Luis Fontés

Who was Luis Fontés?

Luis Fontés was a British racing driver of Brazilian parentage who, along with John Stuart Hindmarsh, won the 1935 24 Hours of Le Mans for the Lagonda automobile company. He also held a pilot's licence after learning to fly at Reading Aerodrome, Berkshire, UK, and entered his own Miles Hawk Speed Six racing aeroplane in the prestigious King's Cup Air Race in 1935. Fontés later briefly served as an Air Transport Auxiliary ferry pilot during World War II but was killed on 12 October 1940 while delivering a Vickers Wellington Mk1C bomber to an RAF Aircraft Storage Unit at Llandow in South Wales. The Le Mans Lagonda M45R survives in the Dutch National Automobile Museum at The Hague and the aeroplane was owned and raced for many years postwar by the late Ron Paine but is now owned by retired Concorde pilot Roger Mills and flies from White Waltham airfield, Berkshire, UK.