LATE CHRIS REA WAS A TRUE MOTORSPORT ENTHUSIAST
Chris Rea, the well-known English singer and songwriter, who passed away on 22 December 2025, at the age of 74, was a keen motoring and motor sport enthusiast. I had the pleasure of meeting him at the Goodwood Revival in 2009 where he was racing a 1955 Lotus 6 Ford – the forerunner of the more famous Lotus 7 – in the Madgwick Cup for classic pre-1966 sports cars with engines under two-litres.
That visit to Goodwood was particularly memorable as I found the Revival, where cars and motorcycles race on the old track, much more enjoyable than the Festival of Speed where cars race up a hill against a clock and which I have attended twice.
What made the Goodwood Festival particularly special was the fact that my companion for each of the three action-filled days was Ian Groat, the publisher of Automotive Refinisher and a motoring enthusiast who had attended the Goodwood Festival previously.
Chris Rea finished 11th out of a field of 30 cars in the 13-lap race around the famous Goodwood circuit on the day we watched him racing on the historic circuit.
The reason I approached Rea in the pits was that I had just had a Millennium 7 – similar in appearance to a Lotus 7 – built for me in South Africa by Chris Carstens and his team in Kempton Park, hence my interest in Rea’s Lotus 6. (A similar Lotus 6 Ford had been owned by Toby van Reenen, a fellow member of the Pretoria Motor Club who raced it in the early days of the new Kyalami circuit in the 1960’s).
What shocked me during the short time I spent with the singer at Goodwood was the way he was surreptitiously smoking Marlboro cigarettes in the paddock, which was a non-smoking area. He held the cigarette backwards in his cupped hand and kept swinging it to and fro to disperse the telltale smoke. I certainly had not expected a man whose voice was his fortune to be an inveterate smoker. I have subsequently learned he quit smoking after suffering a stroke in 2016. He was also battling cancer at that time.
Born of Italian immigrant parents in Middlesbrough in 1951, Chris always had a soft spot for Ferraris and Italian racing drivers. His father owned an ice-cream shop and he passed his driving test in a Commer ice-cream van.
He nearly died in his 30s and quietly battled dreadful health problems for the rest of his life.
Early in his career Rea had considered journalism as a career, seeing himself writing about racing cars! The whim soon passed, and he concentrated his talents on music but retained his interest in motor racing. He was also an accomplished painter and painted throughout his life.
He raced many different cars during his career, including a Lotus 23B, 1964 Lotus Elan 26R, Lola Mk 1, and a 1987 Caterham 7, of which a picture featured on the cover of one of his albums, (Auberge). He also owned the Ferrari 330 which was used as a donor car for the replica Ferrari 250 Le Mans used in the 1996 movie La Passione.
In the latter stages of his racing career, he settled for competing in a 1957 Morris Minor 1000 in British Police Constabulary livery!
However, his real racing passion was the restored replica Ferrari Dino 156 Shark Nose Formula 1 car he had built using some salvaged components such as the engines and transmission with frame and bodywork made from sketches and photographs. The car had the choice of the 65 degree- and 120-degree V6 engines. The task took 22 years and the car, which was a tribute to American world champion Phil Hill, first appeared at the 2017 Goodwill Festival of Speed where it was driven up the Hill by Phil Hill’s son, Derek.
Rea’s motor racing interests included attending Formula 1 races when his schedule allowed. His involvement in F1 included being a member of the Jordan team’s pit crew at the 1995 Monaco Grand Prix. Team owner Eddie Jordan, himself a musician, even gave Chris a drive in one of his Formula 1 cars! The popular song Saudade was a tribute to one of his heroes, three-time world champion Ayrton Senna.
The British rock legend was a significant supporter of various charities including Refuge, which cares for people suffering from domestic violence, and the NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) as well as several organisations supporting cancer research as he was a personal sufferer of this disease.
His support included donating the proceeds from auctioning two of his personal cars to charities. These were the 1987 Caterham 7, which raised £11 500 for the NSPCC and a 1989 Rover Mini which had been electrified by Recharge. The latter raised £25 000 for Refuge.
By Roger Houghton
