ABSTRACT
There should be a historiography of motorsport. We must consider the physical sources of our story such as cars, roads, and landscape through the lens of heritage interpretation in addition to traditional texts and documents. This chapter presents a case study which applies this approach to Mike Hawthorn, the first British Formula 1 motor racing champion. He became champion in 1958, and retired at the end of that year, aged 29. In January 1959, he was killed on the Guildford bypass near London when his Jaguar spun off the road and into a tree. In a remarkable coincidence, the spot is overlooked by the place where Aldous Huxley sets the climax of his science fiction tour de force, Brave New World. However, cars and people’s memories, as related in Golden Boy: The Life of Mike Hawthorn, have proven to be better sources for understanding Hawthorn and his crash than the actual place where he died.
