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There’s a much quoted adage from the ocean racing yacht world. ‘How do you make a small fortune from yacht racing?’
‘Start with a big one!’
If the adage applies to super yachts then it is even more apposite for a privately-funded Formula 1 car racing team. If you really want to up your game, become a motorcycle manufacturer when you have absolutely zero expertise or prior experience. Then you really can whizz through some serious piles of cash. This is just what Thomas Alexander Fermor-Hesketh, the Third Baron Hesketh, managed to do… and with some considerable aplomb.
Lord Hesketh inherited 3300 acres of Northamptonshire countryside including the Grade I listed Easton Neston House, Towcester racecourse and the entire village of Hulcote. After briefly working as a stockbroker in San Francisco, Lord Hesketh returned to Easton Neston to manage the family estate. He had a refreshingly novel approach to money: spend as much as you reasonably (or unreasonably) can, as fast as possible. In 1972, he established Hesketh Racing, which was run by a suitably polished ex-racing driver and secondhand car dealer, Anthony ‘Bubbles’ Horsley. Two years later the team made its first F1 appearance at the 1973 Monaco Grand Prix. In typical Hesketh Racing style, they arrived in the harbour via the Lord’s yacht.
There was a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter to avoid the queues of peasants waiting to get into race meetings and a pinstriped Rolls Royce as a pit car – much classier than the vans which lesser teams used. Lord Hesketh felt that accepting sponsorship
