Drivers

Bill Aston

A former test pilot and motorcycle racer, Aston turned to four-wheel competition with a Cooper-Jap in Formula Junior and later graduated to Formula 2. He came close to winning the 1951 Grand Prix des Frontieres at Chimay only to have his car fail on the last lap.That same year he set a new 500cc world speed record. For the 1952 season he built a copy of the Cooper and fitted the car with one of Archie Butterworth's unusual flat-four engines. The Aston-Butterworths (two were built) showed well in several races in the hands of Aston and Robert Montgomerie-Charrington.Aston entered one of the cars in the 1952 German GP at the Nurburgring but the engine failed on the second lap of the race. He later tried to qualify for the Italian GP at Monza but failed to make the cut. The team never had enough money to develop the cars and so they tended to be very unreliable and the program eventually faded away with Aston - already in his 50s - retiring from the sport.