Alan & Geoff Letts

Brothers Alan and Geoff Letts have been familiar faces in the historic motorsport scene for nearly 20 years, but their journey on track began much earlier – with banger racing as teenagers over half a century ago. That early experience sparked a lifelong passion that still burns brightly today. True to their personal motto, “Letts Race,” the brothers pour their energy into getting the absolute best out of their beloved Lotus Cortina. Entirely self-prepared, the iconic car has been a regular sight at Masters Historic Racing events since 2017. Though the pair have raced at many legendary venues, it’s the Masters events across continental Europe that have become a particular favourite. The combination of competitive grids, camaraderie in the paddock, and historic circuits keeps them coming back year after year. We caught up with Alan and Geoff at the ADAC Hockenheim Historic in May to hear more about their enduring commitment to classic racing, the stories behind their Cortina, and what keeps them motivated after all these years behind the wheel.

How did you get involved in historic motor racing?

GL: In the early 2000s we were racing with the Mini Se7en Club. We had one Mini each and through that we got to meet Peter Baldwin, who is a well-known saloon car champion and a multiple Mini Miglia champion. He’d recently been invited to race an historic Mini and said, ‘You guys ought to come along and do that! There’s this thing called U2TC, you can have one car and share the driver. It’s a one-hour race and not a tenlapper. And you get free meals and jackets and a few shirts!’ And that lit a fire under us. We’d done the Mini Se7en series for years, so we were ripe to find something new. And trying to prepare two cars for two drivers is a whole different world to preparing one car.

AL: First off, I wanted to go back to a rear-wheel drive car and I liked the idea of a Lotus Cortina. Geoff very quickly came on board, so we were on the same page – we’re going to do a Lotus Cortina and we’re going to do historics. Then we discovered that the CSCC were doing a package to race at Daytona in November 2007. So we finished the 2006 Mini season, had a great result that last race and sold the cars on the back of that. So now we had a pot of money. Geoff knew of a former customer of his with a Lotus Cortina that he hadn’t used for a long time, so we managed to convince him to sell it to us. We spent most of 2007 taking the car apart completely and rebuilding it and went to Daytona. We first went to the Daytona 500 30 years ago, as we are big fans of NASCAR. So to be able to race at Daytona – albeit in the Cortina rather than in NASCAR – was a big box to tick. After getting the car back from Daytona at the end of 2007, we spent 2008 rebuilding the Cortina to be FIA-compliant ready for U2TC. Initially this was a new world to us, so we were on a reasonably steep learning curve. And we were playing catch-up at a time when the arms race in that world was gathering pace. So the joy was the experience and we were immersed in the A-game in Europe with some pretty big competitors and big names. We needed to respond to the challenge and it took a while, but in doing so, we learned a lot. We were hooked.

And the Masters Pre-66 Touring Cars also having a European calendar then appealed to you?

AL: During Carol Spagg’s tenure with U2TC, the grid numbers were starting to diminish for whatever reason, so we got to the end of the year at Portimão and it was a small grid. Then she sold the series to Motor Racing Legends who at that point pretty much focused on the UK. We looked around and discovered that Masters were doing Europe. So it was a logical thing to switch to Masters, as essentially we were going to the same tracks with the same car, and racing against much the same people that we had been racing against before.

Your first Masters event?

GL: Our first Masters race was at Brands Hatch on the Grand Prix circuit in 2017. We turned up there having done what we’d done with Carol, against a whole new field of cars with the Mustangs and the Falcons, and we got a decent race finish and class finish. It felt like this was our new home. Not particularly because of the result, but the result really cemented the thing where you have a great weekend, with a great organisation, great racing, and we took home some trophies.

Was it an additional challenge to race those big American V8s?

