We hope this page offers a solution to one of the areas that has always been a point of contention when discussing the reasons behind Mike's fatal crash in 1959.

If you read 1959, you'll see that there was a theory that a hand throttle had been fitted to the car and that this had possibly jammed and caused the crash. Paul Roach questioned Bill Field directly about the statement and he dismissed the entire story as complete rubbish: he did NOT, he said, fit a hand throttle to VDU 881. In this he is corroborated by Roy Monk - a mechanic at Mike Hawthorn's own Tourist Trophy Garage in Farnham.

However, what Roy Monk DID fit to VDU 881 was a Radiator Blind ....

A letter from Roy Monk

While building 881 VDU, Nigel Webb's recreation of Mike's Mark 1, Nigel had correspondence with Roy Monk over a radiator blind that had supposedly been fitted to the car. Roy confirmed that one had in fact been fitted and supplied Nigel with hand drawings of how he remembered the device and where it was positioned. As you'll see from the detail below, it's a possibility that the control for this could have been confused with a hand throttle (although a few moments of thinking about it would show the device below is a pretty risky construction for such a critical device)

Roys' letter reads in part:

"In response to your letter re radblind operation. I'm sure Mike asked for it to be operated by his right hand so bracket would have been mounted in the area I have indicated in your sketch. Please see also separate sketch for what I think the bracket/mechanism looked like. I hope this will help you."

Drawings of the Radiator Blind hand control from Roy Monk © Nigel Webb

Nigel Webb built the blind control using this information and here's what it looks like:

Images: © Tony Bailey

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