Joy Rainey at Prescott earlier this year in her brand new 2018 McLaren F570S.
Just when the planning for our tenth Prescott is reaching the finishing line, it just keeps getting better!
We are very excited to announce that world-respected hillclimb and rally driver, and a firm supporter of Pre-War Prescott for many years, Joy Rainey has announced that she will be bringing her brand new McLaren F570S to Pre-War Prescott, and a run up the hill beside her in the McLaren will be auctioned in our lunchtime charity auction. In addition, we have other supercars lined up with climbs in them being raffled, courtesy of Cotswold Motorsport, and H. R. Owen Cheltenham. All funds raised will be donated directly to the RAF Charitable Trust.
Joy Rainey is the daughter of three time Australian Formula 3 champion, Murray. Throughout her life Joy has achieved impressive goals in the world of motorsport including holding the ladies hill climbing record at Shelsley Walsh for a most impressive twenty-two years in a number of cars (including a modified Pilbeam single-seater, her father’s newly restored 1937 Alfa Romeo and a Murrain sportsracer). She also claimed considerable achievements in long distance rallying, including completing the 2004 London to Sydney Marathon with her co-driver Trevor Hulks, a classic car restorer, in a 1970 Morris Minor.
In 1959 Joy accompanied her father when he spent a season racing in Europe. Amongst the many people they met were Jean Behra who invited Joy to sit in his Ferrari and on another occasion Stirling Moss. Opportunity struck whilst visiting the Cooper factory where Bruce McLaren was trying out a kart – undoubtedly the perfect solution for Joy.
Upon their return to Geelong, Murray started building and selling Rainey Karts with Joy having the prototype and it was not long before she won her first race.
By the time she was sixteen Joy had clocked up an impressive number of victories in karts and when she was old enough to have a road car Murray treated her to a specially adapted 1953 Morris Minor.
In 2009, Joy, together with Trevor, began planning their ‘trip of a lifetime’ – to drive her own 1904 single-cylinder Curved Dash Oldsmobile (with a top speed of approximately 28 mph, two gears and tiller steering), from Oceanside, California across to Daytona Beach, Florida – a distance of 2,903 miles. The idea behind this was to re-enact a similar trip made by Whitman and Hammond more than one hundred years earlier, where they drove an Oldsmobile Curved Dash at a top speed of 20mph from San Francisco, arriving in New York 79 days later.
Tragically, after suffering from ill-health, Trevor died and Joy, understandably grief-stricken, abandoned all plans for their remarkable challenge. It was not until the following year after a chance encounter with an old friend, Mark Riley, who had bought the late Murray’s Cooper-Norton, who suggested that he accompany Joy on the trip.
With a supportive team behind them, offering expert advice for everything involved in a trip such as this, Mark and Joy set out from America’s West Coast on 13th April, 2013, arriving 31 days later at Daytona Beach, Florida. What is so remarkable is that the Oldsmobile ran perfectly – a touching and surely no better tribute to Trevor who had completely re-built the Oldsmobile.
The Foreword to Joy’s book ‘Joy Across America’ was written by Sir Stirling Moss OBE. He concludes his remarks with: ‘Thank goodness she didn’t turn to Formula One!’