People

Guy Edwards

The son of a Royal Air Force Squadron Leader, Edwards was born in Macclesfield in the industrial heartland of England. He spent his childhood in the port of Liverpool, attended the exclusive Liverpool College and won a place at Durham University in 1960. He graduated three years later with a BSc degree.Soon afterwards he took a racing school course at Brands Hatch with the famous Motor Racing Stables organization and began racing a Ford Anglia in 1965. This was followed by a Mini and in 1968 he tried Formula 3. Unfortunately he did not have the budget and after half a season of F3 in 1969 he turned to two-liter sportscar racing with a Chevron. He still had ambitions in single seater racing and tried his hand at Formula 5000 in a McLaren 10B in 1972. The following year, having found backing from Barclays Bank, he was able to run semi-works Lolas in both the sportscar series and in F5000.In 1974 he found money to buy himself the second seat with Graham Hill's Embassy Racing team. Unfortunately he did only seven races before he had an accident in Formula 5000 and broke his wrist, losing his F1 drive to Peter Gethin. In 1976 he found backing from Penthouse and Rizla and bought a drive with Hesketh. At the German GP he was one of the four drivers who pulled Niki Lauda out of the burning wreck of his Ferrari and was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for his bravery.After 1976 he raced with some success in the British Formula 1 series and then returned to sportscars. In 1981, partnered by Emilio de Villota, he won two rounds of the World Sportscar Championship in a Lola-Ford T600. In 1982 he joined the Rothmans March F1 operation as commercial director and continued to be involved with the RAM March operation until 1985. He then began working as a freelance sponsor-hunter and hit it big the following year when he landed a major Silk Cut deal for Tom Walkinshaw's Jaguar sportscar team for 1986-91. In 1987 he negotiated a major deal with Castrol to sponsor the IMSA Jaguars. He made a racing comeback in 1988 having found sponsorship from Kaliber, low alcohol beer, for the British Touring Car Championship and then in 1992 became director of marketing at Team Lotus, signing up Castrol as the team's major sponsor for the 1993 season. He later fell out with the team management when he supported a takeover by Tom Walkinshaw. He left Team Lotus in mid-1994 and it closed down at the end of the year.Since then Edwards has worked as a freelance sponsorship-hunter and has worked on a scheme to sell sponsorship to cities around the world, beginning with London. With some of his deals being for millions of dollars, Edwards is able to live a life of luxury in the south of France.