Mark had been having treatment for over a year and we thought at Christmas that he might be getting on top of it. Indeed, he was in good form at the Jubilee Ball albeit a bit tired and the recent news that the tumours had returned was a bitter blow to us all. Typically he never complained and just got on with his life the way he knew best - by winning his class in fine style at Lydden in April and competing at Hethel even more recently.

He was a very important and valuable member of the club, an excellent all-round competitor and organiser and ambassador for motorsport, a good friend to many and a darn nice guy. To be taken like this at just 35 is so unfair and defies proper words.

Our heartfelt sympathies are with Roy and Gee at this hardest of times.

Although I did not know Mark for as long as most people at the club, he was always a nice friendly bloke who never had a bad word to say about anyone. He was an outstanding driver. I remember the grin on his face when he won Lydden earlier this year and I was at Wiscombe to see him accept his trophy for 3rd in B5 after an amazing drive in his almost standard Puma. I believe that the sign of a great driver is when they do well at all disciplines, something that was true of Mark.

It shocks me that on the surface things can look fine and then a few weeks later this can happen. My condolences go to Mark’s family.

Mark was a real asset to club motorsport.  Not only was he a great guy, he was a very active committee member, he marshalled at all sorts of events and was a very successful competitor at any discipline he turned his hand to, be that sprints, autotests, PCTs or road rallies.  

Our thoughts are with Roy and Gee.

I considered Mark a good friend, as did many. He was always up for a laugh and fun. This is a massive loss.

I haven't been in the club for very long but always found Mark friendly and welcoming. This is such a big loss to the club and us all. My thoughts are with Roy and Gee.

Last time I saw Mark he pulled up along side the Metro at 60 on a dual carriageway coming home from Hethel. He then planted it and carried on going to goodness knows what with little puffs of flame out the exhausts on the gear changes.

He was a great driver and never complained.

Most members will probably not know just how much work Mark had put in recently investigating new venues. My own e-mail records including map extracts, aerial photos etc, bear witness to his follow up on a mass of often bizarre ideas I had floated. Quite often he got inside places in BT disguise to take a current look!

Porlock has just taken place and I'm pretty sure it was at Porlock in 1994 that I first encountered Mark. We even discussed it on this forum quite recently, including how I drove so badly that day and had to ask Jon Miles who Mark was. Those results in front of me include the names of Mark Dawson, Andy Webber, Jon Miles, Steve Medhurst and me (not a 7oaks member then). There also is Pat Doran, who was amazed to have Roy Dawson address him with the correct pronunciation of the name "Doran", something Roy reminded me of in February of this year as we stood by Pat’s RS200 again.

My sincere condolences go to Mark's family.

Mark will be deeply missed by all who knew him. All the time I have known him he has been a true gentleman and truly committed to everything he did, behind the wheel and behind the scenes.

My sincere condolences go to his family and friends.

We are so sorry to hear about the recent loss of Mark. He was a great person and loved his motor sport so much. Nothing was too much trouble and he would always pitch in and help with the organisation, even if he was competing!

Our thoughts are with Mark's family and friends at this time. We are sure they feel complete bewilderment that someone so young whom they love can die... life sometimes is not fair.

I've just heard the awful news and share the sentiments of the other contributors. I guess it's the news we were afraid we might hear but desperately hoped would not come.

Apart from being a friendly and sociable co-competitor, in recent years Mark was more than helpful to me in the running of the Autotest series - indeed, without his always sensible answers to my not always sensible e-mails, it might well not have happened at all.

Thanks Mark - you were one of the good guys.

The immediate shock has worn off, and now I just feel so sad and upset - and selfish too - that I won't see that great bloke ever again. I have started to think back over the years about my contact with Mark.

Mark took a bit of stick from me!  He was on the receiving end each time I was worried about who would bring the caravan to North Weald, or who would bring the equipment, or why we didn't have many marshals.  He always calmed me down and came up with the goods.  Even when he didn't really agree with the meeting that we closed down because of the rain, he was still always the same level-headed Mark, and managed to disagree without making us feel we were wrong and certainly did not disagree in an offensive way.

I was fed up when the news of the national meeting at Lydden came out, and Neville had not been asked. I sent a bit of a howler, and Mark said he had not even thought about Neville being an A clerk, and apologised! Knowing Mark, this was the absolute truth.

Thank goodness he came to Hethel in May.  We had a good long chat about various things, including the viability of another national meeting next year, and a bit of a laugh that he was positioned near one of the PA systems and therefore spent all day being blasted by Neville and me!

We had the odd email conversation in a mixture of Norfolk and some sort of what I took to be Essex/Kent-type dialogue. It was all very funny and I am sure we both enjoyed taking the mickey out of each other.

Mark had a fairly short life, but in that time he made his own mark with those of us that knew him, and none of us will forget him I am sure.  He has left - for us certainly - a lasting image of a really good bloke that we are very pleased to have known and who did an awful lot for his club and his sport and heaven only knows what else.  None of us knows what comes next but his life achievements will, on their own, give him some sort of immortality, well deserved, bless him.

Very very sad news. Although I never really knew Mark that well, he was always an approachable and friendly person, and him and Daren Hall gave Doug (Kingsley) and I a bit of competition on the local 12-cars and scatters. The heart felt feelings of Borough 18 are with his family and friends.