1913/10/31 Brooklands Record Attempts
Note: This is a sub-section of 1913 Brooklands Calendar
Death of Percy E. Lambert. The third track death at Brooklands. [1]
RACING MOTORIST KILLED. TRAGEDY AT BROOKLANDS. TYRE BURST AT 110 MILES AN HOUR.[2]
The famous racing motorist and world's record breaker, Mr. Percy E. Lambert, was killed yesterday on the Brooklands Track while attempting to break the hour's speed record. A tyre burst whilst the car was travelling at about 110 miles an hour, with the result that Mr. Lambert was dashed on the cement track and had his skull fractured. He died shortly after as he was being admitted to the Weybridge Cottage Hospital.
Mr. Lambert, who was the first to cover 100 miles in one hour on land, as Vedrizies was the first to cover that distance in the air, and who only as recently as last Monday had made two fresh world's records at Brooklands, started yesterday morning on the same car - a 25-h.p. Talbot - to regain the hour record, which had been wrested from him. The car ran splendidly for about half an hour, and by a quarter to ten Mr. Lambert had beaten the fifty miles world a record. In the twenty-first lap, when he had covered 58 miles, and was travelling at the rate of nearly 110 miles an hour, the off-side back tyre burst with a loud report. The officials and timekeepers heard the noise, but as Mr. Lambert, after passing the stand, had disappeared behind the hill near the bridge on the north-east side of the track, they did not actually see what occurred. An examination of the wheel tracks, however, showed that the car careered all over the track. First it slid down the saucer-shaped bank, and then dashed up the slope, at the top of which it capsized, ultimately coming to rest after two or three somersaults at the bottom. The terrific pace at which the car was travelling gave Mr. Lambert no chance of escape. He was found lying on the track terribly injured. Medical aid was summoned, but there was no hope, for in addition to many minor injuries the skull was fractured, and the end came shortly as he was being admitted to the hospital.
This is the first fatal accident which has occurred at Brooklands for the last five years. A sad feature of the tragedy is that only the previous night Mr. Lambert promised his fiancée that, whether successful or not, this would be his last attempt at breaking record.
The only witness of the accident was a young man named William McIntyre, a son of one of the lodgekeepers at Brooklands. It appeared to him, he said, that after the tire burst. Mr. Lambert attempted to slow down. He seemed to keep control of it for about fifty yards. Then it began to zigzag across the track, and after striking the bottom edge dashed to the top. Here it struck and turned turtle, and then somersaulted from the top to the bottom of the track, finishing up on the level on its four wheels. It was at the second somersault that Mr. Lambert fell out of the car.