Ted Toleman obituary

Ted Toleman at the launch of his Formula One team in 1981 Photograph: none

Ted Toleman, who has died aged 86, gave Ayrton Senna his introduction to grand prix racing. The team bearing Toleman’s name entered Formula One in 1981 and got off to a faltering start, but three years later they came close to giving the great Brazilian, a future triple world champion, a spectacular first victory in only his fifth race at the top level.

Rain fell heavily during the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix. Senna, then aged 24, started from the 13th slot on the 20-car grid and used all his precocious skill in the treacherous conditions to overtake one rival after another on the tight two-mile street circuit until he found himself in second place behind Alain Prost’s McLaren.

Prost, runner-up in the previous season’s world championship, disliked racing on wet tracks. With barely a third of the scheduled 76 laps completed, he began waving furiously to the clerk of the course, the former Formula One ace Jacky Ickx, every time he crossed the finish line. Eventually Ickx was persuaded by Prost’s gestures and showed the red flag to halt the race at the end of lap 31.

Senna, who thrived in the rain, had been catching the Frenchman hand over fist. When Prost saw the red flag, he continued around the course before stopping his car on the finishing straight. Having closed to within a handful of seconds, Senna flashed past at full speed to cross the line, believing he had won, only to be told on returning to the pits that the rules said the finishing order was determined at the moment the red flag was shown.

Although Senna’s third-place finishes at Silverstone and Estoril later in the season provided further evidence of the team’s progress, the Brazilian announced his intention to move to Lotus. At the end of 1985 Toleman sold his Oxfordshire-based outfit to Luciano Benetton, the Italian clothing manufacturer. As Benetton, the team went on to win titles with Michael Schumacher in 1994-95 and, after being sold on to Renault, with Fernando Alonso in 2005-06.

Born in Manchester, the infant Ted was adopted by Albert and Kathleen Toleman, with no record of his birth parents. Albert was the son of Edward Toleman, whose company had been started in 1926 to deliver Ford cars from their UK factory to dealers and distributors. Albert took over the reins in the 1950s, and when he died in 1966 Ted assumed the chairmanship, becoming joint managing director with his younger brother, Bob. Together with another director, Alex Hawkridge, they extended the business into Europe.

Attracted by motor sport, the Toleman brothers and Hawkridge also took lessons at Jim Russell’s racing drivers’ school. Bob died from head injuries inflicted in an accident at Snetterton in 1976, while Ted’s appearance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans that year, undertaken “to satisfy an itch to drive down the Mulsanne straight at 200mph”, ended in a crash on his first lap.

Nevertheless he and Hawkridge saw their team work its way through the lesser categories before arriving in Formula Two, using Ralt cars. For the 1980 season they constructed their own machines, designed by Rory Byrne and John Gentry, with engines specially built by Brian Hart. The team’s English drivers, Brian Henton and Derek Warwick, finished first and second in the European championship.

Under Hawkridge’s supervision, the in-house design team came up with their first Formula One car in 1981, but it proved to be overweight and unreliable. Using a turbocharged version of Hart’s F2 engine, it was also underpowered, and Warwick and Henton struggled to qualify for grand prix starts, even after a redesigned version with a lighter carbon-composite chassis had been produced.

A further redesign for 1983 enabled Warwick to claim the team’s first championship points with seventh place in the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort.

Senna’s performances in 1984 provided evidence of a steady improvement, but the mid-season announcement of his impending move to Lotus, without having notified Toleman and Hawkridge of his intention to activate the buy-out clause in his three-year contract, led to an acrimonious departure.

A dispute with their tyre supplier forced the team to miss the opening races of 1985, and although the Italian driver Teo Fabi took pole position at the Nürburgring, his 12th place at Monza was the team’s only finish that season. By then negotiations for a change of ownership were under way.

Toleman was also a successful powerboat racer. In 1985 he teamed up with Richard Branson to captain the Virgin Atlantic Challenger I, built with the objective of setting a new record for the fastest surface crossing of the North Atlantic. The 65ft, 4,000-horsepower boat had covered 2,973 nautical miles and was 130 miles from the finish when it sank after hitting a submerged object off the Isles of Scilly. All nine crew were rescued by a passing banana boat.

Following the sale of the transport company and while in dispute with the British tax authorities, Toleman moved with his wife, Diane (nee Prior), and their twin sons to South Africa, where he owned a banana plantation. After the death of his wife and the murder of one son, Gary, then aged 40, in a car-jacking incident in 2003, he moved first to Australia’s Gold Coast and then to Manila in the Philippines, where he spent his final years.

He is survived by his second wife, Maiti (nee Villarreal), his other son, Michael, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

• Ted (Norman Edward) Toleman, entrepreneur, born 14 March 1938, died 10 April 2024