By Steve Lloyd
WDCR Historian
Some of you who’ve been in our merry band of Washington, DC Region SCCA members may recall that our racing activities began not under the aegis of the Washington DC Region, SCCA, but a small group of enthusiasts from the Washington DC area who became infamous for winning just about everywhere they raced in the early 1950s.
Ace Rosner, Dr. Dick Thompson, Bob McKinsey, Bill Kinchloe, Tex Hopkins and several others won with such frequency that Dr. M. R. J. Wylie said of them that they were “egregious pot-hunters” and they supposedly were most ungentlemanly in their winning ways.
About this time a British film starring Alec Guinness was popular. The film told the charming exploits of a small group of down-on-their-luck men who quietly stole many thousands of pounds in gold from a British bank. The film was called “The Lavender Hill Mob” and soon became the adopted name of these enthusiasts who were “stealing” trophies from their competitors on a fairly regular basis.
An important part of this story is in knowing that the members of the Lavender Hill Mob (the racers, not the bank robbers) were some of the earliest members of the Washington DC Region, SCCA. But not all members of the DC Region were Mob members. The Mob was even more restrictive in its membership qualifications than SCCA was at that time. (SCCA used to require, for example, two members in good standing to sponsor a membership candidate. And there were others ways potential new members were vetted!)
As many of you know. The MG-TC almost single-handedly began the sports car craze in the USA after World War II. MGs were the sports car that many of the Lavender Hill Mob cut their racing teeth on. Most of the Lavender Hill Mob were also members of the MG Car Club.
In the Washington DC area we did not have a road racing course and except for the first two SCCA President’s Cup Nationals (the first at Andrews Air Force Base and the second at Hagerstown Municipal Airport) we didn’t have a “street” circuit like Watkins Glen. Our racers did race their cars locally, however. The MG Car Club staged races on the 1/3 mile dirt oval at Marlboro Motor Raceway at least as early as 1953.
Although he would be known later for his many wins in factory-supported Corvettes, Dr. Dick Thompson was a member of the MGCC, the DC Region SCCA and a founding member of the Lavender Hill Mob. He learned to race on that oval at Marlboro. To this day, Dick (who would later be an SCCA National Championin Corvettes; our own Region’s RE; and Chairman of the DC Region, SCCA Competition Board in our Region) claims that the car control he needed with the Corvette was learned in his MG racing on Marlboro’s dirt oval.
The Lavender Hill Mob pined for its own road course, and in late 1954 convinced Marlboro owner Eugene Chaney to pave not only the oval, but to extend a course to and from the oval to make a genuine road racing circuit. To sweeten the pot, each Lavender Hill Mob member pledged $50 each to help with the paving. Interestingly, the contract the Mob drew up with Chaney indicated that the Mob would represent the track’s interest when negotiating with the Washington DC Region, SCCA — a policy that remained in effect until the mid-1960s.
On a weekend in May of 1955, with frequent thundershowers, the Washington DC Region, SCCA and the Mob staged the first Washington DC Region SCCA road races on the newly-paved .7-mile Marlboro course. The Region continued to race there until the end of the 1969 racing season, the same year Summit Point would stage its first sports car races.
Just before the 1957 season at Marlboro, Chaney saw the immense popularity of sports car racing and filled the full 28-acre site with another mile of road course to extend Marlboro to 1.7 miles with eleven turns. It would easily have fit within the perimeter of the current Summit Point main course.
One of the reasons Chaney expanded was because SCCA National told Chaney and the Region that a .7-mile course was not suitable for SCCA National competition. Once the course stretched to 1.7 miles, the Region was able to host its own first National race in 1957. (That’s not a contradiction from what was stated above. The first two President’s Cup Nationals were organized by SCCA National and manned locally by our Region.)
But that 1957 SCCA National was not the first National sports car race to be staged at Marlboro.
Despite the rather modest, but nonetheless challenging, .7-mile Marlboro course, in October 1955, the MG Car Club staged its first ever National race at Marlboro, two years before the DC Region would stage its first National. Appropriately, this MG National made national news with a lengthy article by second-place main event driver David Ash, in Sports Cars Illustrated.
The weekend’s main event was won by the late Duncan Black (of Black & Decker fame) from Parkton, Md., driving his Lester-MG. Black would later be an SCCA National Champion in years to come in two classes, EP with an A.C. Bristol and CP in his Daimler SP250. Third was Dr. Dick Thompson.
Many other Washington DC Region, SCCA drivers raced that weekend, among them Steve Spitler (who would, a few years later, tragically, be the first of two sports car drivers to lose their lives at Marlboro when he rolled his D-Jaguar); Spitler’s mother, (!) Rebecca Spitler; Dick Nash; Pinky Windridge; Foxy Carter; Frank Baptista (later known for many race wins in various Elva sports-racers); Art Tweedale, a Lola sports-racing stalwart and frequent winner, and “Cappy” Cappiello. Cappy would have a turn named after him — apparently because he lost it so often in what would become “Cappy’s Corner” — after Marlboro’s course was extended to its final 1.7 mile configuration.
The entry fee for the MG Car Club National was a whopping $10, with a $5 late registration fee. A “Victory Dinner” at Andrews Air Force base would close the weekend at $2 per person, but participants were advised: “gentlemen will wear coats.”
Take a few moments to view the photos with this article as well as the “supplemental regs” and other memorabilia like the tech inspection form included here.
Author’s note: Many, many thanks to Michael Eaton who shared this information and photos with us. Michael is the proud owner of a very historic MGA TwinCam. I am also indebted to Stan Smilow, who appears driving the “Motto MG” (the white car number 103) for his photos of that 1955 National.
Throughout its existence, the heart of Marlboro was a 1/3 mile oval. Here, the MGCC is gridding the cars on the “unused” portion of the oval. Once the race started, this portion of the oval was not used.
Here is the start of the main event. On the outside is Duncan Black in his Lester-MG #4. He is flanked on the inside by Stan Smilow in his Motto-MG #103. Notice the covered grandstands in the background.
Here, Stan Smilow has come off the oval and entered the road course proper. This led to tight Esses and ultimately a hairpin turn. The entire course was only .7 mile! “Motto” refers to the Italian coachbuilder, Motto. Motto bodied this MG and also styled early Ferrari roadsters.
These are the supplementary regulations for the MG National. The rules were fairly simple, and the entry fees are certainly worth noting!
This is a good diagram of the DC Region’s “home track” in 1955. In this configuration it was less than a mile long, but would ultimately have another mile added to it in 1957 — and all within 28 acres! The course is still there, although quite overgrown, across U.S. 301 from the old Upper Marlboro horse racing track in Prince George’s county.
Very basic, this is the 1955 tech inspection sheet for Stan Smilow’s Motto-MG. The car raced as an “F-Modified” car that weekend, since the rebodied MG was hardly a regular “production” MG.
No fancy credentials here, just a basic luggage tag served as the official Pit Pass for the weekend.
