Forty years ago, on April 2, 1983, a British teenager made history at Le Mans. Eighteen-year-old Alan Carter won the French 250cc Grand Prix to become the youngest-ever intermediate-class GP winner, an accolade he retained for the next two decades. Even now, his achievement has only been surpassed by six-times MotoGP world champion Marc Márquez and Dani Pedrosa, the most successful MotoGP rider never to have won the world title.
Alan’s success happened in the strangest circumstances, which perhaps wasn’t all that surprising considering his sadly unusual upbringing. Alan’s father was Mal Carter – car dealer,
