Hornby in pole position

[Wizzo]

British toymaker Hornby Plc has benefited from the resurgent popularity of Formula One since Lewis Hamilton's appearance on the circuit, helping it almost double first-half pretax profit.

Hornby, which makes Scalextric slot car racing sets as well as its eponymous model train sets, has a licensing deal with McLaren, one of whose F1 cars Hamilton drove to second place in his sensational rookie season.

"Everyone likes to have one of their own countrymen doing well and that's given it (F1) a much sharper profile," Finance Director John Stansfield said in an interview on Friday.

Hornby made a pretax profit of 2.68 million pounds ($5.7 million) in the six months to the end of September, on revenue up 37 percent to 24.6 million pounds. It raised its interim dividend 8 percent to 2.7 pence.

Hornby also owns the licence rights for Hamilton's former team-mate, Spanish double world champion Fernando Alonso.

Altium Securities analyst David O'Brien said in a broker note Hornby's strong order book coming into the Christmas period was encouraging, but noted Scalextric sales in Spain might fall if Alonso moves to Renault while Hornby still has him in a McLaren car.

Hornby shares were up 1.7 percent at 247 pence by 1325 GMT, valuing the company at 93 million pounds.

[Alianora La Canta]

Thank goodness Fernando's gone on holiday then - should delay any Renault move for a couple of weeks at least.

[Wizzo]

Perhaps we should all club together and get Alonso his own Scalextric set, it might be his only drive of an F1 car next year!