Tailpiece
It has often been asked why Ecurie Ecosse from time to time chose drivers to race for the team who were not Scottish.
In the early days the plain fact of the matter was that there were few Scottish drivers who were up to racing in International events. There were too few race meetings in Scotland and even fewer modern competitive racing cars being raced and so David Murray was forced to look around for drivers who could bring in some personal financial backing or else foreign drivers recommended by organising clubs.
A good example came in 1954 when Ecurie Ecosse visited Argentina for the 1000kms race. The organisers offered expenses for Ecurie Ecosse to take three of their C-type Jaguars to race but the catch was the third car had to be driven by Argentinean drivers selected by the organising club. David Murray, who had just taken delivery of two of the ex-factory C-type Jaguars with disc brakes, obviously did not want to give these to anyone to drive and so he put the Scots pairings of Jamie Scott Douglas and Ninian Sanderson in one and Ian Stewart and Jimmy Stewart in the other. The third car he took was one of the old drum-braked 1953 cars which was duly given to local drivers Adolfo Schwelm Cruz and Juan Schroeder but they retired.
The first non-Scottish driver to race for Ecurie Ecosse was Guy Gale who shared Jamie Scott Douglas’ Jaguar XK120 at Spa in 1953. Prince Bira was reserve driver for the entry but never actually drove so he became the first non-British driver to be entered by Ecurie Ecosse.