The disability pioneer who left Moss in awe

Back in the day you could get close to your heroes...

As a kid in the 1950s, I was taken by my parents to Silverstone, Aintree and Oulton Park, where a few shillings would buy you a paddock pass. Bliss for an adoring fan.

It goes without saying that I worshipped Stirling Moss, but in truth I idolised anyone who drove a racing car, and none more than Archie Scott Brown, whose style on the track was beyond spectacular.

What made this more remarkable was that, on the face of it, Scott Brown was hardly equipped to drive cars, let alone race them. During pregnancy, his mother had contracted German measles and, in the late 1920s, the potentially dreadful consequences for an unborn child were not recognised.

Archie's left arm was normal, but he had no right forearm or hand, and his severely shortened legs were without shinbones. Wonderful work by an orthopaedic surgeon - 22 operations over two years - markedly improved the situation, but still none could have predicted any sort of normal life for the young boy, far less that he would race cars with distinction.

As nature takes away, so perhaps she gives. The late Brian Lister, with whose cars Scott Brown will be forever synonymous, had no doubts. "My two passions were motor racing and jazz, and I've seen examples of this in both," he said. "Blind people are often much more aware of sound, very strong on musical pitch, and so on - and I think it was the same with Archie. He was born without a right hand and so on, but his sense of balance was truly exceptional."

"He was able to push the stump of his right arm on to the rim - and he could turn the wheel with it. Our cars always had light steering, so that helped, and a left-hand gear lever, too" Brian Lister

That was never better seen than through 
a corner like the old Woodcote at Silverstone. In those days, you didn't look twice at a car on opposite lock, for that was the quick way through a corner, but by any standards
 Scott Brown's style was flamboyant.

Times without number I watched him recover from impossibly lurid slides, but it was not until I saw him in a paddock that I came to appreciate the miracle of what he could do with a racing car. As Stirling Moss said: "I've seen many drivers with two arms who could have done with as much ability as Archie had in one."

There was never a contract between Scott Brown and Lister. "I think I paid Archie a retainer," Brian recalled, "as well as a percentage of the prize money, but it wasn't really a matter of his driving for me; we worked together - we were mates."

Lister believed Scott Brown's physical limitations were less of a handicap than might have been thought. 
"He was able to push the stump of his right arm on to the rim - and he could turn the wheel with it," Lister explained. "Our cars always had light steering, so that helped, and a left-hand gear lever, too. I remember him driving us somewhere, and asking Josie, my wife, if she'd like a cigarette. He got the matchbox out of his pocket, pushed it open with his thumb, got a match out, closed the box and somehow held it so that it struck the match!

"At Aintree one year he asked Josie to pass his gear to him - his crash hat, overalls and a glove. 'Where's the other glove?' she asked - and suddenly realised what she'd said. Archie, though, treated it as a huge joke - he got her laughing, so as not to embarrass her and, in fact, probably took it as a compliment, which unconsciously it was."

Twice I saw Scott Brown win the British Empire Trophy at Oulton, in 1955 and 1957, and the first of those was especially gratifying, for a year earlier, following a protest, the authorities had refused to allow him to race. Soon his entries came to be accepted in Britain, but it was a different matter abroad.

Scott Brown's cause was widely championed, however, and foreign opposition began to wilt: not only was Archie almost unbeatable in British sportscar racing, he had proved quick in a handful of F1 races with Connaught in 1956, holding off - until his fragile car broke - Moss's Maserati at Goodwood, and finishing second to Stirling's Vanwall in the International Trophy at Silverstone.

Archie's only grand prix came at Silverstone two months later. In the shoestring Connaught, he battled with Eugenio Castellotti's Ferrari before losing a wheel, and later in the year his entry was finally accepted for a continental grand prix. After the first practice session, though, the Monza organisers went back on their word, and Archie took no further part.

In sportscar races, the situation was easier. In 1957, Scott Brown raced a D-type Jaguar at the Nurburgring and in Sweden, then drove a Lister in New Zealand that winter, and in the Sebring 12 Hours in March of 1958.

This was a man of consummate charm. At Oulton, I waited near the green Lister-Jaguar, and asked him to sign my programme. If the car had a failing, it was that it didn't stop as well as it went, and someone asked its raffish driver what he would do if the brakes disappeared altogether. "Go on without 'em, old boy!" came the answer. At 11, I was vastly impressed by that.

The Lister-Jaguar took the first of many victories that day, and Archie was in the lead, too, when he crashed at Spa a year later. Shortly before the race in Belgium, he had lost a battle at Silverstone with the Ecurie Ecosse Lister of Masten Gregory.

"I can remember Fangio coming into our pit, watching him go by, then grinning and saying something in Spanish, which I didn't fully understand, but was obviously very complimentary!" Brian Lister

"The defeat by Gregory unsettled him," Lister remembered. "It shocked him that he could be beaten by a similar car, and there's no doubt he wanted to prove at Spa that he was still the master, as far as Listers were concerned. They had a hell of a race for the first few laps; it was such a desperate shame that he overcooked it..."

That day in May 1958 was one of typically capricious weather at Spa, the track dry in parts, wet in others. Archie slid wide at the left-hander before La Source, grazing the Seaman Memorial stone before hitting a substantial road sign, which tore off the right front wheel and broke the steering. Now beyond control, the car somersaulted, then exploded, where the modern pits sit. Like Dick Seaman, Scott Brown was terribly burned, and died the next day.

A year later, on 1 August 1959, Lister was driving home when he heard on the radio that Jean Behra had been killed at Avus. "I liked Behra, and there had been discussions about him driving 
for us; then when I got home my wife told me Ivor Bueb, who'd often driven for us, had died from injuries received the same weekend," Lister remembered. "I thought, 'That's it'. I didn't want to be part of it anymore.

"Looking back, I was lucky in the conception of the car - the chassis didn't change much - and in the wonderful association with Don Moore, who always did our engines. And of course I had Archie. I can still remember Fangio coming into our pit, watching him go by, then grinning and saying something in Spanish, which I didn't fully understand, but was obviously very complimentary! Racing was never the same for me after Archie - even now part of me is still trying to adjust to the fact that he was killed. I was blessed with a dear friend, one of the most brilliant drivers that ever lived."