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Brit quits House of Lords to become motor racing hero

With a seat in the House of Lords, a biotechnology fortune in the bank and good sight in just one eye, Paul Drayson is an unlikely candidate to become Britain's next motor racing hero.

But on Wednesday the 47-year-old minister for defense equipment and support wrote one of the most unusual resignation notes in political history and told British Prime Minister Gordon Brown he was standing down to pursue his dream of winning the Le Mans 24-hour motor race.

Drayson's day job at the Ministry of Defense had involved buying everything from Typhoon fighter planes to automatic grenade launchers for the British military.

But a greater passion burned within him. In his spare moments he would squeeze behind the wheel of his 6 liter Aston Martin DBRS9 and hurtle round tracks including Silverstone and Brands Hatch at up to 320kph. This year he improved enough to start winning races and was just pipped to the British GT championship.

"A number of special circumstances have now presented me with a once in a lifetime opportunity to take my racing to the next level," the self-confessed "car nut" wrote to Brown.

"I have the opportunity to race next year in the American Le Mans series in the United States, a key step towards my eventual dream of success in the Le Mans 24-hours endurance race," he wrote.

Drayson is reported to have made a personal fortune of around ?80 million (US$168 million) from a revolutionary needle-free injection system and was made a life peer by former prime minister Tony Blair in 2004, within weeks of making a ?505,000 donation to the Labour party. He was made a junior defense minister in 2005 and was promoted three months before Brown took over in Downing Street this summer.

He has championed the use of bio-ethanol fuel in racing cars and said his decision to leave government was given fresh impetus when the American Le Mans Series -- 12 races from Salt Lake City to Detroit -- decided to allow bio-ethanol cars for the first time next year.
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