Ted Toleman, boss of the underdog Formula One team that gave Ayrton Senna his first drive – obituary

Ted Toleman, who has died aged 86, was the motor-racing entrepreneur who gave Ayrton Senna his first drive in Formula One. As the owner of a British underdog team, Ted Toleman had many admirers – and some detractors – in an era when motor racing was fraught with risk, precarious sponsorship deals and rumours of financial shenanigans.

Having risen through F2, side-stepping an apprenticeship in F3, the Toleman team not only created a new F1 car, they designed a new engine using the new turbo-technology. Several Italian sponsors co-funded such bravery.

A Toleman TG184 driven by Ayrton Senna was on course to win the Monaco Grand Prix in 1984, having risen to second place from a lowly start, when the rain-affected race was controversially stopped, handing victory to the French driver Alain Prost, although Senna had just overtaken him.

The Toleman team was also a proving ground for other racing drivers: Teo Fabi, Stefan Johansson, Johnny Cecotto, Pierluigi Martini, Bruno Giacomelli and notably, Derek Warwick. Rory Byrne, who would latterly design several of Michael Schumacher’s world-championship-winning cars, joined Toleman in 1979. Brian Hart’s turbocharged engines were honed at Toleman, as were Pat Symonds’s aerodynamic ideas.

Founded in 1977, Toleman Motorsport quickly established itself as a PR-savvy motor racing outfit, led by Ted Toleman. The Toleman transport dynasty was a major name in British haulage, with its familiar blue transporters delivering new cars to the nation’s Ford dealers and others. Yet the deeper story was more complex.

Norman Edward “Ted” Toleman was not a blood-line Toleman but an adopted son, born on March 14 1938 – reports differed on whether it was in South Africa or Manchester – of undisclosed parentage. He joined his new family’s firm.

Possessed of an always perfectly trimmed naval-style beard and a pompadour of latterly whitening hair, Toleman was rarely seen without a gold watch and flash car – a Ferrari or an eye-catching gold Lamborghini Countach. He lived in a house in the grounds of Gedding Hall in Suffolk, owned by the Rolling Stone Bill Wyman.

Alongside his undoubted talents and charisma, Toleman had, in the words of one F1 luminary, “a remarkable ability to come up smelling of roses – or champagne, petrol, and sponsors’ money”.

The Toleman Group had been founded by Edward Toleman in Manchester in 1926. Edward’s son Albert had won several national club-level rallies driving a Ford Zephyr.

On Albert’s death in 1966, his adopted son Ted became chairman, managing the Toleman Group jointly with Albert’s son Robert, a co-director.  With another Toleman Group director, Alex Hawkridge, they steered Toleman into sponsoring motor sport in the 1970s, as well as involvement in Formula Ford 2000. (Hawkridge, with his talented lieutenant, Chris Witty, a former motorsport journalist, would take many of the key decisions for Witney-based Toleman Motorsport.)

Ted also expanded the Toleman Group into other areas, notably purchasing Cougar Marine – power boats were his principal passion. In 1976, however, Robert was killed aged 30 racing a Royale RP21 at Snetterton.

After a season running a March 782 chassis in 1978, Toleman Motorsport became a racing car constructor, entering the 1980 European F2 championship with the first in-house designed Toleman, the TG280, driven by Brian Henton, who won that championship. His team-mate Derek Warwick was runner-up.

In 1982 Warwick led the 1982 British Grand Prix for 16 glorious laps. The next year he scored Team Toleman’s first F1 championship points.

The team then signed up the F3 champion Ayrton Senna da Silva (who later went by just his mother’s maiden name, Senna) from under Bernie Ecclestone’s nose. Toleman’s Rory Byrne observed after a testing session: “This is the guy… we’ve just got to have him”.

After the 1984 Monaco debacle, Senna exited his contract to go to Lotus. That, and self-inflicted tyre-supplier troubles, saw Ted Toleman sell the team, and its new TG185 car, to Benetton – which itself later became the Renault F1 team.

A winner of the British, and Australian powerboat championships, in 1985 Ted Toleman joined Richard Branson in an attempt to win the trans-Atlantic speed record in a powerboat. They hit debris near the finish line and sank. Ted Toleman would also race in the Paris-Dakar car rally on three occasions.

In 1992, the Toleman Automotive transport company was hit by strikes after it made workers redundant and had refused to restore a 25 per cent pay cut that had been forced on it by its bank. The unions had previously agreed to the cut on the grounds that the company was in trouble. A reported £22 million had also been spent developing a new design of car transporter.

In 1993, Ted Toleman moved to South Africa, having sold the family transport company, and bought a banana plantation near Nelspruit.

A role in a failed attempt at creating a new racing team reputedly damaged Toleman’s standing in South Africa and, having moved to Australia, he then became resident in Manila, Philippines.

Ted Toleman’s first wife Dianna died in 1999. In 2003, one of their twin sons was murdered in South Africa by car-jackers. He is survived by his second wife, Maiti, and the surviving  son from his first marriage.

Ted Toleman, born March 14 1938, died April 10 2024