RallySport Magazine December 2016

RETROSPECTIVE: AUGUST 2005
History noted
We take them for granted now,
but pace notes have a unique
history that may surprise you.
By JEFF WHITTEN
It would be easy to assume that
pace notes were a relatively new
invention, particularly from the
Australian point of view.
It wasn’t all that many years ago that
pace notes were introduced after years
of using tulip instructions and route
charts and, even earlier, map-based
navigation.
However, it may come as some
surprise to realise that pace notes were
first used not by a rally driver but by a
racing
The ‘Supreme Rat Traps’
Vanguard stuck in a bog in
the 1955 Redex Trial.
The original notes were very basic, but
they did the job and set the scene for
rallying of the future.
60 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - DECEMBER 2016
driver, as
far back as
1955 in the
annual Mille
Miglia race
in Sicily.
The first use of pace notes is credited
to Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson,
who used the system to win this high
speed annual event that was held on
the mountainous roads of southern
Italy.
First, a bit of background. Stirling
Moss was a well-known driver in the
Formula 1 grands prix of the 50s
and had heard about the famous
Mille Miglia (which literally means
1000 miles in Italian) race, which
had been running since 1903.
The event was more often
than not won by Italian drivers,
simply because of their intimate
knowledge of the route, which
they were able to drive whenever
they chose.
Moss was friendly with Denis
Jenkinson, a small, bearded,
gnome-like man who was editor
of the English Motor Sport
magazine. Jenkinson was no
stranger to motorsport either
– he was a former motorcycle
sidecar World Champion
passenger.
The pair had been discussing
the event and Jenkinson
mentioned to Moss that he
would like the chance to
compete in the event and beat
the locals at their own game.
Jenkinson (or ‘Jenks’ as he
was commonly known) also
mentioned his desire to an
American driver, John Fitch, a
former fighter pilot who had
driven a Nash-Healey in the
1953 Mille Miglia.
Fitch claimed that the only
way that a non-Italian could
be beaten was by applying
science to make up for the
lack of local knowledge.
Jenkinson went away and
thought about what Fitch
had said. He already had knowledge of
much of the route through his many
trips through the country chasing
motorcycle events, while Moss had
competed in the event itself four times
in a Jaguar, without success.
Although Moss had accumulated
a great deal of knowledge about
the hazards on the route – the
bumps, the blind corners, the railway
level crossings – there was still no substitute
for local knowledge.
Between them they believed that they
had a reasonable amount of knowledge
of about a quarter of the Mille Miglia
course.
Early in 1955, Moss secured a drive in
a Mercedes 300SLR for the forthcoming
event, so the pair soon got serious
about their preparation for the big
event.
They decided that route notes that
described every straight, every bend,
every geographical feature or landmark,
should be prepared.
But covering a 1000 mile route was
no mean task, so over a period of time
the pair drove the course at speed,
while Jenks took notes.
Eventually, Jenkinson had recorded
around 17 pages of detailed notes and
Moss was confident that he could take
many blind brows at 100mph, still well
below the speed that the locals drove.
With his comprehensive hand written
notes massaged into some sort of
order, the next problem was how he
was going to be able to deliver them
to Moss in an open-top sports car at
speeds of up to 170mp/h.
After much thought, Moss came
up with the idea of building a small
aluminium box to hold a continuous roll
of pace notes.
The box contained two shafts around
which the pace notes were rolled, and
there was a clear Perspex window on
the top through which the appropriate
notes could be read.
The box was sealed with adhesive