Raymond Mays

Thomas Raymond Mays ( born August 1, 1899 in Bourne, Lincolnshire, † January 6, 1980 ) was a British racing driver and entrepreneur.

By 1917, he attended school in Oundle, where he met Amherst Villiers. After military service in the Grenadier Guards in France, he enrolled at Christ's College, Cambridge. He liked to go to the theater in London and watched Jean Borotra tennis.

Racing career

Mays played a crucial role in building the British car racing stables ERA and BRM. Workshops of these companies were each directly behind his home in Bourne. Throughout his life, his goal was to see his native country at the forefront of international motorsport. These ambitions are not always complied with the technical and financial capabilities, and finally culminated in the failure of the BRM V16 project.

Mays ' racing career lasted about 30 years, where he went in different cars: a 1 ​​½ -liter Hillman Speed ​​Model, two 1 ½ -liter Bugatti, an ( unsuccessful ), charged AC, Vauxhall -Villiers, Mercedes, Invicta, Riley and ERAs. Mays was in Shelsey Walsh announced that he played with two Brescia Bugattis, the Cordon Bleu and Cordon Rouge was named for its first race of the 1920s. A well-known picture of " Cordon Bleu " was created in 1924 when mountain race on Caerphilly Mountain. He developed his cars with compressors of Amherst Villiers from AC via the Vauxhall -Villiers to the famous "White Riley ," which later became the ERAs were developed.

1929 Raymond Mays drove the mountain race in Shelsey Walsh with a Vauxhall -Villiers with dual rear wheels, according to Mays "the first time that such a ausgeüstetes car participated in a mountain race." He thus broke the speed record, and subsequently this innovation was widely copied.

Mays made ​​in racing events such as the Grand Prix of Germany in 1935, the Tazio Nuvolari won, attention, where he shared his ERA with Ernst von Delius. The band at the victor's crown of this race can be seen in the Raymond - Mays - space in Bourne Heritage Centre.

Mays was one of the most famous drivers of ERA, which gave the British Bergrenncup in the first two years, 1947 and 1948, also won as the Brighton Speed ​​Trials in 1946, 1947, 1948 and 1950. Towards the end of the season 1950 in his black ERA 4RD he racing on.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Mays presented tuning parts for the British Ford four-and six-cylinder engines, including an aluminum cylinder head, the Mays ' colleague at ERA and BRM, Peter Berthon, had designed. These parts were installed in automobiles from Ford, AC and Reliant.

Publications

• Raymond Mays & Dennis May: Split Seconds: My Racing Years. G.T. Foulis & Co. Ltd.. ( 1952). 306 pages.
• Raymond Mays & Peter Roberts. BRM Cassell & Co. Ltd. .. London (1962). 240 pages.

From 1938 to 1939 was taken at Shelsley motor in Bourne ( Lincolnshire ) based on the standard V8 in a few copies of a cabriolet which the name Raymond Mays ' wore. This elegant car had a side-valve V8 engine with 2.7 liter displacement, the (62.5 kW) gave 85 bhp power at 5000 rpm. On the chassis with 2819 mm wheelbase and a track width of 1321 mm and a four-door sedan was planned, but it was - if at all - only a single piece. The Second World War ended the production.