Writer, broadcaster and great friend of C&SC Henry Hope-Frost became legendary as the effusive commentator and gridwalker at the Goodwood events. Here his friend and colleague Andrew van de Burgt, Editor in Chief of Autosport Media, remembers 'H'.
I don’t think I’ll ever meet anyone again who had as much fever as Henry Hope-Frost. In fact, I didn’t really know what real fever was until we started working together at Autosport.
Fever is the undiluted love of all the good things about motorsport – speed, risk, triumph over adversity, even inglorious failure. Henry dropped it into almost every conversation we had, and no doubt he would have been chuffed to see #fever trending across Twitter this morning. If only he could have…
A lot of great things have been written about H in the day following his fatal motorbike accident. But I think the most pertinent was the description of him simultaneously taking motorsport seriously, yet not seriously at all.
It was this casual charm, underscored by a serious depth of knowledge, that made him such a great interviewer, whether that was onstage at the Autosport Show, on the floor of the Autosport Awards or on the grid at the Goodwood Revival.
His love of the sport was broad. He was equally happy talking to a legend from the WRC as he was to a modern-day F1 star or a rising single-seater wannabe. His style was conversational, cheeky you might say, and it put people at ease. And the fact he knew absolutely what he was talking about meant he got their respect and the best out of them.