn’t race himself. He and I went to Argentina as the guests of Juan Fangio. We went to Fangio’s estancia for a barbecue and I remember huge steaks sizzling on the grills as well as huge amounts of other food.

JW: And the tracks?
Bob Hanna: Well, there were the early airport tracks like Green Acres which was on the shores of Lake Huron. The first races there were organized by the Port Huron SCCA and Sarnia’s Bluewater Sportscar Club, and then LASC and Stan Williams took over the track. Many Americans came over at Sarnia to race. LASC operated the track until 1962 or so, I believe. Then, the club took over Harewood Acres after BEMC moved its attention to Mosport. LASC operated Harewood until 1970.

JW: One of the first professional races took Place at Harewood, did it not?
Bob Hanna: That’s right, and it was called the Carling 300. Roger Penske and Peter Ryan raced and won there back in the day.

JW: Stan Williams told me a story about Wayne Kelly and a package delivered to him by air. Would you tell us the story?
Bob Hanna: Well, Wayne Kelly was racing his Porsche on a Friday, and the car broke. People were razzing him and telling him he was finished for the weekend, telling him he should go home. He replied not to sell him short. On Saturday, people were qualifying and racing in preliminary races, when staff in the tower saw a T-33 Silver Star jet approaching from the east. It had its landing gear and flaps down. Tower staff threw the red flag, and all cars stopped in the pits. The jet did another pass, and the fuselage flaps opened, and a small parachute popped out on the main straight. The jet raised its landing gear, closed the flaps and zipped off. Kelly walked onto the track and picked up his package of parts.

JW: Your tax dollars at work.
Bob Hanna: Apparently, Wayne had the weekly flight from Germany loaded with his Porsche parts. That’s one story. The other one is that the package was loaded with junk.

JW: Bob, thanks for the stories from back in the day.