A FORMER motor racing champion from Bolton has vowed he will not return to the sport because it is not dangerous enough.

Kurt Luby, aged 46, stopped racing competitively six years ago following an ill-fated motorcycle ride through North Africa in the Paris to Dakar rally in which he was temporarily stranded in the desert.

Luby has now turned his attention to flying, and, while qualifying for his pilot’s licence, he built his own Jabiru J430 kit aeroplane.

His exploits now are a far cry from his in days in the 1990s when he was racing alongside ex-Formula One driver David Coulthard and this year’s Formula One world championship contender Rubens Barichello in the Vauxhaull Lotus Championship.

Luby finished one place ahead of Coulthard in 1990, but the highlight of his career came in 1998 when he was invited to drive a sports car in the British GT championship — an endurance event — which he won in a Chrysler Viper powered by a V8 engine in a season when he and his co-driver Richard Dean were unstoppable.

The Bolton racer had already showed his class as a teenager when he was crowned the junior British Karting Champion in 1978 and 1979 and was five-times British Gearbox Kart Champion between 1980 and 1987 before he graduated to Formula Ford in 1988 and became champion again.

“They were great days,” said Luby. “But I have no ambitions or inclination to be involved in motor sport any more.

“I always follow Formula One, but I don’t particularly follow it for the racing. It’s very sterile now, as with most forms of motor racing. I’m old school. I liked it when the tracks were dangerous and the car had more power than grip — unfortunately now, the tracks are very safe and the cars have got more grip than power.

“That’s why I turned to bikes — I like them more. They are a more purest form of racing. If the rider can make a difference it will show in the results, but it is not necessarily the case with F1.

“I was chuffed to bits with Jenson Button winning the F1 world title. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke and the whole scenario with what was happening at the beginning of the season with Brawn, when he didn’t know he’d be in a car — let alone a competitive one — was a fairytale story.

“The only thing that people didn’t realise was that Brawn had about £120 million to go at from Honda and I think some people thought they were rising from the ashes and had nothing.

“Next year’s going to be very interesting. But I do like watching it from a technical point of view.”

Now, Luby is content to spend his spare time airborne.

“You’ve got to do something,” he said. “I don’t know whether its a control thing, or something you’ve just got to get out of your system. Learning was quite a long drawn out thing. I fly as often as I can, the nights have closed in now, which is making to difficult, and there’s having to work as well.

“But at the weekends I get out when I can. It makes England a very small place when you’ve got an aeroplane.”