24h Le Mans
24 HOURS CENTENARY – People and machines ⎮ In 1924, Bentley became the first British constructor to triumph at the race, winning four more consecutive times between 1927 and 1930, including scoring the first quadruplet in Le Mans history in 1929. The marque's extraordinary success was owed to outstanding drivers with personalities as larger than life as their talent on the track.
Between 1923 and 1939, many of the best drivers of the period competed at the 24 Hours, as did women, predecessors of today's gentlemen drivers, weekday entrepreneurs and weekend sportsmen, aristocrats and even crown princes. In this pioneering lineage exists a very special subset: the Bentley Boys.
They were rich bon vivants, all living in the highly chic Grove neighborhood in London. The Bentley Boys were one of the first groups of drivers to embody a true family spirit, later adopted by Audi racing drivers in the 2000s. They shared a definite esprit de corps, especially given that at that time the impact of World War I remained strong among the eight Bentley Boys who earned the marque's five wins ffrom 1924 to 1930.
The first driver to win the 24 Hours three times (1928, 1929 and 1930), Woolf Barnato ended the first world war with the rank of captain, before becoming a lieutenant-colonel during World War II; John Duff (winner in 1924 with Frank Clement) fought in Belgium at Passchendaele in 1917; Dudley Benjafield (winner in 1927 with Sammy Davis) served in Egypt; it took Bernard Rubin (1928) three years to regain the usage of his legs after a serious injury in 1917; Henry Birkin (1929) reached the rank of lieutenant in the air force; Glen Kidston (1930) was a corvette captain and submariner.
Two Frenchmen figured among the Bentley Boys. For his rookie participation with a Sunbeam in 1925, Jean Chassagne finished second then joined Bentley after driving an Aries in 1926 and 1927. In 1928, he finished fifth and then fourth in 1929. Those results were the culmination of a successful career that saw Chassagne take pole position at the Indianapolis 500 in 1914 and win the RAC Tourist Trophy in 1922. He served in WWI like his British counterparts, as a fighter pilot.
In 1929, Chassagne was beaten in the classification by fellow countryman André d’Erlanger (third). A French baron born in Great Britain, d’Erlanger took the start in the 24 Hours three times. He and Chassagne both shared a Bentley with winners of the race: the first joined forces with Dudley Benjafield (1929) and the second with Tim Birkin (1928 and 1930) and Frank Clement (1929).
While posterity mainly remembers the winning Bentley Boys, several others experienced varying outcomes at the wheel of the British manufacturer's racing cars: Jack Dunfee (second in 1929 with Glen Kidston), Richard Watney (second in 1930 with Frank Clement), Leslie Callingham (retirement in 1927 with Frank Clement, fifth with Lord Howe in 1930), Tommy Thistlewayte and R. Clive Gallop (retirement in 1926), George Duller (retirement in 1926 with Frank Clement and in 1927 with André d’Erlanger), Giulio Ramponi (retirement in 1930 with Dudley Benjafield) and Jack Dunfee's brother Clive (retirement in 1930 with Sammy Davis).
The Bentley Boys satisfied their need for adventure in other ways before and after winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans. A talented swordsman, John Duff became a stuntman in swashbuckling films in Hollywood. Before competing in the race, bacteriology expert Dudley Benjafield worked at the heart of the fight against the 1919-1920 Spanish flu pandemic. Journalist, writer and caricaturist, Sammy Davis was one of the great automotive writers of the interwar era.
Glen Kidston turned to aviation and, in 1931 a year after his win at Le Mans, set the record for the England-Cape Town, South Africa air link (12,900 km at an hourly average of 211 kph). During WWII, Woolf Barnato served in the Royal Air Force, ensuring the protection of aircraft construction sites on British territory against Luftwaffe bombing.
Seven decades later, a second generation of very cosmopolitan Bentley Boys honoured the British racing green of Bentley at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. But that's another story…
PHOTOS (Copyright - ACO Archives, Bentley Motors): LE MANS (SARTHE, FRANCE), CIRCUIT DES 24 HEURES, 24 HOURS OF LE MANS. From top to bottom: the first Bentley to win the 24 Hours in 1924; the historic quadruplet in 1929 with Woolf Barnato/Henry Birkin (#1, winners), Jack Dunfee/Glen Kidston (#9, second), Dudley Benjafield/André d'Erlanger (#10, third) and Frank Clement/Jean Chassagne (#8, fourth); a group portrait at the end of the 1920s with (from left to right) Frank Clement, Leslie Callingham, Woolf Barnato (behind André d'Erlanger), George Duller, Walter Owen Bentley, Sammy Davis, Clive Dunfee and Dudley Benjafield; three-time winner Woolf Barnato (at left in the Bentley) in as many participations after his 1929 victory with Tim Birkin. Below (Copyright - Louis Monnier/ACO): the inauguration of rue des Bentley Boys at the 2019 24 Hours coinciding with the British marque's centenary. From left to right: Gilles Huttepain (member of the ACO Management Committee representing Pierre Fillon), Brian Gush (Bentley's competition manager at the time) and Stéphane Le Foll (mayor of Le Mans).