GL: The funny thing was that there had been people in U2TC who had talked about Masters and these V8 cars. They said, ‘Oh, they drive like crazy and crash into the little cars.’ And so we went to Brands and were in amongst the V8s – no problems! What we came to realise is that Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit really brings the best out of both types of car. The big V8s have power but tend to wear out their tyres and brakes, so if you’re patient in the early stages and just be like a terrier barking around their heels for 20 minutes, you’re going to give them trouble later.

AL: And there’s times when you can pick up an aero tow off those bigger cars, we didn’t have that before with the under 2-litres.

GL: We went to Magny-Cours, and after the race started I was able to get into position behind the two lead Falcons. Without doing anything different, the field disappeared in the mirror, and I’m still with the Falcons!

Are you in it to win it – or is it ultimately just for fun?

AL: In the winter, when we’re freezing in the garage, working to get the car ready for the season and it’s all a bit hard going, I tell Geoff, ‘The chase for a trophy starts here!’ All you’ve got left after the meeting is some pictures and possibly a trophy. To have a trophy – and especially Fred’s new trophies in the shape of the circuit – for me, that’s important. So I’d be lying if I said we didn’t come here with the aim of going home with a top-three memento. And until our mum passed away last summer, we’d come back home after a week away, and I’d put that trophy in her hand. It was special to see the look on her face when she would hold it.

GL: In the Minis we were chasing a championship. Each round you get points and at the end of the year whoever got the most points gets the trophy. It’s always in your mind that you’ve got to have ‘a good points day’. When we went into historics, we were just racing for that race of the day. Those first few seasons we were still developing, but when we got a sniff of the podium… Sometimes you have to accept that you’re not going to get a podium, but if there’s a chance of it, I want to be stood on that step. I want to be enjoying the reward of the effort that goes into getting cars back on the track. There’s an old adage, which is earn your trophies during the off-season, pick them up during the summer.

AL: Standing on that step at Mugello – remember how good that felt, especially working in our garage with no heating and questioning the whole sanity of building an engine. But then there’s a real sense of satisfaction because we do everything on the car. Geoff does more than me, Geoff’s the clever guy, but between us we do everything. So when you have a good result, it’s the satisfaction knowing that we built this thing from scratch and nurtured it.

Of all those days in motor racing, what has been your best day?

AL: There are two. Spa, about 2015, with U2TC. For qualifying, I’m in the car, and the bonnet ripped the pins out going up Eau Rouge. It slammed against the screen, so I was blind, but I managed to get the car over to one side. The screen was in a dreadful state, but we could get another windscreen. But the guy who was willing to let us have his was doing the first race, and then we could have his for the second race. Then the scrutineer said, ‘If you put clear vinyl over the screen, we’ll let you race.’ We thought he meant on the outside, so when he came round to check, he said, ‘Fine, but now put in on the inside.’ It was good sense, as it was to stop any little fragments of glass coming off when you went over a bump and going into your eye. But now the windscreen was all blurry! Geoff started the race and handed over to me as the second driver, and then going up the long Kemmel straight the windscreen blew in – only the rear-view mirror stopped the whole windscreen coming into the car. I could only see through a small right-hand corner to judge where the track was. Geoff was on the pitwall and said to the guys, ‘He is going to park it’. But I finished it. And in third, so we got a podium – our first U2TC podium! Another special day was the Nürburgring when they held a four-hour marathon around the Nordschleife. It was a scramble to get the car ready, but we finished. We did four hours, at times in the pouring rain, around the full circuit, and we survived.

GL: For me it’s one of the Masters races on the Brand Hatch Grand Prix circuit. That particular year, Alan was sharing a car with a friend of his in the same race, so I had to do the whole race solo. I ended up with a third overall, second in class, a complete solo effort. It was a huge affirmation of the group of friends who help us in the pits and the personal satisfaction of getting my own personal podium. I was so excited, shouting and hollering in the car as soon as I crossed the line. And the second best day was our Masters podium at Mugello last year. Whilst a small grid, we had come off the back of a load of problems. Each time we thought we had overcome it, something different would come along and bite us in the bottom. The year before, we comprehensively blew up two engines in two meetings, so 2023 was torrid and 2024 started out pretty torrid as well. At the beginning of the year, the only meeting that we really wanted to do was Mugello. Such a fabulous setting, such a fabulous circuit. For me, it culminated when the pitboard said I had got to come in for the driver change. I realised at that point that I really needed to soak up this last lap. Emotionally, it was like a victory lap. Alan brought the car home on the podium, so that was really special, also to share it with our friends and family.

