Denis Jenkinson
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Denis Jenkinson | |
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Motor sport journalist and competitor Author | |
| Years active | 1946–1996 |
| Known for | Continental Correspondent for Motor Sport magazine, World Sidecar Champion 1949 1955 Mille Miglia winner |
| Notable work | With Moss in the Mille Miglia |
Denis Sargent Jenkinson (11 December 1920 – 29 November 1996), "Jenks" or "DSJ" as he was known in the pages of Motor Sport, was a British journalist deeply involved in motorsports. As Continental Correspondent of the UK-based Motor Sport magazine, he covered Formula One and other races all over Europe. He gained fame as the navigator for Stirling Moss in their record-breaking triumph in the 1955 Mille Miglia cross-country race.
Career
Jenkinson became a motor sport enthusiast in the mid-1930s:
"In 1936 I saw a racing car "in the flesh" or should I say "in the metal," for the first time, that was an E.R.A. at the schoolboys' Exhibition. Later in the year, whilst staying at Brighton, I found that the Lewes Speed Trials were quite near, so off I went to find the venue. It was there that I first saw racing-cars in action, what a thrill!" [1]
Jenkinson was studying engineering at the
After the war Jenkinson started competing on two and four wheels, but he lacked the funds to race regularly. He found that acting as
Jenkinson abandoned front-line competition to become Continental Correspondent for Motor Sport. He spent his summers touring Europe and his winters in a succession of 'digs' in England; Jenks eventually settled near Crondall in Hampshire in a tiny run-down house with no mains electricity or water, largely full of his archives and of parts of vehicles he was 'fettling'. He was legendary in the sport for the lack of basic domestic amenities in his home; to Jenks nothing mattered but racing. He became accepted as the 'elder statesman' of British racing journalists due to his closeness to the teams and drivers, his conversational writing style and his obvious and enduring passion for the sport.
DSJ loved to race and drive
His most famous competitive outing was as navigator for
One of Jenks' most famous exploits was road-testing an unregistered, unsilenced and very much not road-legal Lotus Formula Two car on the roads near his Hampshire home on Christmas Day 1958, the logic being that the roads would be quiet and few police would be active.
As well as his journalism, Jenkinson went on to write several other motorsports books about Porsche,
For many years in the 1950s he produced an annual Racing Car Review for Motor Sport, but stopped doing so as he became increasingly disgruntled with the discrepancies between the chassis numbers teams quoted and what was actually being raced; rather than compromise his journalistic integrity, Jenkinson simply stopped producing the books.
Jenkinson also developed the classification of a driver's effort into "tenths". 10/10ths being the highest, attained by only a few drivers in history; the ability to 'Tiger' (to race at ten-tenths and achieve feats that other drivers would find impossible) was seen as crucial for a champion.
In the sixties Jenkinson did much to promote the sport of drag racing in the pages of Motor Sport magazine.[4] On 14 September 1963 he rode his NorBSA motorcycle, a BSA Gold Star 500 cc engine in a modified and lowered Norton frame, at the Brighton Speed Trials.[5] He drove an Allard Dragon dragster and also rode a 648 cc Triumph sprint motorcycle in the 1965 Drag Festival.[6] He remained a motorcycle enthusiast, and competed in hillclimbs and sprints on his own Tribsa hybrid well into his seventies. As DSJ he contributed regular columns and features for several decades to Motor Sport's sister magazine Motorcycle Sport run from the same offices at Standard House.
Later life
In his later years, he became involved with Brooklands Museum and was involved in several adventurous operations, including exploring sealed up underground air raid shelters. Despite his advanced years, he worked as hard as any of the others involved and never asked for or received any special treatment.
Jenkinson suffered a series of strokes in 1996 and moved to a home administered by the motor industry benevolent fund (BEN). He died on 29 November 1996.
Books
A partial list of the books written by Jenkinson follows. Not included are several monographs for the Profile series.
- The Racing Driver: The Theory and Practice of Fast Driving (1959)
- Grand Prix Cars (1959)
- A Story of Formula 1 1954–1960 (1960)
- The Racing Car Pocketbook (1962)
- The Maserati 250F (1975)
- The Batsford Guide to Racing Cars (1978)
- Porsche 356: Coupé, Cabriolet, Roadster, Speedster & Carrera (1980)
- Jaguar E Type: 3.8 & 4.2 6-cylinder, 5.3 V12 (1982)
- Porsche: Past and Present (1983)
- From Chain Drive to Turbocharger: The A.F.N. Story (1984)
- Maserati 3011: The story of a racing car (1987)
- Directory of Historic Racing Cars (1987)
- Motorcycle road racing: the 1950s in photographs (1989)
- Grand Prix Winners: Motor Racing Heroes since 1950 (1995)
- Jenks: A Passion For Motorsport (1997)
- A Passion for Porsches (2001)
Footnotes
- ^ D.S.J. letter to Motor Sport, November 1939, Page 308.
- ^ Motor Sport, January 1943, Page 15.
- ^ In his book Porsche: Past and Present (1983), Jenkinson credited Richard von Frankenberg—who raced Porsches—with this word. The word is formed from the German for "wiping," which Frankenberg used to describe cornering so.
- ^ Motor Sport, July 1964, Page 529; Motor Sport, January 1966, Page 44. etc.
- ^ For photograph see Motor Sport, November 1963, Page 916.
- ^ 2nd International Dragfest Official Programme.
External links
- Brooklands Museum
- Jenks at play (a short clip) on YouTube
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