THE BETTER PART OF VALOUR

An ambition to race at Le Mans a quarter of a century ago lives on.

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This is the story of the Lindsay LMP2 675 Anyone scanning the entry list for the Endurance Racing Legends grid at this year's Le Mans Classic would have noted the presence of famous marques such as Audi and Bentley, plus the usual GT contenders from Porsche, Ferrari and Chevrolet. As they got a little further down, however, they might have paused at car number 65, which had an altogether less familiar name: 'Lindsay LMP2 675'. And they're unlikely to have known exactly what this low-key appearance at La Sarthe meant to the man who'd hoped to drive it there almost 25 years earlier.

Valentine Lindsay had been surrounded by cars and motor racing since childhood. His father, Patrick, was a renowned historics racer who owned a mouthwatering collection of cars over the years. Then there was the influence of his cousin, Lord Hesketh, and the excitement and sense of adventure that came with growing up at the heart of Hesketh Racing.

It's little wonder that Valentine – along with older brothers Ludovic and James – ended up going racing himself. He campaigned everything from a Grand Prix Opel to a Maserati 'Birdcage' in historics, and also spent three years in the British GT Championship plus two in long-distance racing at the wheel of a Group N BMW.

Along the way, he got to know Peter Hannen, widely respected as being one of the finest historics racers at that time. Their fathers had known each other since the mid-1950s, thanks to their respective careers at auction house Christie's and, as Hannen puts it: 'The two families were always what I would call lightly intertwined.'