Originally Posted by
JEM60
My wife and I flew to the U.S. Grand Prix in '77??? with Capt. Dibley. He was kind enough to invite me to the Flight Deck. Good old days!. At the time, he was quite well known as a racing driver, competing with the Howmet Gas Turbine car. Aircraft was G-AWNO.
H.P.K. Dibley's days as a racing driver were long gone by 1977. He was at his peak as a driver in the mid sixties, when he was flying 707s. He ran a 6 litre Lola T70-Chevrolet in British sports car races and won the sports car race that supported the 1966 British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch. In 1968 he did indeed drive the Howmet gas turbine in long distance sports car races, without success. He briefly dabbled with racing car construction with an F2 car called a Palliser (The "P" of his initials). There was a story in the racing world in the early seventies that BOAC prevailed on him to concentrate on flying after an unfortunate experience on a 747 simulator!