Peter Roderick Procter (born 16 January 1930 in Bradford,

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...

) is a British former

cycling Cycling, also, when on a two-wheeled bicycle, called bicycling or biking, is the use of cycles for transport, recreation, exercise or sport. People engaged in cycling are referred to as "cyclists", "bicyclists", or "bikers". Apart from t ...

champion,

rally driver Rally is a wide-ranging form of motorsport with various competitive motoring elements such as speed tests (often called ''rally racing),'' navigation tests, or the ability to reach waypoints or a destination at a prescribed time or average speed. ...

and racing driver. Shortly after his birth he moved to Harrogate, and then to Alne Hall in the village of Alne, near York. Following the premature death of his parents, he moved back to Bradford, where he took up cycling. Procter competed in all types of cycle racing at home and on the Continent, but excelled in hill climbs, winning the British championship in 1951. After becoming disillusioned with the UK cycling, and after the British Olympic Committee failed to select both him and other top cyclists of the time to represent Great Britain in the Olympics, Procter dropped out of professional cycling to concentrate on his building company in Bradford. He was soon involved in rallying. He competed in events including the

RAC Rally Wales Rally GB was the most recent iteration of the United Kingdom's premier international motor rally, which ran under various names since the first event held in 1932. It was consistently a round of the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) calen ...

Tulip Rally The Tulip Rally (Dutch: ''Tulpenrallye''), first held in 1949, is the oldest Dutch rally competition. The teams are divided into three classes: Tour, Sport and Expert. The Expert Class is for the navigators which in the past 2–6 years in the T ...

Coupe des Alpes The Alpine Rally, also known by its official name Coupe des Alpes, was a rally competition based in Marseille and held from 1932 to 1971. In the 1950s and the 1960s, it was among the most prestigious rallies in the world and featured an internat ...

(Alpine Rally), Tour de France Automobile and Monte Carlo Rally. Procter also competed in the Le Mans 24 Heures race several times, and raced in many Grands Prix, his highest position second in the Berlin Grand Prix. Procter's racing career ended in 1966 when he was hit from behind in a saloon car race at Goodwood. After several somersaults, the car burst into flames and Procter was left with third degree burns to 65 per cent of his skin. After many months of treatment and operations, he left hospital and returned home to Yorkshire, where he lives with his wife and family. Procter has returned to driving a few times, including racing his original

Sunbeam Tiger The Sunbeam Tiger is a high-performance V8 version of the British Rootes Group's Sunbeam Alpine roadster, designed in part by American car designer and racing driver Carroll Shelby and produced from 1964 until 1967. Shelby had carried out a ...

at the Le Mans Historic in 2002, and is still involved in motorsport, a member of the

British Racing Drivers Club The British Racing Drivers' Club (BRDC) is an exclusive invitation-only members club for racecar drivers who are judged to have achieved success in the upper levels of motor sport for a number of seasons. Except under exceptional circumstances, me ...

at Silverstone.

References

Tigers United
1930 births Living people Cyclists from Yorkshire English racing drivers English rally drivers British cycling road race champions Sportspeople from Bradford 24 Hours of Le Mans drivers World Sportscar Championship drivers {{England-autoracing-bio-stub