Driven To Crime: True stories of wrongdoing in motor racing

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He not only acquired an example of the even rarer GTR racing version, of which 28 were made, but also became the proud — and very dishonest — owner of a road-going model as well. Added to this was his brazen arrogance in publicly bragging to anyone who asked about the source of his wealth at the time he was racing the McLaren F1 GTR.

He said: ‘Any funds that are siphoned off [from BEC] dishonestly means a reduction of funds that are available for the community and for the regeneration of this area. This book will appeal not only to motor racing enthusiasts and cognoscenti on both sides of the Atlantic but also to anyone who enjoys reading about crime. To feed his apparently insatiable appetite for fame and attention, Munroe had hired a public relations specialist, Panic Publicity, at the start of the season, and this company probably organised the original Soho launch.This prompted sympathetic colleagues to arrange for flowers to be delivered to the hospital only for their kindness to be repaid with the discovery that no child of that name was at the hospital. After his arrest, he claimed that the executive cars were for use by company directors and that the season tickets were a legitimate business expense for entertaining clients. There’s no doubt that Crispian’s book is a tough read, sometimes depressing, often crushing our idols; people and sportsmen we looked up to. After an enthralling battle in qualifying, Goodwin just missed out on pole position, beaten by Tim Sugden’s EMKA-run McLaren. Even after his early release from prison in 2003, Munroe evidently still felt that the world owed him a living and that crime paid.

Now going by the name James Munroe, he fooled himself that he was ready to live the second part of his childhood dream: he was going to become a racing driver. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Description Description People lie, cheat, steal and even kill for a variety of reasons, one of which is to go motor racing, a particularly expensive and egotistical sport. Within nine months, he had been recruited by Automotive Skills, a charity funded by the Department of Transport to promote training skills in the retail motor industry. It was while Munroe was away on a two-week family holiday in Spain that his life of subterfuge began to unravel.As the director of accounting he was responsible for the management of the payment system and had detailed knowledge of the payment process. The British GT Championship, which featured cars from the GT1 and GT2 categories, was in its seventh season and in 1999 was sponsored by Privilege Insurance. He bought a Ferrari F355 Challenge, which was a special race-bred version of the F355, the 348tb’s successor. An enthusiastic collector of classic cars, he lives in a 16th century manor house in Northamptonshire, conveniently close to Silverstone.

This was supposedly a fact-finding mission to investigate the possibility of running the McLaren in the last three rounds of the ALMS season. Besides the cars already mentioned — the two Ferraris and the two McLarens — his fleet of road cars included three Aston Martins, three Mercedes and a Ferrari 550 Maranello.Inspired by James Hunt's Formula 1 exploits with Hesketh and having become friends with the World Champion's younger brother at school, he competed in Formula Ford during the late 1970s but had to face the reality that his results were not going to earn him a place in F1. Other misdemeanours: Roy James (Great Train Robbery getaway driver); Bertrand Gachot (jailed after road rage in London); Juan Manuel Fangio (kidnapped by Cuban rebels in 1958); Colin Chapman (the unresolved 'DeLorean Affair'); 'Spygate' (Ferrari design secrets passed to McLaren). When Goodwin flew in from America, where he had been racing at Sebring, and topped the official pre-season testing sessions at Silverstone, spirits were high and Spires said: ‘It couldn’t have gone better. His behaviour guaranteed that he would draw attention to himself to such an extent that it was almost as if he wanted to get caught.

In handing down a four-year prison sentence, Judge Roger Chapple told him, ‘Your naked greed is breathtaking. Questions had already been raised about the honesty of this ostensibly very ordinary man who took excessive amounts of sick leave so that he could devote time to his extracurricular activities. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.As disenchantment grew with what he felt was a meaningless existence, it simply fuelled his dreams more strongly. By the time he had reached his 20s, the nearest he had come to owning any kind of ‘performance car’ was very much more modest. Like so many schoolboys, James Cox was passionate to the point of obsession about cars as a teenager and dreamt of racing them as soon as he was old enough. The aspiring racing driver’s new venture was announced with great fanfare at a lavish press launch held at the exclusive Mezzo restaurant in London’s Soho on 15th January 1999.