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The incredible drunk story of Duncan Hamilton
After getting drunk for the 10th time this month last sunday, I decided to finally stop for awhile and reconsider my drinking habits. Of course, when I say "I got drunk", I dont mean the extreme blackout definition of the term. I just had enough alcohol to extend my concepts, about what I physically can do, or better said, what I generally find as reasonable.
So my thoughts about drinking let me to the obvious question - is it any good? Well, of course it is and to prove my point, I'm starting a new type of articles in my blog. It will be called "The incredible drunk story of...". Here, in a form of a short history lesson, I will tell the story of people, who by accident or just purely under the influence of alcohol, achieved something really amazing and inspirational. And here it is : The incredible drunk story of Duncan Hamilton !
Who is Duncan Hamilton, you wonder, and whats so interesting about this guy?
A quick check in wikipedia will tell you, that Duncan was a British amateur racing driver, who was educated at Brighton College, flew Lysanders with the Fleet Air Arm in World War II and ran a garage.
He appeared in five Formula One Grand Prix in the 40s and 50s with no significant success. Duncan's fate thou, was to become arguably the most famous motor racing story of all time. You see, back in the 40s and the 50s, professional sport was just in the first years of its development in general. In most of the cases with automotive racing, it was just a side activity for people with a lot of money. Even thou being very popular even back then, all salaries of the football stars were nowhere near the standards of today. Duncan Hamilton, therefore wasnt taking racing seriously - for him it was the thing to do, after drinking all the booze and having all the girls. He became a mascot for the scene, because of his rock star way of life, and back than, many people were joking about him.
Aside from Formula One, Dunken contested nine times in the legendary endurance race "The 24 Hours of Le Mans". The most notable was the race of 1953. Driving a works Jaguar C-Type, he and co-driver Tony Rolt believed that they had failed to gain entry for the race. So, after qualifying, they headed into town for a monster session. Only once they’d drowned their sorrows several times over were they found by a team member who told them that they would be starting the race after all. And guess what happened - still completely drunk, they won the race. A very interesting part of the whole story thou, was the fact that Hamilton collided with a bird, while driving at 130 mph. He got his nose broken, but he soldiered on. Another racing legend says, that Dunken refused to drink coffee in the pit-stop to keep himself awake, because it was making his hands shaky. Instead, to keep him calm and focused, the team were giving him a glass of brandy. Still, the fact remains that despite being drunk, Dunken Hamilton and his co-driver, became the first team to average a speed of 100 mph in the history of Le Mans. Later that year, Duncan made even more of an impact when he crashed into a pylon when racing in Oporto and cut off the power supply to the Portuguese city for several hours.
Dunken's incredible story became a legend, but most importantly, his career put a smile on many peoples faces. Maybe, it was the only case, when drinking and driving was the right thing to do.
