David Leslie
Leslie in 2003
Nationality	British
Born	(1953-11-09)9 November 1953 Annan,Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland
Died	30 March 2008(2008-03-30) (aged 54) Farnborough,Greater London, England
British Touring Car Championship
Years active	1987,1989–2000,2002–2003
Teams	John Maguire Racing Brooklyn Motorsport Pyramid Motorsport Auto Trader Techspeed Team Ecurie Ecosse Team Mazda Honda Team MSD Vodafone Nissan Racing PRO Motorsport Petronas Syntium Proton
Starts	218
Wins	9
Poles	16
Fastest laps	12
Best finish	2nd in1999
Championship titles
1977 1980	BARC Formula Ford 1600 British Formula Atlantic

David William Leslie (9 November 1953 – 30 March 2008) was a Britishracing driver. He was most associated with theBritish Touring Car Championship, in which he was runner-up in1999. He was particularly noted for his development skill, helping bothHonda andNissan become BTCC race winners. He was born inDumfries, Scotland.

Leslie was Scottishkarting champion 5 times before switching to cars, winning theFormula Ford title in 1978. He later moved to theBritish Formula Three Championship from 1981 to 1984, becoming involved with theEcurie Ecosse team.

With Ecosse, he moved to theWorld Sportscar Championship, driving to multiple C2 class victories and helping the team earn the1986 championship. Leslie himself would earn second place in the Drivers Championship in1987 alongside teammateRay Mallock.^[1] Leslie and the team also finished second in the C2 class and 8th overall in the1987 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Ecosse eventually took over theAston Martin sports car program before Leslie departed in 1990 to become part ofTom Walkinshaw'sJaguar team. Leslie competed at the24 Hours of Le Mans a total of 10 times, including driving the works Jaguar XJ220 in 1993 alongsideWin Percy andArmin Hahne, only to retire with engine failure while in contention for the lead of the GT class.

In 1985, Ecosse ran Leslie in the ESSOMG Metro Challenge.^[2][3]

Leslie raced in theHonda CR-X Challenge in 1988^[4][5] and 1989.^[6]

Leslie maintained his links with Ecosse when the team moved to theBritish Touring Car Championship in 1990. He competed on a partial schedule for the first two seasons before becoming a full-time driver forVauxhall in 1992. He took his first win a year later,^[1] and earned a total of sixpole positions over those two years, both of which ended in top 10 championship placements.

1994 was an unsuccessful season in aMazda, but for 1995 he joinedHonda as they entered the series for the first time. The car was late getting onto the track in pre-season, and reliability was initially poor, however he finished 10th overall after a strong end to the season. 1996 started badly with several collisions, but a victory in theBritish Grand Prix support meeting kick-started a strong second half of the season, allowing him to snatch 4th overall at the final round of the season.

For the BTCC in 1997James Thompson andGabriele Tarquini raced the Hondas and Leslie switched toNissan alongsideAnthony Reid. Again the car was initially uncompetitive, and much of the credit for its eventual success is widely attributed to Leslie. In 1998, he achieved two victories and five podiums for Nissan, finishing seventh in the standings. He also did a one-off appearance in theBritish GT Championship that same year at the British Grand Prix supporting race, finishing third in a Porsche 911 GT1 shared withMatt Neal.^[7] In 1999, he finished a close runner up in the championship standings to teammateLaurent Aïello, with three race wins and 10 podiums.

The company pulled out after that, and Leslie did only occasional races in 2000. Notably for the works Honda team in one round of the2000 European Super Touring Cup and three rounds of the2000 British Touring Car Championship – one for the works Honda team and two in the private PRO Motorsport Nissan Primera. He competed at the Spa 24 Hours that same year, sharing a Honda Accord with James Kaye and Mark Lemmer, but retired with engine failure. He also drove for Marcos in the 2000British GT Championship for a select number of rounds, finishing on the podium at Croft. He contested theSpeedvision Challenge in the US during 2001 in addition to another outing in the British GT Championship (Knockhill), once again in a Marcos and finishing on the class podium.^[8]

He joinedProton in the BTCC for the2002 and2003 seasons, but the project was not a great success. He did, however, manage to secure two third-place results and was the best-placed Proton in both seasons. Thereafter Leslie provided commentary forEurosport on theWorld Touring Car Championship series, although he continued to occasionally participate in theBritcar series.^[1]

For the past three years, he had been lecturing Motorsports Management, part-time atSwansea Metropolitan University.

