Carlotti Takes the Wheel by Mike Hawthorn.
 
In this, the second of the stories which Mike Hawthorn wrote for the young motor racing enthusiast before his tragic death, Carlotti Smith, the boy whose one ambition is to emulate Mike's achievements on the track, is well and truly launched on his perilous career.
 
When Tony Marston won the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa he was promptly signed up to drive Maseratis. Could Carlotti step into his shoes into the cockpit of Tony's Marston-Special? Here was Carlotti's chance to prove his worth, and his startling methods, which were as unorthodox as his own nature.
 
He had tremendous confidence in him-self, which was very quickly to be tested on a secret circuit in France, at the fabulous 'Twenty-Four Hours' at Le Mans, where he faces his first real trial, and then in a rip-roaring contest at Goodwood, where he takes up the challenge thrown down by snarling engines, screaming tyres and the beckoning sweep of the track. Lack of experience of a racing Jaguar or of a full-blown Grand Prix car can do more than kill chances and ambitions, and Carlotti nearly oversteps the mark.
 
Illustrated by J E McConnell