How Rolex 24 victory helped Ryan Dalziel leave self-doubt in the rear-view mirror

How Rolex 24 victory helped Ryan Dalziel leave self-doubt in the rear-view mirror

Perhaps no better venue exists for the continuation of Ryan Dalziel’s racing renaissance than Sebring International Raceway.

His wife, Jessica, is from Sebring. His father-in-law has attended races at the track for decades. He married into a Sebring family, people who know all the race winners and all the crazy infield stories. People who know people who know where the burned couches are buried.

After his first race at the track in 2005, Dalziel stepped out onto a balcony at what was then called the Chateau Elan (now the Seven Sebring Raceway Hotel) and gazed at the aftermath in the infield. “It was like World War III had happened,” he said with a laugh. “It’s calmed down a lot since then.”

In essence, that’s why the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Presented by Advance Auto Parts on Saturday is the fitting race for Dalziel to press forward with a comeback that began victoriously in January at the Rolex 24 At Daytona.

He never really went anywhere, mind you, but the past few years weren’t up to Dalziel’s standards. He raced just twice in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship in 2020 and six times in 2019 — all for Starworks Motorsport — after a five-year run with Tequila Patrón Extreme Speed Motorsports ended in 2018.

Not surprisingly, that’s when the self-doubt surfaced.

“I’ve been vocal with this at times,” Dalziel said. “I wouldn’t have hired me during a couple of those seasons.”

He found his way back in January with an emotional victory for Era Motorsport in the LMP2 class at Daytona. He teamed with Kyle Tilley, Paul-Loup Chatin and Dwight Merriman for a triumph that couldn’t have been more timely or necessary.

“I’ve won Daytona twice now, and both times it’s been equally special but also personally very much needed,” Dalziel said. “When I won it in 2010, I was unemployed. That was a one-off race for me. It led to a full-season program with another team after that and a second-place finish in the championship that year.”

In 2018, Dalziel, an established, multi-faceted racer with a résumé that included the 2012 LMP2 win with Starworks in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, found himself scrambling to find work. He landed a part-time gig in the GT GTD class with Starworks, but he also began to feel uncertain.

“By no means do I think I’m old in the racing world,” said Dalziel, a 38-year-old native of Glasgow, Scotland. “But when you go through droughts, it’s pretty easy to doubt yourself. On the IMSA side, for sure, it’s been a tough few years for me since the Patrón deal ended, just trying to find some security and continuity.”

He found it with Era Motorsport, the Indianapolis-based team founded and operated by Tilley. The group brought its ORECA LMP2 07 to Daytona, qualified seventh in class, then chased down six competitors over 24 hours. The win hit the refresh button on Dalziel’s career.

“It was just a very good, very needed, very well-timed result,” Dalziel said. “It was more of a personal one. Kyle put a lot of hard work into the program, and everybody needed that one. It was definitely pretty special for all of us. But selfishly, it gave me that fire in the belly for endurance racing that I was missing the last couple of years. It definitely reignited all of those feelings about the reason I do this.”

His renewal now turns to Sebring with confidence gained from a team with which he feels comfortable — and successful.

“You always swagger a little bit more going into the next one after winning,” Dalziel said. “It’s one of those teams that has so many good ingredients. That doesn’t mean to say that it always works for other teams like that, but to me it was pretty evident very early on that it did work with this team.”

The site of 15 years of racing memories and volumes of wacky stories is the proper place to bury the doubts and celebrate the renewal. Sebring, welcome a member of your family. He’s back in more ways than one.

“I don’t care what athlete you are or what person you are, it’s impossible to say you don’t start having self-doubts, and I definitely had them,” Dalziel said. “I just kept plugging away. I kept thinking, ‘It’s going to change. It’s going to change.’ And then it did change. It was perseverance.”

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British revival watchmaker Duckworth Prestex builds UK network of retail partners

You would think after five decades building watch businesses in the UK, Neil Duckworth might have taken one look at the impact of covid-19 in 2020 and concluded the world was telling him it was time to put his feet up.

Instead of slowing down, Mr Duckworth sprang into action, putting the finishing touches to a plan to bring back Prestex watches, a brand founded by his grandfather Franck Duckworth in the 1930s.

The first watches with the revived Duckworth Prestex name on the dial are being offered on pre-sale this month for delivery in June, and already Mr Duckworth is reaching out to potential retail partners.

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“We are looking for retailers in a number of countries, starting with the UK,” he tells WatchPro.

“The first target is to sign up around a dozen partners, with stores and ecommerce, and it would be great to get a retailer in Bolton, because that is where it all started,” he adds.

Neil Duckworth began his career in the mid-1970s as a sales assistant at his family’s business, Prestons of Bolton (he later returned as managing director in 2001 before most of its seven stores were sold).

Karl Massey acquired the best stores, the Prestons name and all of its stock and revived the business as one of this country’s premier Rolex, Patek Philippe and Tudor authorised dealers with showrooms in Wilmslow, Cheshire, Leeds (with a monobrand Rolex boutique and a pre-owned watch shop) and Guildford in Surrey.

In the gap years away from the family retail business, Mr Duckworth launched and ran Nuval for 15 years, which handled distribution for the likes of TAG Heuer, Maurice Lacroix, Oris and Ulysse Nardin.

That experience, particularly with TAG Heuer, landed him the role of managing director for LVMH Watches and Jewellery from 1997 to 2001.

A five year hiatus from the watch business in 2003 saw Mr Duckworth return to his first love — music (he was educated at the famous Chetham’s School of Music) — as head of his own production studio.

But he was back in watch distribution in 2008 bringing brands such as Technomarine, Carl F Bucherer, Reservoir, Favre-leuba, Chronoswiss and Delma to the UK.

Few executives could be better prepared to pivot into creating their own watch brand, and Mr Duckworth’s family history with the Prestex brand made it an itch he had to scratch.

“After devoting 40 years of my life in the watch business, I am truly delighted to announce that I have finally launched my own watch brand: Duckworth Prestex,” he declares.

“This is not so much a new launch as a brand revival. Prestex watches have existed since the 1930’s made by by grandfather Frank Duckworth so this is a realisation of a lifetime’s wish for me,” he adds.

Duckworth Prestex launches with two models.

First up is Verimatic, a 39mm automatic collection in steel cushion-shaped cases housing Miyota 9039 movements. There are three fumé dial variations in orange, blue and black.

They can be pre-ordered today for £595 each, or in a limited edition set with all three references for £1,785.

Secondly, the Chronograph family, also in cushion-shaped cases, but this time the 42mm watches house a quartz Miyota 6S21 chronograph movement.

Sunray dials in black, green or blue have white small seconds and chronograph minutes sub dials.

They are priced at £495 each or, again, there is a limited edition box set of all three for £1,485.

Mr Duckworth’s family firm, Prestons, was originally founded in 1869 in Bolton and by the 1920s it was making its own pocket watches under the Prestex name.

Prestex expanded over the next few decades to produce a variety of timepieces including chronographs, pocket watches dress watches. Reference designs are already being poured over for future Prestex Duckworth watch launches, WatchPro it told.

“I’m incredibly proud to give new life to a historic British name. In buying a Duckworth Prestex watch, you’re buying into a tradition, which as a third-generation watchmaker, I’m delighted to represent. Despite our close links to the past, we’re looking firmly to the future with the latest technology and a whole new family of designs that look forward to the next hundred years,” Mr Duckworth concludes.

The watches are currently for sale on the new Duckworth Prestex website.