A north-east businessman is revving up his involvement in a charity which aims to empower sick and wounded military veterans through motorsport.
Findlay Leask of Aberdeen-based Caber Coffee has become the first Scottish business mentor for Mission Motorsport, a charitable organisation which was set up in 2012 to help
find hope and futures for people leaving the forces through sickness or injury. Notably, the charity ran the driving challenge for the 2014 Invictus Games and is currently working with Jaguar Land Rover to identify work opportunities in the motoring world.
Feeling the benefit of Findlay’s experience is former Black Watch soldier and now ambitious Fife-based racing driver Mikey Courts who was injured in Afghanistan in 2009 and again in 2011 when he ruptured a disk in his spine while taking cover from fire and subsequently suffered long-term mobility restrictions. Mikey raced go-karts with considerable success for the first time last year, graduating to the BMW Compact Cup in 2014.
Findlay said: “Our initial involvement in Mission Motorsport was a fundraising coffee product and I am delighted to have become a mentor, a pilot project for the charity. I have seen the charity in action at Silverstone and speaking to those involved is incredibly humbling – they truly are heroes for how they face up to recovery. Becoming physical or mentally unable to do the job you are trained for must be terrifying but Mission Motorsport builds people back up, gives them motivation and hope, and brings them back to being part of a team.”
To find out more, visit www.missionmotor
sport.org