service manager, team manager, founder, motorsport manager
Kas Kastner
American tuner, racer, team manager and author. He began racing in 1952 in an MG TD and opened a tuning shop in Salt Lake City in 1953. The TSOA Newsletter of October 1955 reports an "R. Kastner" winning two races in a TR2 at Cheyenne, Wyoming. In 1959, by the TSOA Newsletter's account, he won the Pacific Coast Class E Championship, the California Sports Car Club championship and the Motoracing West Coast Point Championship in a TR3 he drove to work and to races. After preparing three TR4s that finished 1st, 2nd and 4th in their class at Sebring in 1963 he set up Triumph's US competition department (by his account, no other foreign maker had one there) and wrote Triumph's competition preparation manuals. He finished three of the works TR4s for the 1964 Shell 4000, built the TR4A Super Stock in which Charlie Gates won the 1965 SCCA D Modified title, captained the TR4A team whose cars were 1st, 2nd and 3rd in class at Sebring in 1966, and in 1968 built the TR250K, a prototype on a TR4A chassis, with Peter Brock for Sebring. He was the factory team's guest at Le Mans in 1964 and owned the Macau Spitfire from 14 April 1966 to 2 February 1968. He left Triumph at the end of 1970 and was inducted into the British Sports Car Hall of Fame in its first class, 2017.
