John Cleland

CHAMPION 1989, 1995

Has there ever been a more memorable phrase in the British Touring Car Championship? As John Cleland climbed out of his battered Vauxhall Cavalier at Silverstone in 1992, slammed the door shut behind him and stood trembling with anger next to his machine, he was already thinking on his feet. When he met the inevitable television camera as he strode back the paddock, he uttered the immortal line, “The man’s an animal.”

He was referring to BMW driver Steve

Soper, who had just cannoned into his rival to assure his own BMW team-mate Tim

Harvey of the title in 1992.

That was what Cleland was about – TV gold – but to remember him for that alone is a huge disservice to a BTCC legend. He was, at times, the only real home-grown talent leading the frontline against the big-name imports from aboard.

He was a dogged overtaker and raced with such fire that anyone who managed to unseat him in a duel had achieved something special. His first crown, from Class C in 1989, paled into insignificance compared to his second in the one-class Super Tourers in ’95.

But there was always a story with the Scot. In the early 1990s, amid the influx of professional wannabes, Vauxhall realised it needed to respond and hired a personal trainer for Cleland and team-mate Jeff Allam. What the team bosses didn’t know was that the two drivers clubbed together and paid the trainer just as much again to leave them alone and keep schtum. “I think the bloke was able to buy a Harley Davidson after just one year,” jokes Cleland.