Have-a-go hero: Andy Wallace
When a Le Mans winner enjoyed a combative BTCC cameo
When Le Mans winners making British Touring Car Championship cameos with Team Dynamics come to mind, the majority would immediately cite 1991 winner Johnny Herbert’s three-round stint in 2009. But back in the team’s early days in 1993, it had welcomed 1988 Le Mans winner Andy Wallace for a rare foray into tin-tops at Oulton Park.
Toyota-contracted Wallace had been looking to supplement his racing activities after the cancellation of the world sports car championship left him with “not much going on” after Le Mans, and he duly found it in a third Dynamics-run BMW alongside future champion Matt Neal and Alex Portman.
“I was always looking around for something to top the season up,” recalls Wallace. “I think it was a last-minute call-up too, because I didn’t have a chance to test before the race. It would have been my first time [at Oulton] since the F3 days.”
Indeed, the 1986 British F3 champion wasn’t a frequenter of the Cheshire track during his Group C pomp, although had previous experience of racing with a roof over his head from a guest appearance in a Renault 5 Turbo in 1986, when he’dfinished fifth after jumping out of his regular Madgwick-run F3 Reynard.
“Touring car racing is such a different discipline from single-seaters or sportscars that I certainly didn’t find it easy to just jump in and go,” says Wallace, who qualified 23rd in the 25-car field. “It was rear-wheel drive, so that was one thing that wasn’t quite so different, but even so it made you think. I was trying to look at where I was losing compared with Matt Neal and he was just brilliant everywhere.”
Naturally, Wallace sought advice from his paddock contemporaries, but not everybody was helpful: “I spoke to quite a few people and they were trying to give me bum information so I would do rubbish. I think Patrick Watts was one of those…”
Come the race, Wallace had a spirited battle with fellow BMW racer David Pinkney that involved a fair amount of old-fashioned trading paint, culminating in a last-corner fracas when Wallace anticipated a shove and braked early to hold on to his 11th place.
“The shove did happen and it was quite a big one!” he says. “I made it OK around the corner, but I have a nasty suspicion he punctured his radiator…”
It would prove to be the one and only BTCC outing for Wallace, although his tin-top education continued in the DTM in 1994. “It wasn’t exactly a spectacular result,” he says. “I would have needed a lot more running to be competitive.”
“TOURING CAR RACING IS SO DIFFERENT THAT I DIDN’T FIND IT EASY TO JUST JUMP IN AND GO”