Caring Pendine Park staff drive appeal to honour F1 racing hero

Big hearted staff at a Pendine Park care home in Wrexham have been helping drive forward a fundraising appeal honouring Grand Prix racing hero Tom Pryce.

The energetic team of carers and friends of Pendine Park’s Hillbury House Care Home used pedal power to get behind the £50,000 appeal to erect a statue in memory of the late Formula One ace and inspire young people to follow their dream just like he did.

He was born at the former Trevalyn Maternity Hospital, Rossett, and well known in the Wrexham area where he had many friends. Tom, the son of a policeman and a nurse, spent his early life living in the Hightown area of the town before moving to the nearby village of Brymbo.

A website, a Facebook page and a Go Fund Me page https://www.gofundme.com/tom-pryce-appeal are live so supporters can make donations.

Numerous money-spinning activities are also planned, of which the sponsored pedal was one of the first.

Over 24 hours volunteers at the home in Hillbury Road committed to clocking up a combined total of at least 200 miles via the continuous pedal on an electric exercise bike.

Enrichment and activities coordinator Gerry Humphreys said there was immense enthusiasm among staff and residents to raise as much as possible. She said: “Tom Pryce is a local hero who tragically died when he was right on the brink of achieving what could have been legendary status in his sport. But, after starting out as a tractor mechanic, he still achieved his dream against the odds to be a Formula One racing driver and that is what this fundraising appeal is really about - encouraging young people to realise that if they work at it they too can achieve their dreams no matter how impossible they may seem.

Pryce - the only Welsh driver ever to have won a Formula One race - was killed, along with safety marshall Frederik Jansen van Vuuren, in a high-speed collision at the 1977 South African Grand Prix in Kyalami.

A friend of James Hunt and Nikki Lauda, he had been widely heralded as having the potential to achieve legendary status. Just two years earlier he won the Brands Hatch Race of Champions, a non-championship Formula One race, and he remains the only Welshman to have led a Formula One World Championship Grand Prix: two laps of the 1975 British Grand Prix.

For more information go to www.tompryce.co.uk or www.Facebook.com/TomPryceF1 and to make a contribution to the appeal fund go to https://www.gofundme.com/tom-pryce-appeal