Chris Aylett: chief executive, Motorsport Industry Association

A former Roosevelt Scholar, Aylett began his career as a sportscar driver, eventually becoming a team owner and race promotor; while also building an international sporting goods distribution group.

Having served as president of the Sports Industries Federation, Aylett became chief executive of the Motorsport Industries Association in 1998. In 2000, he initiated a UK government review energy efficient motorsport; three years later, he launched the world’s first international Low Carbon Motorsport conference.

The image of motorsport is one of blood and thunder; deafening noise, the smell of fuel and hot rubber; the dash and glamour of race days and playboy drivers. It isn’t one of cool, calculated engineering. But all of that may be changing; in fact, some would argue that it has to.

One of the loudest of those voices would probably belong to Chris Aylett. The veteran chief executive of the UK Motorsport Industry Association, celebrating 15 years in the post, Aylett is something of a paradox; a garrulous raconteur of the type that used to be known as clubbable, he is fond of telling stories against himself and declaring himself a dinosaur, yet for the past ten years he has been the driving force behind the annual Low Carbon Motorsport Conference.