Former British Touring Car Championship race winner David Leslie and Apex Motorsport team boss Richard Lloyd have been confirmed among the five people killed when their plane came down shortly after take off yesterday.
The pair were heading to the French circuit of Nogaro for the latest equalisation test for the
FIA GT3 European Championship, where Leslie was due to get behind the wheel of Apex's Jaguar XKR.
The Cessna Citation 1 jet had taken off from Biggin Hill airfield for the trip across the English Channel when it got into trouble, with another pilot who heard a mayday call from the aircraft telling the
BBC that the pilot was reporting 'severe engine vibrations'.
"You could hear the alarms in the cockpit," he said. "The pilot came back over the radio a second or two later and said 'We're going down, we're going down'.
"The radio stayed live, and as I turned off the runway I looked back and I saw the plane basically drop out of the sky. And then the radio went dead and black smoke came up from over the hill."
The plane came down on the edge of a housing estate in Farnborough in Kent, although there were no injuries amongst people on the ground.
Police have this morning confirmed that the pilot had reported a mechanical issue prior to the incident and have also named both Leslie and Lloyd amongst the victims. The remaining names have not yet been released.
Authorities plan to move the five bodies from the site of the accident today as investigations begin to find out what caused the plane to come down.
Crash.net joins the entire motorsport community in extending its deepest sympathies to the family and friends of all five people involved.
