David Leslie Portrait
“Get away” David Leslie tells the Ecurie Ecosse team members to stay away as he tries to repair the Ecosse Ford on the Mulsanne Straight in 1984. The car, however, retired from the race.
The Ecurie Ecosse team at the 1984 Le Mans 24 Hours. Left to right David Duffield, David Leslie and Mike Wilds. On the extreme left at the rear is David Leslie senior talking to Mike Tazzioli
David Leslie at the wheel of the Ecurie Ecosse Vauxhall in the British Touring Car Championship
Leslie at the wheel. David changes down a gear at the end of Silverstone’s main straight in the 1985 Group C2 Ecosse-Ford.
David Leslie 1953-2008
It is hard to comprehend the shock the team, and motor sport in general, felt on news of the tragic accident when the executive Jet in which David Leslie was travelling crashed shortly after take off from Biggin Hill on Sunday March 30 . David was on his way to Nogaro with Richard Lloyd and a young engineer to test the Jaguar XKR he was to drive for Lloyd’s Apex Racing in the FIA GT3 European Championship.
David Leslie was born in Dumfries in November 1953. His father, also David Leslie, was an early kart racer and it was only natural that young David should follow suit. Indeed it was through karting that Hugh McCaig, patron of Ecurie Ecosse, first met David Leslie as McCaig was karting at the same time. David Leslie’s links with Ecurie Ecosse go back a long way. He was a superb kart driver and won five karting championships including the 210 class in the World Cup. He first raced at Ingliston in karts but the following year, 1975, he was back at Ingliston this time with a Crossle 16F Formula Ford.
By this time the family had moved from Dumfries to Carlisle where David senior was a Fiat dealer.
In his first season with the Crossle David came second in the Dunlop Star of Tomorrow Championship and in 1976 he moved up market with a more modern Royale RP24 winning thirty races and becoming BARC National Champion. Here in Scotland he was presented with the Ecurie Ecosse Hubcap - an actual hub cap from one of the Ecurie Ecosse D-type Jaguars - as the most promising young Scottish driver of the year. That year he was sponsored by Crossflags Garage in Dumfries, the BMW dealership owned by Bert McNish, father of Allan McNish.
If David Leslie had been as brash as some of the young drivers of today he may well have pushed himself ahead but he was always a modest man and tended not to push himself. Despite this he was to finish second in two of the National Formula Ford 2000 Championships and hoped to go into Formula 3 but could not raise the sponsorship. Two years later, in 1979, with the backing of a local company Dukes Pallets, he won the two Formula Ford 2000 National Championships. This led to his race in a Formula 1 car when he finished fourth in a British national meeting driving the Durex-sponsored Chevron B41.He certainly had the ability to progress to Formula 1 level but was always dogged by the availability of sponsorship. It was this that kept him out of Formula 3 in 1980 but an Edinburgh company, Hope Scott Racing, bought a Ralt RT4 to run in the Hitachi British Formula Atlantic Championship where Leslie swept the awards with seventeen wins out of twenty races. He also won the Scottish Formula Libre Championship.
Then, in 1984, when Hugh McCaig reformed Ecurie Ecosse, David Leslie was one of the first drivers he chose to race for the team. It was the break David Leslie needed as it put him once and for all on to the International racing stage. David Leslie's success with Ecurie Ecosse saw him share the Ecosse cars with such drivers as Ray Mallock and Mike Wilds and he scored many Group C2 Class wins during the Ecurie Ecosse period. In 1986 along with Ray Mallock and Marc Duez he became World Group C2 Champion and the following year at Le Mans he came away not only with the Group C2 Class but Ecurie Ecosse won the Index of Performance.
He also successfully raced the Ecurie Ecosse Opel Manta with Hugh Chalmers in the British Thundersaloon Championship in 1987.
David was drafted into the factory Aston Martin AMR1 team in1989 alongside Brian Redman but when the team was disbanded on the sale of Aston Martin to Ford Motor Company he was to drive for both Nissan and Mazda at races such as Le Mans.
At the same time, he and his father formed David Leslie Racing which, history will show, was one of the most successful private teams in the training Formulae of motor sport. They ran modestly but efficiently and one of their early stars was Allan McNish who they ran in Formula Ford with a Van Diemen. They were to go on to run David Coulthard in Formula Ford which sent him off on his International career and then did the same with Dario Franchitti in Formula Vauxhall Junior. The Leslies were a formidable team and McNish, Coulthard and Franchitti have all admitted that they learned most of their early race craft from David Leslie who would always take the cars out to check the set-up before sending our their drivers.
When Tom Walkinshaw started his Jaguar 220 racing project it was David Leslie he turned to for all the development testing for he realised that Leslie not only had the driving skill but the engineering knowledge to help advance the development of the car.
In 1993 Ecurie Ecosse moved into the British Touring Car Championship with two Vauxhall Cavaliers with David Leslie and it was a proud moment when David and Bobby Verdon Roe lined up on pole positions at the Knockhill round of the BTCC against all the factory teams. However, David was to suffer disappointment the following season when Ecurie Ecosse took over the running of the factory Vauxhall team. One of the conditions was that the drivers had to be the Vauxhall contracted drivers Jeff Allam and John Cleland and so he was out of a drive. However he was to prove successful when he was invited to join the Nissan team and finished second in the Championship to Laurent Aiello. He later raced for Honda and Proton and spent thirteen years racing in the BTCC.
David Leslie was to spend a lot of time with his father working on David Leslie Racing as well as testing and driving a variety of cars in recent years. At the same time he competed in a number of historic events racing one of the early Ecurie Ecosse Tojeiro Coupes at the Goodwood Revival and more recently he prepared his Royale RP24 for historic Formula Ford racing.
David was also fortunate in meeting and marrying his wife Jane and with their two sons Graham and James they gave David their support at most of his races.
As Hugh McCaig said recently : “ David Leslie had no airs and graces and did a lot to help young drivers reach the first rung of the ladder. He would wander through the paddock and help anyone who needed some assistance.”
When Richard Lloyd’s Apex Racing team decided to prepare one of the new Jaguar XKRs for the FIA GT3 class it was to David Leslie he turned to help develop the car and ultimately race it. Sadly, their trip to their first major testing session ended in tragedy for David, Richard Lloyd and a young engineer who joined the team just a week before.
David Leslie will be remembered by motor racing enthusiasts and drivers alike as a fast and tough competitor who was willing to put as much back into motor sport as he took out of it and he will be sadly missed. Ecurie Ecosse sends its condolences to Jane, Graham and James as well as to David Leslie senior who supported his son and occasionally took over as team manager of Ecurie Ecosse.