And your worst day?

AL: For this one, I have to go back to the end of 1994. I’d been racing a Group N Astra and that came to an end, as the car wasn’t going to be eligible anymore. So we put our heads together and I said, OK, I need to build a new workshop in my garden and we’re going to go Mini Se7en racing. But in the interim, a friend of ours had a Sapphire Cosworth, the booted Sierra Cosworth. He’d been running it for a customer, but the customer was moving to the Cosworth Escort instead. So the Sapphire was spare. He said, ‘If you guys want to race, take the Sapphire, you can have it for free. Just bring it back in the same shape at the end of the year.’ They got the timing on the turbo really worked out, so they were making a hell of a lot of boost with this thing. We get to Thruxton, and this thing was like an Exocet missile in a straight line. The trouble was that the series was for production cars, so it was on production car brakes and Uniroyal treaded tires. That didn’t work! It was a mixture of wow, I’m going fast, and just scary. At Thruxton, there’s a quite sharp chicane at the top of the straight, and half way through qualifying I spun off when I got there. So I had to see the Clerk of the Course. He looked at me and went, ‘Can you drive?’

GL: I only warped an engine block on that car, in a straight line at Donington… My really worst day wasn’t actually in a race, but in a test. This is 1990-ish, and I was campaigning a pre-1985 Formula Ford. Amazingly at the time, you paid a 50-pound entry fee and got 80 quid if you won the race, so in man maths there was profit to be made from doing well! So the next round is at Cadwell Park. I’d never seen the place, so I did a test first. The very short version of a much longer story – I wrecked the thing, just over the top of the mountain before you go into the series of esses. I reckon I was only doing about 70mph but it was into an Armco that had a grass bank right behind it, so it was like driving into concrete in a bathtub. I haven’t had any other experience where it feels like your head is a bell. We were able to reconstruct the car, but the ferocity of the impact made it a hard day.

Best car you’ve ever driven?

AL: I love the Cortina and the Chevrolet Corvette that I race with Peter James. They probably get the vote over the other close contender, the Vauxhall Astra we built for Group N in the early nineties. It ran the whole time, never had a problem, and was on decent-sized Dunlop slicks, so it had grip. But the Cortina & Corvette are the best because they’re tricky to drive.

GL: It has to be the Cortina for me as well. It is such a driver’s car. Simply factor in just how good it feels to be the deciding factor on that car’s performance. But you do have to be kind but cruel to it. It’s a strange combination where on the one hand you’ve got to look after the tyres because you can abuse them. On the other hand, you’ve got to drive it with your right foot. But it’s so rewarding in that regard. We tested yesterday and there’s big-slick sportscars going around like they are Scalextric cars and clearly a phenomenal driving experience. But I did wonder how much fun they were really having compared to me in a 1963 Cortina on crossplies!

And the worst car?

AL: I’ve enjoyed all of our cars, although the Mini wasn’t my favourite, because it’s small and front-wheel drive and I prefer rear-wheel drive. So I wasn’t particularly emotionally engaged with that car. But the worst one as a race car was that Sapphire Cosworth.

GL: I actually think back to the part of our story that hasn’t surfaced yet, when fifty years ago Alan as a school boy got taken to a local quarter-mile oval track, as part of a birthday treat. It was banger racing, so full contact. That ignited a motorsport flame under him which then ignited one under me. So for our school years, we were regular attendees of the local oval. But that was never going to be enough. When you see how we are now, we were always going to want to take part. Initially, Alan had a go, and as I got a bit older, so did I. So the relevance of all this to my worst car is that mine would be an Austin A60 Cambridge stock car. It was an MOT failure, unsurprisingly, and cost 25 quid or something.

