Brooklands Museum marks 100 years since pioneering motorcycle Grand Prix

Brooklands Museum is marking the centenary of the 1926 Brooklands Motorcycle Racing Club Grand Prix, celebrating a pioneering race and the riders, machines and engineering ambition that helped shape British motorcycle racing.

Held on 9 October 1926, the meeting brought Grand Prix motorcycle racing to Brooklands just two months after the Royal Automobile Club staged Britain’s first Grand Prix at the same historic circuit.

A century later, the Museum is sharing the story of Brooklands’ ‘other Grand Prix’, recognising its place in the history of the world’s first purpose-built motor racing circuit.

The headline under-500cc race covered 43 laps and 50.3 miles of a course incorporating the Finishing Straight, chicanes and a hairpin at The Fork. Its tight turns presented riders with a different challenge from the speed and sweeping banking of the Outer Circuit.

Although 16 riders entered, only nine started. Tommy Bullus took victory on a New Hudson, prepared by legendary record breaker Bert Le Vack, at an average speed of 59.07mph. Freddie Hicks finished second on a Velocette, with Gordon Cobbold third on a Sunbeam. Bullus received silver cups for both victory and the fastest lap of the meeting.

The day also featured races for smaller-capacity motorcycles and sidecars. A relatively unknown Eric Fernihough won the 250cc race, while the sidecar competition saw George Patchett recover from a spark plug change to win the 1000cc class, finishing just five seconds behind overall race winner Freddie Dixon.

Allan Winn, Vice President of Brooklands Museum Trust, said: “Motorcycle racing arrived at Brooklands in February 1908, and from then onwards nurtured the careers of not only international champion riders like Bert Le Vack, Noel Pope and Eric Fernihough, but also started the careers of four-wheel builders and racers including W O Bentley, Frank Halford, Chris Staniland and Freddie Dixon. Their exploits on the notoriously bumpy track, riding fearsome machines with little or no suspension at lap speeds of 120mph or more, are justly the stuff of legend, and helped cement the reputations of some of today’s great makes such as Triumph, Norton and Harley Davidson. The 1926 Brooklands Motorcycle Racing Club Grand Prix might have suffered - as did the pioneering Grand Prix of the Royal Automobile Club a few weeks earlier - from small fields, but it laid down a marker for bigger and faster races all the way through to 1939."

The meeting’s success helped establish a series of Members’ Grand Prix races that continued until 1930. Entries doubled in 1927, when the winners of that year’s Tourist Trophy races joined the competition.

The centenary also has a personal connection. Earlier this year, the Museum welcomed Tommy Bullus’s granddaughter Samantha Bullus and author Susanne Shartel, whose family is related to Tommy’s wife Hilde, bringing together the English and German branches of the family at the place where he won 100 years ago.

The anniversary adds another chapter to a year of celebrations at Brooklands Museum, which has also marked Concorde’s 50th anniversary and the centenary of Britain’s first Grand Prix, organised by the Royal Automobile Club.

1926 photos not from Grand Prix, but taken at Brooklands

2026 photograph credit: @Pezpix