An exhibition of memorabilia from our Cobham days was displayed in the Vickers Suite. Visitors had the opportunity to study archive photographs and plans as well as be tested in a ‘What is the object?’ collection of unusual and maybe baffling items, not all from buses thus making the task a little harder. For children there was ‘bus rubbing’ using relief plaques, but appar- ently as many adults enjoyed this activity as did
children. Prizes were presented of course.
The day ended well for everyone, although the clearing up and rearranging of the vehicles did inevitably take time and effort and lasted into the Sunday evening, but we were pleased that 1,721 people visited TransportFest 2016 and prepara- tions have already begun for our next event, the Spring Gathering 2017 – ‘Pay As You Board’. Deryck Fill, Event Manager LBM
BTM TALK –DAVID RICHARDS News
David Richards (left) explains a point to Steve Cropley (Gareth Tarr).
‘O
f course they did that... I’d forgotten they had won that... I didn’t know they were involved in that…’ The fact is that there are not many areas of motor sport that David Richards and his company, Prodrive, haven’t got involved in during the last 40 years, as the man himself described to a Brooklands Trust Members’ audience in an interview with Autocar’s Steve Cropley. In an hour and a half there was barely time to scratch the surface of some of the projects that they have covered – Formula One, Le Mans, the World Rally Championship, the British Touring Car Championship and many others.
David Richards’ motor sport career started with rallying his mother’s car in secret (he discon- nected the odometer to disguise the mileage). Meanwhile he was also pursuing a career in accountancy, which he did for five years, although by his final year he was co-driving for Andy Dawson and spent most of his time organising sponsorship deals. He moved on to co-drive for Tony Pond but was sacked by team manager John Davenport.
Aged 23, David was somewhat curious when he received an offer to organise a rally in Kuwait,
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only to find that the position was available because the previous occupant had been shot! Any- way, he took on the job and the contacts he made helped him buy Aston Martin many years later.
By now Richards was building a reputation within the rallying world and had established a relationship with Rothmans, which was keen to sponsor motor sport. In 1979 Richards advised Rothmans that Ari Vatanen was a potential future world champion and they agreed to put up £1 million in sponsorship. Unfortunately Ford withdrew, but David Sutton was engaged to run the Escorts in 1981 and the Vatenen/Richards combination won the world championship. As a boy, David used to watch the RAC Rally from a particular corner located near his North Wales home, so it was fitting that the same corner was the last part of the final stage that clinched the championship for them.
Richards now had a young family and he decided to focus totally on his motor sport management activities. He flipped Rothmans’ sponsorship deal from the ‘basket case’ March F1 team to the Porsche Group C operation – a smart move as the Le Mans-winning Ickx and Bell
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