Allan McNish credited the start he,David Coulthard, andDario Franchitti were given at the start of their careers as largely to Leslie and his late father David senior.^[9]

Leslie died on 30 March 2008, when the private jet he was travelling in crashed into a housing estate inFarnborough. He was flying with fellow racing driver and team ownerRichard Lloyd and data engineer Chris Allarton.^[10] They were travelling to theNogaro Circuit in France to test for Lloyd'sApex Motorsport in preparation for theFIA GT3 European Championship.^[11]

The investigation into the crash found that a combination of incorrectly identified, non-critical system failures led to the in-flight shut-down of both engines, with the crew unable to restart them in time to avoid the impact.

(key) (Races inbold indicate pole position; races initalics indicate fastest lap)

(key) Races inbold indicate pole position (1 point awarded – 1996–2002 all races, 2003 just in first race) Races initalics indicate fastest lap (1 point awarded – 2000–2003 all races) * signifies that driver lead race for at least one lap (1 point awarded – 1998–2002 just for feature race, 2003 all races)

‡ Endurance driver (Ineligible for points in 1990)

(key) (Races inbold indicate pole position) (Races initalics indicate fastest lap)

(key) (Races inbold indicate pole position) (Races initalics indicate fastest lap)

Year	Team	Car	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	DC	Pts
2000	JAS Engineering	Honda Accord	MUG 1	MUG 2	PER 1	PER 2	A1R 1	A1R 2	MNZ 1	MNZ 2	HUN 1	HUN 2	IMO 1	IMO 2	MIS 1	MIS 2	BRN 1	BRN 2	VAL 1	VAL 2	MOB 1 10	MOB 2 5	18th	9

Year	Team	Co-Drivers	Car	Class	Laps	Pos.	Class Pos.
1984	Ecurie Ecosse	David Duffield Mike Wilds	Ecosse C284-Ford Cosworth	C2	36	DNF	DNF
1985	Ecurie Ecosse	Ray Mallock Mike Wilds	Ecosse C285-Ford Cosworth	C2	45	DNF	DNF
1986	Ecurie Ecosse	Ray Mallock Mike Wilds	Ecosse C286-Austin-Rover	C2	181	DSQ	DSQ
1987	Ecurie Ecosse	Marc Duez Ray Mallock	Ecosse C286-Ford Cosworth	C2	308	8th	2nd
1988	Mazdaspeed Co. Ltd.	Marc Duez Yoshimi Katayama	Mazda 767	GTP	330	17th	2nd
1989	Aston Martin Ecurie Ecosse	Ray Mallock David Sears	Aston Martin AMR1	C1	153	DNF	DNF
1990	Silk CutJaguar Tom Walkinshaw Racing	Martin Brundle Alain Ferté	Jaguar XJR-12	C1	220	DNF	DNF
1991	TWR Suntec Jaguar	Jeff Krosnoff Mauro Martini	Jaguar XJR-12	C2	183	DNF	DNF
1993	TWR Jaguar Racing	Armin Hahne Win Percy	Jaguar XJ220	GT	6	DNF	DNF
1995	Team Marcos	Chris Marsh François Migault	Marcos LM600	LMGT2	184	NC	NC

Year	Team	Co-Drivers	Car	Class	Laps	Pos.	Class Pos.
1993	Ecurie Ecosse Vauxhall	Philippe Adams Bernard de Dryver	Vauxhall Cavalier GSi	Pro 2L	101/engine	DNF	DNF
1998	Belgacom Nissan T.U.R.B.O Team	Dirk Schoysman Grégoire de Mévius	Nissan Primera	SP	471	7th	7th
2000	ELR & Barwell Motorsport	James Kaye Mark Lemmer	Honda Accord	SP	?/engine	DNF	DNF

(key) (Races inbold indicate pole position) (Races initalics indicate fastest lap)

Year	Team	Co-Drivers	Car	Car No.	Class	Laps	Pos.	Class Pos.
2007	GTS Motorsport	Joe Macari Rob Wilson Stuart Wright	BMW M3 E46 GTR	26	GTC	553	6th	3rd

Wikimedia Commons has media related toDavid Leslie.

• BTCC pages profile
• David Leslie Online MemorialArchived 24 January 2009 at theWayback Machine

• 1953 births
• 2008 deaths
• Scottish racing drivers
• Formula Ford drivers
• British Formula Three Championship drivers
• British Touring Car Championship drivers
• Swedish Touring Car Championship drivers
• People associated with Swansea Metropolitan University
• 24 Hours of Le Mans drivers
• 24 Hours of Spa drivers
• European Le Mans Series drivers
• Sportspeople from Dumfries
• World Sportscar Championship drivers
• European Touring Car Championship drivers
• Scottish Formula One drivers
• British Formula One Championship drivers
• Britcar drivers
• British GT Championship drivers
• Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in England
• Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 2008
• Jaguar Racing drivers
• Ecurie Ecosse drivers
• People from Annan, Dumfries and Galloway

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