Richard Shepherd-Barron, After Dinner Speaker, Former Racing Driver, Morgan Motor Cars, International GT Racing, Sports Cars Racing, Richard Shepherd-Barron comes from an era when Motor Racing was considered a gentleman’s sport, and many would regard this as the golden age of motor sports! Richard raced professionally for 5 years in the late Fifties and early Sixties, driving and testing cars; Fiat-Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Lotus, Cooper, AC-Bristol, Morgan, Deep-Sanderson, Taraschi-Fiat, Chevrolet, Porsche, Ferrari, Ford GT40, Mini. He was racing in International GT and Sports Car races on circuits such as Silverstone, Brands Hatch, Goodwood, Nurburgring, Monza, Le Mans plus Formula Junior (like today’s Formula Ford) at Pescara and Reggio Calabria. He competed in many national races and hill climbs in the UK and France. In 1959, Richard competed in 42 different events, winning 15 and finishing in the first 3 in more than half. Richard gives humorous and insightful presentations to motor racing in the 1950’s and 1960’s. This was an era when it was all much more casual and friendly – in the paddock sports cars were mixed up with Formula 1, touring cars, Formula junior and other categories so the drivers were involved with their friends at all levels – Stirling Moss, Jimmy Clark, Graham Hill, Wolfgang von Trips, “Lucky” Casner, Phil Hill, Paul Frere, Sir John Whitmore, etc. Those were the times when the drivers raced on roads that were closed just for the weekend - not always special closed circuits – and there was not a lot of room for error! Richard has many anecdotes from those days which are from personal experience and give an insight into a period of motor racing which we shall not see ever again. Richard was closely involved in racing for the Morgan Motor Company. As Morgan is celebrating its Centenary in 2009 then his experience of racing Morgans is very topical - notably Morgan’s great success at Le Mans in 1962, having been thrown out of the race the previous year in a strange French political scenario!

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