With great regret we record the death back in September of Brian Heath at the age of 87.
Brian was the third generation of a motor sporting family. His grandfather George Heath was an active competitor at the dawn of motor racing in the early years of the 20th century. His father Harold won the President’s Cup on Formula at Shelsley Walsh in 1928 at the wheel of a Darracq. From the early 1950s Brian, a prominent member of the BRDC, and later a Regional Co-ordinator for them, regularly competed in a variety of motor sport events at club level in Triumph and Frazer Nash cars. In 1956 he joined Avon as Competition Manager. At the time Aston Martin enjoyed considerable success in sports car racing with the DB3S and DBR1, exclusively using Avon tyres, with drivers of the calibre of Stirling Moss, Tony Brooks, Roy Salvadori and Reg Parnell.
When Avon withdrew from international racing, Brian maintained his involvement with motor racing at the wheel of ‘chain gang’ Frazer Nashes. In late 1984, shortly after the formation of the Michael Sedgwick Memorial Trust, Brian took over from Graham Robson as Secretary, a role he ably filled until he was succeeded by Malcolm Parsons in 2002. The holding of the post of Secretary for the longest period in the Trust's history was not the end of his involvement as he continued as a Trustee of the MSMT until 2010. In 1992 he became the respected editor of The Automobile magazine, a position which he held until his retirement at the age of 70 in 2003.
