DOWN THE PUB
Age: 63 Lives: Towcester Rally of the Tests contender
He rallied as a youngster “I started road rallying as soon as I got a driving licence in an 850cc Mini. They were just flat-out days and I loved it. I ended up doing some stage rallies and rolled the Mini into a ball when we hit a tree on the Suffolk Stages. So that was my rallying career over at the age of 19 or 20. I didn’t have any money to repair the car.”
He worked in F3 “I decided to get a proper job and I was a trained BMC mechanic. But I was more interested in how to make the car go round corners better, so I got into Formula 3 racing with Dr Joseph Ehrlich and I worked for him for three or four years building F3 cars. I learned a huge amount and went from there to March Engineering where I was race engineer and team manager. I ran people like Nigel Mansell and Mike Thackwell and then started my own business called Crosby Composites.”
He engineered some top names “We started off in fibreglass and progressed into carbon fibre and I built it into a multi-million pound company and sold it two years ago. My first love has always been cars and how they work and I did some freelance engineering for Dave Price and Eddie Jordan. So I ran Martin Donnelly and Jean Alesi in F3000, then David Coulthard and Gil de Ferran. So alongside the business I did race engineering alongside all these wonderful drivers and wonderful teams.”
He went back to rallying “When I sold the business I decided I’d like to have a go at rallying again. So I tried it out to see if I enjoyed it like I did when I was thrashing up and down country lanes as a youth. So I bought a 1969 Porsche 911 and the rest is history. The first event I did was Throckmorton three years ago, with my son navigating and we had a fantastic time.”
He’s out this weekend “I now do as many events as I can. I’m lucky enough to have people like Andy Pullan sit alongside me. I bought an MG TB as I wanted to do some pre-war rallies like the Flying Scotsman and 1000-Mile Trial. The Porsche 356 is a new addition for things like the Rally of the Tests. I did Throckmorton with it as a shakedown and I think it will be okay this weekend.”