The Lancashire Automobile Club (1902) Ltd is proud of the many motorsport evenings with some of the greats from motorsport.
Our next evening on 23rd March is with Alec Poole.
Alec is a legend in British Motorsport and he has tales and stories as an impecunious BMC (Austin / Morris / MG) apprentice in club racing and rally driving in the Sixties. These fun and games led to being asked by the Factory to drive at Sebring in the United States in a Works Austin Healey. Then there was Le Mans also for Austin Healey in 1968, followed by co-driving with Paddy Hopkirk (one of his best buddys who sadly died last July) for them to finish 2nd on the London – Sydney Marathon.
Then he won the British Touring Car Championship in a Mini the year after in his early Twenties.It wasn’t all sweetness and light racing back then. People got badly hurt.
In the mid-Nineties he was roped in by Nissan to turn round their dismal European Touring Car racing programme. Result – standing toe to toe with all of the other Manufacturers; it only took them 4 years to win everything.
Then there was The Dakar with Nissan South Africa when Nelson Mandela took him to task – Maybe he wasn’t far wrong as Alec managed to blow all of Nissan’s cash on a New Years Eve party in Marseilles before the Start. He even managed to give Carlos Ghosn his heavyweight boss some Blarney to look the other way.
As journalist Maurice Hamilton says: “Alec, you portray the golden era this was – and how mundane the life of a racing driver is today by comparison. It’s a wonderful antidote to Political Correctness and yet you are by no means pompous or an old boy looking through rose-tinted specs. This is the way it was; period.”
Tickets are only £15.00 and are available from Eileen Dyson email eileen.dyson@btinternet.com Tel 01282 771488
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