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<body> <Table Width="550" border="0" style="border-collapse: collapse" cellpadding="0"><TR><TD Width="35"><IMG SRC="//www.totalmotorsport.com/images/spacer.gif" WIDTH="35" HEIGHT="1"></td><td> <CENTER><Table border="0" width="100%"> <TR><TD width="100%" align="center"><B><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="5">LE MANS</FONT></B></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="left"><B><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="2">09/01/2001</FONT></B></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="center"><B><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="4">Les Edgar</FONT></B></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="center"><B><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="3">The Man Behind The Aston Martin Vanquish Racing Project</FONT></B></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="center"><img border="1" src="Storage/wldspta92.jpg"></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="center"><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="1">  </FONT></TD></TR> <TR><TD width="100%" align="left"><FONT FACE="Tahoma" SIZE="2"> TotalMotorSport revealed the first news of the Aston Martin Vanquish project for 2002 during the period between Christmas and the New Year. That was a deliberately low key announcement, one reason being that the feasibility study on the Vanquish won’t be completed until the end of February.<BR> <BR> Aston Martin and GTC both have their own motor sport heritage – but who is Les Edgar? Les explains that, “I’m involved in farming, but most of my interests are in computing. The Aston Martin project is my romantic thing. It’s not a commercial venture initially, it’s from the heart.”<BR> <BR> Les is one of the many who have been going to Le Mans year after year. “The Jaguar days were fantastic; British cars, taking on the might of Germany in an endurance race in France. And they won. The atmosphere was amazing. I’ve wondered for a long time about Aston Martin going back to Le Mans, and whether I ought to be the man behind it. A couple of years ago, I was thinking of a prototype with an Aston Martin engine, but I wanted it to look like an Aston Martin.”<BR> <BR> He has clear views on current Formula 1 cars, in particular their lack of any correlation to what the public might dream of owning. “Show me a GT car – I can aspire to that.” Not that he needs to. “I drive my Aston Martins as much as I can. People recognise them as fantastic cars. They’ve got a heritage like no other, thanks to the Bond films, Prince Charles and his DB6 and so on. My first one was a Vantage.”<BR> <BR> “What really struck me when I visited the factory was the care that is lavished on them. The guy who built the engine on that car remembered assembling it. He described it as ‘a beauty’. He also asked me to look after it. That’s heritage.”<BR> <BR> It is still very early days with the Vanquish project, and it may not race until 2002. But Les Edgar wants something “we can all be proud of. It will be a works supported private entry, and in this country, we all love the underdog, the privateer taking on the might of overseas factories. In this case though, we expect to be doing it with a car that will be as race ready as anything on the grid.”<BR> <BR> With Graham Humphrys at the helm, Michael Cane navigating and Les Edgar supporting this venture, it’s hard to believe that the Vanquish will be anything but race-ready for 2002.<BR> </FONT></TD></TR> </TABLE><BR> </CENTER> <BR><CENTER><font size="1" color="#808080" face="Tahoma">Copyright ©2000-©2023 TotalMotorSport</font></CENTER> </td> </tr> </table> </body>