EAST Lancashire racing car star turned author Brian Redman has won a top prize for his new book.

The title ‘Daring Drivers, Deadly Tracks’ has won the third Royal Automobile Club Motoring Book of the Year award.

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The 79-year-old, born in Colne and raised in Burnley, left the family’s grocery business in 1967 to pursue his passion for high-speed thrills.

Redman and Company had almost 100 shops throughout Burnley, Blackburn and the rest of Lancashire.

He had spells in Formula One (taking third place in the 1968 Spanish Grand Prix) and sports car racing (winning the gruelling ‘Targa Florio’ endurance race in Sicily in 1970).

He moved to the United States for a successful new career there, winning the SCCA/USAC Formula 5000 Championship three times in a row from 1974 to 1976.

Now resident in Florida, Mr Redman said of the win: “You could knock me down with a feather.

“I am thrilled and delighted. This is as good as winning the Targa Florio.”

Published in March 2016, Redman’s memoir is a vivid account of the down-to-earth, popular and highly respected British racer’s exploits in a perilous era.

Described as extremely readable, and at times both funny and poignant, it is a very personal book that has received great acclaim and has already been reprinted twice to meet demand.

The book’s content confirms Redman’s significant place in motor racing history.

Accompanying the text, the book includes over 300 photographs from a career that lasted till Mr Redman was 52 in 1989.

In 2002 he was admitted into the motorsports Hall of Fame in Michigan USA.

Mr Redman was stunt driver for acting legend Steve McQueen in the 1971 film ‘Le Mans’.

Judge Gordon Cruickshank of Motor Sport said: “This is not just a driver autobiography, but a comprehensive and thoughtful picture of an era, and of the racing driver’s mind-set.

“It is very moving when discussing how to cope with the death of friends, yet also full of the fun and enjoyment of the time - an attractive and very readable work.”

Formula One world champion Mario Andretti wrote a foreword including: “Brian has managed to cap a pretty terrific racing career with a pretty terrific racing memoir.”

The book is published by Evro Publishing.