John Brooks

Le Mans has been part of John Brooks’s DNA since his youth. Who is to blame? Well, Motor Sport’s MLC (Mike Cotton), ARM (Andrew Marriott) and DSJ (Denis Jenkinson) must be considered as suspects and also the Porsche 917 and Steve McQueen.

In 1978 he boarded an old train at Victoria and many hours later he was at Le Circuit des 24 Heures du Mans courtesy of Page & Moy. The next two years followed this course, the latter with a camera. By 1984 the camera had meant an upgrade to media accreditation, helping rising star Keith Sutton’s photo agency. A few years later and John’s advertising contacts generated a deal with Castrol that led to further business with Jaguar, Mazda and Toyota. As endurance racing recovered in the mid-1990s, he acquired other clients such as Harrods and Gulf Oil, but the foundations of these projects was always Le Mans and the 24 Hours.

In 1998 he made the jump, going full-time as photographer and scribbler, working on projects with outlets such as Autosport, Sport Auto, Le Mans Annual, European Car and many others, while advertising and promotional work included many manufacturers — Aston Martin, Audi, BMW and Ferrari among them — and race teams, plus several championships. Despite the workload it was a precarious existence, but one constant was June and Le Mans.

Eventually he took on a PR role for Greaves Motorsport for six seasons and the story came to an end in 2019, after 36 years in a row working at the 24 Hours. During that time he has accumulated encyclopaedic knowledge of the Le Mans 24 Hours that has served him well in compiling the eighth title in Evro’s decade-by-decade series about the race.