Johnny Dumfries has died

The British driver Johnny Dumfries, the winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans and former teammate of Ayrton Senna at Lotus, has died at the age of 62 years: He was suffering from an untreatable disease. His family announced it. He was born in Scotland, and his real name was John Crichton-Stuart; Dumfries, later on, he chose to race under a pseudonym to conceal his aristocratic profile. Highly gifted at the wheel, he won the British F3 championship in 1984, then he auditioned for Ferrari in 1985. He finally joined the Lotus team in F1 as a teammate of the young and promising Brazilian Ayrton Senna.

He left Lotus at the end of the 1986 season after finishing only six times, with his best result being a 5th place in Hungary. Dumfries then dedicated himself to endurance racing and won the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans in a Jaguar, in 1988, teamed with Andy Wallace and Dutchman Jan Lammers.

The name Dumfries, chosen as a penname by the pilot, is the name of a small village in the southwest of Scotland, located in the heart of the county of Dumfries and Galloway.