“Green Dust: Ireland’s unique motor racing history, 1900-1939”
Ireland hosted Great Britain’s first motor race, the 1903 Gordon Bennett Cup which featured the first US team to compete abroad.
The subsequent Belfast Ards and Dundrod TT series and the Irish Grand Prix at Dublin’s Phoenix Park attracted the cream of European drivers. From Tazio Nuvolari and European Champion Rudolf Caracciola to world record breakers Malcolm Campbell, George Eyston and John Cobb.
Irish drivers won many international honours. America’s first successful driver, Joe Tracy, Hugh Hamilton who scored MG’s first continental success and Sir Henry Segrave, in his day the fastest man on land and water and the first to drive at 200mph.
The comprehensive GREEN DUST details the success of these drivers and covers every Irish race, hillclimb and speed trial from 1900 to 1939. The book won the Guild of Motoring Writers Pierre Dreyfus award. It features 140 photographs.
Review Excerpts:
Irish Times: “Riveting.”
Autosport: “This excellent book.”
Motoring News: “Sparkling, nostalgic history.”
Classics/Sportscar: “ This is a very important book.”
Denis Jenkinson: “Lovely stories about people as well as races.”
Hardback: 160 pages
Publisher: Portobello (1988)
ISBN: 0951366807
Brendan Lynch 
Dear Brendan
I have rercently been told by an English friend who is a member of the Bentley Drivers Club in the UK that the first recorded motor race held in Ireland took place in Navan. Do you have any information about it.
I am from Navan and have a keen interest in classic cars.
Regards
Vincent O Reilly
By: Vincent O Reilly on September 26, 2012
at 9:23 pm