KEEPING THE SPIRIT ALIVE SINCE 1999
R.E.L. Featherstonhaugh
10/10/1909 - 12/7/1976
Famous English jazz saxophonist Buddy Featherstonhaugh took time out for a brief international motor racing career in the 1930s, driving Maseratis for Whitney Straights team and others, and also appearing in ERA and Alfa Romeo cars.
R.E.L. Featherstonhaugh died 45 years ago, he was 67
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Born in Paris but educated in England, Rupert Edward Lee Featherstonhaugh did extensive recording and performing prior to World War II, then had lengthy inactive period immediately afterward. He worked with vocalist Pat O'Malley in 1927. He played for Spike Hughes from 1930 to 1932, recording two versions of "Buddy's Wednesday Outing," which was written for him by Hughes. He toured Britain in 1932 with pianist Billy Mason in a band backing Louis Armstrong, then recorded with his band The Cosmopolitans in 1933. Fletcher Allen was among his sidemen. Featherstonhaugh later recorded with Valaida Snow and Benny Carter. He led a group in the Royal Air Force that included Vic Lewis, Don McAffer and Jack Parnell; it eventually recorded as The BBC Radio Rhythm Club Sextet from 1943 to 1945. Featherstonhaugh toured Iceland in 1946, then was out of action until he resurfaced in 1956, heading a bop quintet and playing baritone sax with Leon Calvert and Roy Sidewell. Keny Wheeler and Bobby Wellins were later group members. Featherstonhaugh made a final tour of the Middle East in 1957 before he retired from jazz.He was thus already well-known in that field when he joined Straight for a few 1934 races and won the Dieppe Grand Prix at his second start. He couldn’t repeat that effort in 1935, but raced in France and Ireland as well as at Brooklands. He drove old 2½-litre and 3-litre Maseratis in these events, but for the 1935 Donington Grand Prix had a year-old 8CM Maserati, which unfortunately did not last the distance.
He had also raced a little MG in 1935, and for 1936 shared the wheel of Jock Manby-Colegrave’s ERA for a couple of British long-distance races, taking a fifth and sixth. In 1938 he negotiated a ride in Hans Rüesch’s 8C-35 Alfa Romeo but was unable to make the placings at Crystal Palace in April, and then crashed in practice for the BRDC Empire Trophy Race at Donington Park the following weekend.
Then it was back to his music, and a wartime contract with the BBC, after which he continued playing in other bands until his 1957 farewell tour. He seems to have made just one postwar motorsport appearance, setting fastest sportscar car time in the 1946 Brighton Speed Trials at the wheel of an Alfa Romeo.
David McKinney
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Murray Walker 1923 -
Ralph Liguori 1926 -
Eugenio Castellotti 1930 - 1957 -
Warren Bentley 1940 -
Siegfried Stohr 1952
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Ken Downing 1917 - 2004
Ken Downing was a genuine privateer who bore allegiance to the Connaught marque for most of his career, both in sports cars and single saters. Although Downing only made two Grand Prix starts, he was a regular podium finisher in National events. -
Dick Gibson 1918 - 2010
Gibson raced a Cooper-Bristol and an A-type Connaught before aquiring Cooper T42 Climax Formula 2 car. He raced in the 1957 and 1958 German Grands Prix and won the RAC South African International Championship in 1959. -
Richard John Beattie Seaman 1913 - 1939
Seaman was one of if not the greatest British pre-war Grand Prix driver. He famously drove for the Mercedes-Benz team from 1937-1939, winning the 1938 German Grand Prix in the W125 car. He was killed while leading the the 1939 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps. In the wet, he crashed into a tree on lap 22. -
David Hampshire 1917 - 1990
A company director who business funded his racing in an ERA and Maserati. He raced before and after the Second World War. -
Philip Fotheringham-Parker 1907 - 1981
Fotheringham-Parker was a wealthy amateur driver who participated in the 1951 British Grand Prix driving a privately-run Maserati 4CL. He once survived going over the top of the banking at Brooklands in an Alvis Silver Eagle.