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"When I started racing, I wore an ordinary tie, but then I found it flapped in my face so I changed to a bow tie. Now it's a sort of trademark and that's why the French call me 'Le Papillon'." -JMH
 A cavalier of the track and one of Britain's most famous motor racing sons, Mike Hawthorn culminated eight seasons of racing for fun by winning the world championship for his beloved country in 1958. Driving for Ferrari, Vanwall, BRM and Jaguar, it was with Ferrari that he gained this greatest accolade.
Yet he drove a Jaguar with such fervour and tenacity that nobody could match him. Many notable writers of the day felt no one had ever driven a Jaguar like Hawthorn. As Jaguar teamleader he enjoyed a good deal of success during the '55/'56 season, prior to the demise of the Jaguar's competitions department. Had he not experienced various mechanical problems, his successes with the 'D' type at Sebring and Le Mans in 1955 might have been repeated in 1956. His last drive in a Jaguar was at Sebring in 1957 with XKD 605; he finished third.
He had always given a consistent one hundred per cent at the wheel of any car - his 3.4 saloon car drives at Silverstone in 1957/58 are legendary - and had become a much-loved and well-respected man with the public and personnel on and off the track, despite occasional press controversy.
He was held in special regard at Browns Lane, Coventry. Those who knew him at the Jaguar factory were impressed by his personality and genuine, friendly nature. His engineering background and passion for Jaguar made him especially popular with the competitions department and he built up a particular rapport with Len Hayden and 'Lofty' England. Andrew Whyte compared the relationship between Mike and 'Lofty' with that between Jim Clark and Colin Chapman some years later.
Mike Hawthorn was not yet 30 when in 1959 he crashed his 3.4 Jaguar saloon on the Guildford by-pass and died.
One of Britain's most captivating and gifted racing drivers, John Michael Hawthorn's career included disasters as well as triumphs. Here Paul Skilleter examines his Jaguar works drive in the tragic 1955 Le Mans race.
Paul Roach
 The 1955 24-Hour race at Le Mans always was going to be an epic. Mercedes-Benz had entered its brilliant new W196 single seater-based sports car, the 300SLR. Stirling Moss -who had won the 1955 Mille Miglia in a 300SLR less than two months before - was paired with Juan Manuel Fangio in perhaps the most formidable driver combination Le Mans had ever seen. Two other Mercedes were driven by Karl Kling and Andre Simon, and John Fitch and Pierre Levegh (whose single-handed drive in the 1952 race had nearly deprived the Mercedes 3OOSL of its victory).
Ferrari was present with three enormously powerful (360bhp) 4.4-litre 121 LMs and, especially after they had beaten the new 'D' type the year before, could not be discounted. But on the grounds of reliability, Jaguar were generally viewed as a better bet -especially as the completely revised 1955 cars now had 270bhp, a more aerodynamically efficient body and the enormous asset of properly-developed disc brakes.
The full Jaguar team, and the other Jaguars entered, were as follows:-
Entrant Ch. no. Reg. no. Drivers Race no.
JC XKD505 774RW Hawthorn Bueb 6
EF XKD503 Claes/ Swaters 10
C XKD506 O32RW Rolt/ Hamilton 7
JC XKD508 194WK Beauman/ Dewis 8
BC XKD507 Spear/ Walters 9
JC Jaguar Cars;
EC Ecurie Francorchamps;
BC: Briggs Cunningham
Sure enough, the race soon developed into a stupendous duel between Fangio and Hawthorn who, after 15 laps, overhauled Castellotti's Ferrari. The Mercedes and Jaguar drivers, passing and re-passing each other, annihilated the lap record in turn, though it was Hawthorn who finally posted the quickest lap of all, at 4 mins 6.6 secs., an average of 122.39mph.
It was a fascinating contest, sustained by two great drivers conducting two fine but very different cars. The bulkier Mercedes was tubular-framed with independent swing-axle rear suspension that helped put the power down. Motive force was provided by the complicated downdraught inlet M196 'straight eight' engine of impressive specification (yet slated some years later by Harry Mundy who thought that, with its well-developed desmodromic valve gear, huge 1.968in inlet valves and roller bearings throughout, it should have developed more than 300bhp!).
The car's Achilles heel at Le Mans might have been its brakes; these were drum and had earlier given concern through their tendency to 'grab'. Mercedes' counter-measures at Le Mans were twofold : the 300SLR was provided with a large air-brake which rose up behind the cockpit, and with four dash-mounted plungers which were apparently intended for driver operation, to squirt oil into a grabbing brake. The air brake was somewhat controversial and while Jaguar team manager 'Lofty' England states that he didn't protest pre-race as has been suggested, the Le Mans scrutineers insisted that little windows be cut in the panel to allow something of a rear-mirror view when the air brake was applied.
Jaguar, on the other hand, had no Formula One technology to use. Indeed the 'D' type's mechanical aspects were largely production derived. The 3.4-litre dry-sump straight-six engine had classic twin ohc valve operation, with 7/16in lift camshafts, 2in inlet valves and a 9:1 compression ratio. The 35/40 degree cylinder head was a twin-spark type, but only one sparking plug per cylinder was actually used. Much more than the 270bhp given could have been extracted but Bill Heynes knew that reliability was paramount at Le Mans.
The car's tubular frame which penetrated the car's unique aircraft-riveted aluminium monocoque was enclosed by Malcolm Sayer's beautiful bodywork. In today's terms this was not especially 'aerodynamic' - it was the car's commendably small frontal area that probably helped give the 'D' type a slightly better top speed than the more powerful Mercedes and Ferraris.
The 'D' type's live axle rear suspension was crude compared to the Mercedes' but less of a handicap on the fast, smooth Le Mans circuit for which the car was exclusively designed. But to compensate were those wonderful power disc brakes, honed to reliability by Dunlop and Jaguar since first being used on a 'C type in 1952. |
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