DOWN THE PUB
Age: 30 Lives: Leamington Spa Pilbeam FF2000 racer He races a rare Pilbeam “We’ve had the Pilbeam MP52 since 2013 but for a couple of years I was out of the country so I didn’t do anything with it. We’ve now done a little bit of development on it.”
He enjoys Classic FF2000 “Due to budget constraints we only tend to do about half a season. The racing is very, very good when the Classic FF2000S share the grid with the historics and they are quite closely matched. It’s nice to have a car that is different to a Van Diemen and part of the reason was that it came up at a reasonable price. It looked a little bit more interesting.”
It’s a rare car “It was converted back from a hillclimb car in about 2007, but I’ve got very limited history on the car. I’ve tried to find out how many were built in period and it’s hard to get an answer. I’ve heard between eight and 12 were built and I’m aware of four that I’ve seen in various places around the world.”
He started in Locost “I built a Locost as a road car and had a year in industry from university. I was living at home and had a bit of spare cash so I decided to race it with the 750 Motor Club. My dad Alan raced Formula 1300 and my uncle and grandfather had raced, so there is a family heritage. My uncle John was a champion in the 1960s and they built their own cars. So the Pilbeam is the first racing car that the Lancasters have bought and not built.”
F3 is a dream “While I was racing the Locost, Formula Ford 2000 really appealed. They are proper cars, although I’d really love to have a Formula 3 car. But these are easy to run and engineer and more manageable from an amateur point of view.”
The Pilbeam is competitive “We’re getting there with it now and having Ian Pearson move to an Historic FF2000 car has opened the Classics up to a new guard. It would be good to get a bit more seat time and development and I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t be as quick as a Van Diemen in the right hands.”