Peter Wheeler / Ben Samuelson

Aston Martin DB4  N0.8

Former owner of TVR. Peter is now getting quicker and quicker in his beautiful lightweight Aston.

Peter, from Newton in Bowland, did every race in the TVR Tuscan Challenge for 15 years and then 2 years of AMOC racing. Has been a regular in Heritage since.

The car is a 1959 4500cc DB4, very modified and prepared in house.

Interests are: Sailing, shooting and racing

Ben worked for Peter at TVR from 1993 to 2004, and raced against his boss in the highly competitive Tuscan Challenge for many of those years. Showing an astonishing lack of intelligence, Ben crashed into Peter at Croft in one race, simultaneously becoming the first driver to be taken into protective custody by the clerk of the course and TVR’s first ever employee to be posted to Greenland. On another occasion he was rather surprised to find Peter overtaking him at three figure speeds, backwards… Although by sharing a car they can’t crash into one another any more, the relationship has not changed and Ben is still regularly accused of sliding Peter’s DB4 sideways in order to show off to the marshals.
 
He now runs his own PR and Marketing company and splits his time between London and Lancashire. Off the track, his interests include exaggerating how quick he has just been on it, pretending to himself that he can occasionally connect with Peter’s high pheasants and explaining to his wife why he is off racing or shooting again.

The lengths ben had to go to in order to overtake Peter when he was in defensive mode. Peter described the manoeuvre as “a novel way to hand in your notice.”

Photos Jeff Bloxham