Race C

Sports Cars pre 1953

Further to the reorganization required for this edition, the category devoted to sports cars was the most penalized by a single envisaged session of practice, although increased by 10 seconds with respect to the other sessions, and the race run on Sunday evening at the end of the event. A logical choice if you consider that at Monaco these cars ran only in 1952 by replacing the ones of Formula 1, even if some of the present two-seaters could boast a blazon superior to many single-seaters, among all the Talbot Lago T26GS, protagonist, just in 1952, of that lonely ride at Le Mans, interrupted not longer than two hours before the end, which saw Pierre Levegh as the leader. On the track John Ure, the favoured driver, the winner of last two editions, was obliged to yield to the competition of Carlos Monteverde in Jaguar C Type and Blakeney-Edwards in Frazer-Nash Mk2, first and second respectively at the end of the testing session, situation complicated by technical problems which forced the English driver to give up the last 10 minute’s qualification, being relegated to the third place at almost 2 seconds.

At the start Blakeney-Edwards had a good sprint passing in first position on St. Devote corner, but Monteverde, making the most of his engine power took again the lead on the hill of Ostende. Behind them Ure made a bit of mess losing two positions to the advantage of Webb and Marcais, but the race of the French driver, the winner of the 2004 edition, unfortunately was yet finished at lap 2, due to an about-face on the tight of St Devote corner; Ure needed two laps more to pass Webb on Fairmont hairpin bend and go back to his third position. The leading Blakeney-Edwards seemed faster and on third passage, taking advantage of a trajectory mistake made by Monteverde on St. Devote, passed him level with Beau Rivage; it seemed done for a couple of laps, but the exasperated drive required by the Frazer-Nash obliged him to slow down just when the Brazilian, English naturalized, in his Jaguar started improving his lap time. At the beginning on passage seven the two drivers found themselves placed side by side on final straight, with Monteverde who put on a final spurt to win.

Marco Zanello
Photos by Fabio Carrera
Technical advice by Joni Stefani

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