Autosport – 25 July 2019

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JE

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AUTOSPORT HISTORICS 25 JULY 2019 21

BLAKENEY-EDWARDS AND HUNT

HISTORIC

COACHING

In only a handful of years, Martin Hunt has developed from

someone in his early fifties with no racing experience, to a

habitual winner. So much so, Patrick Blakeney-Edwards

believes “you can barely tell the difference from the pros”

and Hunt when he’s behind the wheel. Blakeney-Edwards

himself was a big initial help, both in and out of the car.

“He held my hand, metaphorically,” Hunt says. “When

you first start on a track there are a lot of things you just

don’t know and they could be very basic things.”

What Blakeney-Edwards also does is “push you, almost like a

personal trainer, out of your comfort zone,” Hunt adds. “When

two of you are qualifying a car for a race, his recommendation

is always for the owner or the slower driver to take the start,

and then to learn from the sharp end. That works fantastically.”

Now Hunt has greater experience, though he still uses

specialists, such as historic racing ace Martin Stretton (above).

“Getting that last five to 10% out of a driver, it becomes very

difficult and then you need a pro,” reckons Blakeney-Edwards.

Hunt concludes his improvement is “a combination of

Patrick sitting next to me nervously, Martin Stretton’s course

and a bit of trial and error of getting out there and getting stuck

in”. At his peak, Hunt raced as many as five cars at one meeting.

And there could be a next generation, in Hunt’s son Theo. He

is, according to his dad, “totally immersed in the old car world”

and is building an old Frazer Nash up in the Blakeney-Edwards

workshop. In the meantime his dad is “letting him loose bit-by-

bit” in his cars, and admits he’s “a little bit quicker than me so

far in pretty much anything he has driven”.

Frazer Nash

was key to PB-E

(below right) and

Hunt getting into

historic racing

J BLOXHAM