Foot Ups Fred 1950 - 2020 Motor Racing History

Fred Levesque was born in Zambia in on Jan 29 1950. His parents actually lived in Zimbabwe, but since the closest hospital was across the Victoria Falls Bridge, he was technically Zambian. He spent most of his childhood in Harare (then known as Salisbury).

After school he did his army service and then went to the Uk where he grew his hair long and did every job you could think of from picking hops to truck driving, and also did some compulsory hitchhiking through Europe. After about 5 years in the UK he decided to return to Africa. So he bought an old motorbike, rebuilt and sold it, using the profit to buy himself a boat ticket home. He settled in Joburg which was to remain his home for the rest of his life. He first joined SA Motorsport in the late 70s. He started Off Road Racing on a bike and later graduated to both single seater and twin seater cars (as navigator). His Off Road Racing career had many highlights including earning the title of overall SA champion (he was the last single seater to ever do that, he claimed they changed the rules because of his win, making it harder for single seaters to outright beat the twin seaters). As navigator he won the toughest and most prestigious Off Road Race, the Roof of Africa held in Lesotho. He even once finished the race in a three wheeler, not letting a small thing like a wheel falling off stop him from getting to the finish line. He built every one of his Off Road Vehicles from the chassis up, and would completely strip and rebuild the cars between races. In between all the racing he also managed to get married, to Pixie and have two kids, Sally-Ann and Richard. With his business partners Gavin Orbell and Richard Schilling he started a very successful plastics manufacturing, Mototech. Of course, they manufactured for the auto industry!

In the late 80s or early 90s he stopped racing for a few years, but the oil was too thick in his blood to keep him away from motorsport for long. In the early 90s he bought his first trial’s bike and the rest, is history…