The two-time British National Hillclimb Champion who was also the man who gave five-time Le Mans Derek Bell his initial international opportunity to race, Peter Westbury, has died at the age of 77.
Westbury won the 1963 Hillclimb Championship aboard his homebuilt Felday 1, powered by a supercharged Daimler V8, the repeated his triumph the following year when the Ferguson factory loaned him the four-wheel-drive P99 Formula One car. Westbury continued building Felday sportscars, then moved into Formula Three with his own Felday International Racing & Sportscar Team (F.I.R.S.T.), with one of the team’s Brabham BT21s being driven by Bell, whose performances soon caught the eye of Ferrari.
Westbury himself was also quick in those cars, twice winning the public-road race at Chimay in 1967 and ’68, and victorious at Reims in the latter year as well. He subsequently managed to enter two F1 races, the first the 1969 German GP at the Nürburgring, where he took an F2 Brabham BT30 into 9th place overall, and the second at the next year’s USGP at Watkins Glen where an engine failure prevented him from qualifying a works BRM.
To his family and many friends in the sport, Vintage Racecar extends its sincerest condolences.
