NOTICE OF DEATH - BRIAN HEATH (1933 – 2021)

With great regret we have to advise Members of the death on 18 September of Brian Heath. He was 87 years of age and had been suffering from pancreatic cancer. Brian became an Associate Member of the BRDC in 1996 and, in harness with Rex Woodgate, who passed away last June, had been the Club’s Regional Co-ordinator for the South of England for many years.

Brian was the third generation of a motor sporting family. His grandfather George Heath was an active competitor at the dawn of motor racing in the early years of the 20th century. His father Harold won the President’s Cup on Formula at Shelsley Walsh in 1928 at the wheel of a Darracq. From the early 1950s Brian himself regularly competed in a variety of motor sport events at club level in Triumph and Frazer Nash cars. In 1956 he joined Avon as Competition Manager. At the time Aston Martin enjoyed considerable success in sports car racing with the DB3S and DBR1, exclusively using Avon tyres, with drivers of the calibre of Stirling Moss, Tony Brooks, Roy Salvadori and Reg Parnell.

When Avon withdrew from international racing, Brian maintained his involvement with motor racing at the wheel of ‘chain gang’ Frazer Nashes. In 1992 he became the respected editor of The Automobile magazine, a position which he held until his retirement at the age of 70 in 2003.

The BRDC tenders its most sincere condolences to Brian’s wife Anne and to his family