Alan Brown died of a heart attack in the small hours of 20th January, 2004. He had been admitted to hospital with pneumonia and died in his sleep, he was 84.

Though never a household name, Alan was a double Formula Three Champion, the first man to win World Championship points for Cooper, and the first to race a Vanwall. He was also a Formula One constructor (the man who financed the Emerysons of 1961/2) and a leading private entrant of saloons who ran drivers like Jim Clark, Dan Gurney and Jack Brabham. It was Alan who got Ken Tyrrell started as a team manager. He was never that well-known, but his influence was wide.

Alan was born in 1919 and his parents owned a farm in Surrey so Brooklands was close at hand. His desire to go racing had come early and he and his friends got up motorcycle grass track races until he suffered the only heavy crash in his entire life. He was not an academic and eventually his headmaster suggested to Alan's father that his education was a waste of time and money.

An apprenticeship was obtained with Dennis Brothers, Guildford, makers of trucks, fire engines and motor mowers. Then came World War II and, Alan, already a member of the Territorial Army was very soon in France where he attempted to establish a lap record for army trucks on the Reims circuit.

On a leave pass to Paris, he and a friend were approached by a photographer from the leading British weekly magazine, Picture Post. The upshot was a photo-feature showing the pair enjoying Paris, with the tab picked up by the magazine even though not all the places they visited were suitable for a family publication.

Alan missed the Dunkirk evacuation and was among the last British troops to leave France, from a port much further south. He spent three days in the bowels of a ship expecting it to be torpedoed at any time but, like so many ex-soldiers who have seen the sharp end of war, Alan preferred always to remember the lighter times. He told me, "I was made the unit's Entertainments Officer and provided you secured a chorus girl for the colonel there was nothing to it." The colonel was Norman Garrard, later the competitions manager of the Rootes Group. Alan also spent time in the Iraqi desert where he organised motorcycle racing among the dunes.

Major Brown returned to England at the end of the war and found that Dennis Bros. had no need of someone with an unfinished apprenticeship but, after a year of wheeling and dealing, he was offered a job as a technical representative for the firm. Alan said, "The government was about the nationalise the road transport industry and this opened up all manner of opportunities since full compensation was to be paid and it was advantageous for a company to own as many trucks as possible. I teamed up with a dealer called Bob Hamblin and we shifted a lot of trucks. Bob made a lot of money and he wished to express his gratitude so I suggested he bought me a racing car.

"He thought I was joking but then I explained about Cooper and the 500cc movement, so he bought the car and I provided the engine. That was in 1949 and I got only a few events in but, by the end of the year, I had assured myself that I was good enough to hack it. It seemed to me that it was silly to run a 1949 car in 1950 so I sold that on to a chap named Tyrrell and bought a new car on hire purchase. I think I must have been the first person to do that because the finance company featured it in its newsletter."

"1950 was not that good a year. I stuffed my car at Silverstone but was offered another in the Monaco GP support race when I shunted into a tobacco kiosk. The owner decided the only thing to do was to help me out and open a bottle of Champagne while we watched the rest of the race.

"It all sounds a huge laugh, but I was ready to quit. Okay, I'd finished up drinking Champagne while watching the race, but I was in second place when I crashed and to win was the reason I was there. Following so soon on my crash at Silverstone, it completely undermined my confidence. Charlie Cooper was not a sophisticated man, but he understood what was going through my mind. He worked on me all the way home until I believed in myself again."