Even the weather decided to pay tribute to the legendary Bill Boddy and his 81-year-old career spent living and breathing motor sport: when Brooklands director Allan Winn put the call through to Motor Sport magazine suggesting a celebration of Boddy’s lifetime as a journalist (over half of his career spent as Motor Sport editor), nobody would have dared wish for a Mediterranean summer day on 1 October.  

Yet a tropical sun shone on cars which would have been well known and loved by a man who spent his entire life driving or writing about them and the motorsport events which dotted the last century.

Brooklands has a special connection with Bill Boddy, who campaigned relentlessly to defend the race circuit’s heritage after WWII, when the venue’s future became uncertain. Boddy even wrote a book, ‘History of Brooklands’, to highlight the circuit’s special place in the British history. In his honour, the Tribute Day saw hundreds of vintage cars gathering under an impossible sun in the middle of British autumn: Talbots, Bentleys, Daimlers and Bugattis, not to mention Sunbeams and Darracq cars were assembled together - to pay their last respects - by the STD (Sunbeam, Talbot and Darracq register), of which Bill Boddy was President and, with his late wife Winifred, the founding member.

The event’s highlight was a series of re-enactment of race starts, complete with vintage machinery and the true spirit of Brooklands at its best: leather caps and goggles were sported among those who felt brave enough to confront the famous banks.

Row after row of veteran cars and famous wheels gingerly paused at the beginning of the ‘straight’, banter flowing among the drivers, before opening the throttle. Those were cars which refuse to gather dust in museums: the 1903 Daimler 22HP, still regularly participating in the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run, at least once driven by Boddy himself; the Brooklands Museum’s own 24-litre aero-engined Napier-Railton (pushed out and onto the straight for its customary ‘bump start’); Stanley Mann Racing’s ‘Mother Gun’, fearsome yet elegant; the unmistakable blue of a Bugatti Type 35: in front of large crowds in sunglasses, priceless historic models were driven hard yet in a controlled way, gamely yet respectfully.

It was a shame that Bill Boddy was not there to enjoy it, though the original racing spirit, and his own, were definitely inspirational on the day.