Sir Leslie Lynn Marr, 2nd Baronet (born 14 August 1922 – died 4 May 2021) is a British landscape artist, painter and former racing driver. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Leslie Marr was born in Durham and during World War II he served with the Royal Air Force. Although he was well known as an artist, cars caught his engineering attention; as he stated ‘he liked to know what all the clatters and squeaks meant.’
His first race was in 1950 in an Aston Martin International and in 1951 he had a 1934 Aston Martin Ulster team car.
He bought a Connaught A-type in 1952 and competed in national events. He also purchased a single-deck London bus to use as a transporter and even earned some money by putting a Dunlop advert on it.
During 1953 he won in Formule Libre races at Snetterton and Silverstone and finished third in the US Air Force Trophy at Snetterton. He also achieved fastest practice time for the Wakefield Trophy at Curragh (almost beating Stirling Moss’ absolute track record).
As I’m sure was the situation with many drivers’ parents, his mother didn’t like him racing and during the races she would wait for a call from him to let her know he had survived another race. But when he raced in the Coronation Trophy at Crystal Palace, the BBC televised the race. His mother had a TV and watched it, only to see Leslie disappear into a wood after having the biggest crash of his career.
1954 saw him take third place in the Formule Libre Glover Trophy at Goodwood, third (F2 class) at an Aintree 200 run in torrential conditions, and he finished seventh at Oulton Park’s Gold Cup. He also finished third in the same meeting at Oulton, in the Formule Libre race.
His Grand Prix debut was in the 1954 British GP, where he finished 13th, but in the following year’s GP he crashed when his brakes failed and caused him to spin off.
During 1955, he won the Cornwall MRC F1 Race, had some close battles with Jack Brabham’s Cooper at Charterhall and although he retired from Oulton Park’s Gold Cup, he nevertheless had out-paced the works Ferraris of Peter Collins and Alfonso de Portago in qualifying. He also removed the car’s bodywork to compete at Shelsley and Brighton.
He then travelled down under to race and, despite not having practised, finished fourth in the New Zealand GP (behind Stirling Moss), followed by a third place in the Lady Wigram Trophy. But at a Southland Road Race near Invercargill, while chasing a Ferrari, he was hit in the face by a stone and crashed heavily.
After Leslie retired from racing he took up filmmaking, and was eventually asked by a film company to do a documentary on Unilever. To his bemusement it won an award for Best Documentary and he later humorously stated in a newspaper that ‘it must have been the only entry.’
He then returned to his major passion, painting, and embarked upon various journeys over the following years, embarking on landscape-painting trips in Britain, Spain, France, Greece and New Zealand, often in challenging weather conditions. He remained a professional artist well into his nineties.
Renowned artist and former racing driver Sir Leslie Marr dies aged 98
