Crispian Besley is using his participation in historic motor racing as a novel way of raising funds and promoting awareness of United Response, a national charity working with adults with learning disabilities, including some of the most vulnerable people in society.

Providing everything from 24-hour care to a few hours of support a week, United Response is a community based charity working with people across England and Wales.

The charity has a special significance to Crispian as they looked after and cared for his younger brother Dominic for the last 15 years.

Crispian said: “Dominic was born with Down's Syndrome and sadly died earlier this year at the age of 48 but his years in United Response’s care were some of the happiest of his life."

“I want to use my passion for motor racing to tell others about United Response’s work and to make it possible for more people with learning disabilities to live life to the full.”

Crispian, a winner of the Front engine class of the Historic Formula Junior Championship 2008, is hoping that his friends, supporters and corporate contacts will consider contributing as much as they feel able to, however small.
As an incentive, he is offering the chance to win back all or part of a donation by personally returning 1% of the total funds raised on line to whoever manages to correctly guess both his final position in the 2009 championship AND the number of points that he scores over the course of the season (This has averaged 43 over the last 7 years..)

In the event of a draw, this will be awarded to the person who has made the most generous donation !

Crispian's two FJ racing cars - an ex Charlie Kolb Elva 100 and his newly acquired ex works Tyrrell Cooper T56 - will both be sporting United Response’s name and logos over the course of this season which starts at Mallory Park on April 5th.

Crispian will also be competing in the Derek Bell series in his ex Bob Wollek Brabham BT38 F2 car, now restored to its correct Motul /Rondel period livery and to F2 specification.

To support Crispian’s fundraising efforts go to www.justgiving.com/crispianbesley
To read more about United Response’s work go to www.unitedresponse.org.uk