Leo Sayer Places Brunel Motorsport Calendar in Pride of Place
So how did singer Leo Sayer come to be holding a copy of a Brunel Promotions calendar you may ask?
The motorsport artist Andy Kitson has a long standing friendship with Leo Sayer, who made his fame in the 1970s, with his first seven singles all reaching the top 10. Leo has lived in Australia since 2009 so it is even more unusual that the calendar has made its way across to the other side of the world.
We caught up with Andy after he sent us the photograph of Leo holding a copy of Brunel’s Motorsport Calendar. We asked him how the friendship had come about.
Andy had been involved with motor racing his whole life as his father was a racing car mechanic in the 1960s. He’d often go along with him to Silverstone and Brands Hatch and from an early age he could be found polishing the cars and working stopwatches from the pits. At school he was always in trouble for drawing racing cars in his school books instead of the task at hand!
As a teenager he had weekend jobs helping out local racing teams and being fairly good at art, his racing car drawings improved. He subsequently went to college to study technical graphics and illustration and attended race meetings at the weekends. He also developed a great love of music in the 70s, especially rock music, so Friday nights were usually spent at concerts in Cambridge where he lived.
After college Andy worked in the German car industry for several years, drawing illustrations for manuals and he began doing paintings of racing cars in his spare time giving early versions to friends and racing drivers he’d met in the sport. Gradually this took over until motorsport artwork became his full time occupation in the 1990s with a side-line in band album artwork for CD covers.
In Andy’s career as a motorsport artist, clients have included Lewis Hamilton, Ayrton Senna, Ferrari, McLaren, Honda, Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet, Jackie Stewart, the BTCC and Silverstone circuit, plus many drivers, teams, sponsors, clubs, car owners and fans. Bernie Ecclestone liked his work and was very kind in providing a pass to any Grands Prix he wanted to attend. It was at the San Marino Grand Prix in Imola in 1991 where Andy first met Leo Sayer in the F1 Paddock. He is an avid motorsport enthusiast, and whenever Leo and Andy met at the races they'd always have a chat.
The two subsequently lost touch when Leo stopped attending races and he moved to Sydney, however social media has enabled a re-connection and were delighted to meet again at Leo’s
concerts when he tours the UK.
Andy started doing paintings for the Brunel Grand Prix calendar in 2015 and he is very proud of the artwork that goes into them. He sent Leo a copy of the calendar last Christmas, and it is proudly displayed in his studio in his beautiful house in Australia.
Andy still paints some band album cover artwork and continues to produce motorsport paintings so that we can include brand new material in our 2025 calendar which is currently being compiled.
Leo continues to tour and love F1 – we are sure he will have a Brunel 2024 and 2025 Motorsport calendar on his walls in the coming years.
