It's a very journalistic, non-fiction style, very straightforward and with incredible eye to detail. Read with another racing friend and have great discussions about the chicken and the egg (or more like the chicken vs. He chose the Goodyear-supported Ferrari Challenge, a club-level British championship that catered for drivers competing in a wide variety of Ferrari models divided into two categories, one for older and often standard road models, the other for much quicker ‘modified’ cars. In a rather charitable defence, Paul Tweddle told the court that his client was an ‘educated’ single man with a degree in accounting and finance from Bristol University, but that is open to question as the university has no record of him. This prompted sympathetic colleagues to arrange for flowers to be delivered to the hospital only for their kindness to be repaid with the discovery that no child of that name was at the hospital.

After his arrest, he claimed that the executive cars were for use by company directors and that the season tickets were a legitimate business expense for entertaining clients. Taking advantage of clement winter weather in Spain, AM Racing conducted initial pre-season testing at the Albacete circuit with Calum Lockie. The kind of white collar criminals we hear about all the time – who just don't happen to get into professional racing. Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages.Drugs: Ian Burgess (sometime British F1 racer); Randy Lanier (drug-smuggling IMSA champion); John Paul Sr and Jr (talented son dragged into a racing father’s drug-running); Vic Lee (super-successful team owner with a dodgy transporter); the Whittington brothers (more misdeeds in IMSA circles).

People lie, cheat, steal and even kill for a variety of reasons, one of which is to go motor racing, a particularly expensive and egotistical sport. For more than a decade it was hailed as the world’s fastest production road car and immediately became a modern classic with its ground-breaking design. With it all seeming so easy, the regularity with which he sent phoney invoices to his employers spiralled out of control. She posed next to the car dressed in white racing overalls, together with Munroe and Calum Lockie, the team’s professional driver, who was to share driving duties and had been introduced to Munroe by driver coach Les Goble.The whole of this enterprise was funded by unauthorised payments by McGraw Hill,’ said Sally Howells for the prosecution. He said that he fully recognised that his job had put him in a position where it was easy to take advantage. Less than a month after the well-publicised press launch, the McLaren was in action again at Silverstone for more testing on the national circuit. The next outing for the AM Racing McLaren F1 GTR was back at Silverstone, this time for the biggest British GT Championship event of the season, as one of the support races for the British Grand Prix on 11th July.

Now going by the name James Munroe, he fooled himself that he was ready to live the second part of his childhood dream: he was going to become a racing driver. Come the first round of the championship, at Silverstone on 28th March, the pre-season optimism continued when the team’s lead driver put the McLaren on pole position with a lap over eight seconds quicker than the car’s custodian could manage. Cox was tracked down and found to be living in a Premier Inn hotel in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, at the time of his arrest. Now aged 42, he was convicted on one charge of obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception, three charges of obtaining services by deception and two of theft, but there were 16 other charges that he denied and weren’t dealt with. By the time of the next round of the British GT Championship, at Donington Park on 7th August, the AM Racing McLaren F1 GTR had vanished from the entry list.

Indeed, the only recognition he ever seemed to receive over the course of two seasons with the F355 came at Croft, North Yorkshire, when the race commentator lavished inordinate attention on his car just because its red-and-white harlequin livery looked similar to nearby Sunderland football club’s team strip. In the story, Munroe was quoted as saying: ‘I’ve been into fast cars and racing since I was a teenager, but it’s a difficult game to get into.

To feed his apparently insatiable appetite for fame and attention, Munroe had hired a public relations specialist, Panic Publicity, at the start of the season, and this company probably organised the original Soho launch. It was while Munroe was away on a two-week family holiday in Spain that his life of subterfuge began to unravel. Within nine months, he had been recruited by Automotive Skills, a charity funded by the Department of Transport to promote training skills in the retail motor industry. There’s no doubt that Crispian’s book is a tough read, sometimes depressing, often crushing our idols; people and sportsmen we looked up to.Goodwin again put the car on pole position and recorded the fastest lap of the race on his way to third place, complete with the obligatory pitstop. He made up the lost time before handing over to Munroe, who brought the car home a disappointing sixth, nearly two laps down on the winner. A serial conman and deluded ‘Walter Mitty’ fantasist, James Munroe — born James Cox —appeared to typify dull, unremarkable respectability but led a very public and extravagant double life.