AL: I’d raced it already. So I had had the best out of it and then gave it to him!

GL: It was almost like a Flintstones car where you could see the ground going past underneath your feet. Being launched onto a fence post at Wimbledon pretty much puts that car into the worst ever, really. Like all these things, they are great life experiences, but man oh man, it was just dreadful.

Your favourite circuit?

AL: I’ve enjoyed all the circuits that we’ve been to with U2TC and now Masters, but I think any circuit in Italy just edges anywhere else that we’ve been. Not just because of the circuit but it’s the mixture of the culture and where these circuits are located. The whole pleasure that you get from a race meeting just stands head and shoulders above the rest, to the point where if the schedule comes out and Italy’s on it, there’s a big circle around that and we’ll backfill wherever else we’re going.

GL: I echo Alan, and will actually peg Imola as a favourite because it has everything, from Italian life and the enthusiasm and passion of the people that turn up, along with the iconic nature of the circuit. It is a proper, proper driver’s circuit. And to speak to people after you’ve been there and be able to talk about Tamburello, Piratella, Acque Minerali, Rivazza… There’s a quote that goes around that says, ‘Give me Goodwood on a summer’s day and you can take the rest.’ I would say, give me Imola on any day if you have it.

And why doesn’t Masters go to…?

AL: I don’t know if I’m missing something but I don’t have a circuit that we haven’t been to in Europe that I’d like Masters to give us the opportunity to go to. So I suppose the answer would be back to keep going back to these iconic places. If we went to three, tops four European circuits with Masters during the season, that would be perfect.

GL: For me, it’s three circuits that Masters have been to before, but we missed out on two of them: Estoril, Barcelona and Zolder. Having driven past the Zolder exit on the motorway on the way here, it suddenly came back to me that that’s a track we’ve never been to.

And who’s the rival that you fear or respect the most?

AL: I think anybody in a podium position is always someone to respect. These historic cars don’t perform the way they do by accident. So when we were with Carol, Alex Furiani and Frank Stippler were a very, very strong team and set a high bar. On the one hand you quietly shake your fist and go, why do you have to be so fast? On the other hand you say, I’m going to work out at how I can be as quick as you. Also, we were very blessed to race with Steve Soper, a phenomenally fast driver, but also a phenomenally nice fella and very generous with his time and his feedback. The word respect is an important one here because it’s respect for whoever’s in our race, respect for being able to drive these cars at the front end of the grid, and respect because they race respectfully. And for me, all those pieces are important. Thankfully, we don’t often encounter it, but people that come in to the races more as a one-off, sometimes they don’t show respect. They just seem to lose their minds in amongst the big field.

Finally, who’s your best mate in the paddock?

AL: This is going to sound soppy, but it’s him [points to Geoff]. I was going to say, that’s because I haven’t got any mates, which could be true! But in reality it’s because we have been so close in living this with everything to do with the car. There are other folks in the paddock that we get on well with and have something in common, but when we’re preparing and then coming here after some long journeys, it’s my brother and my wife Carolyn. I was very fortunate to marry a car girl, so she wants to be part of this.

GL: For me, it’s hard to pick a single one of them out…”

AL: He’s trying to think of someone else. Oh my god, there must be someone else I can nominate other than my brother!

GL: If we just stick with the Cortina years, we’ve made many friends over the years. But put it into the context of best friend, then it has to be my brother, because we’ve been through the whole of life together. We’ve always been close and always had a similar interest, going right back to Matchbox and Dinky toys as kids. That just rolled on for the last 60 years. Starting racing was his fault too! If it wasn’t for him, I’d be doing stamp collecting and have a load of money…