PUB

DOWN THE WITH JON MILICEVIC

He’s been racing most of his adult life “I started karting in 1978 and progressed through to Ministox. We had a few years off racing when we had the children and worked on the business from 2000 to about 2006. Then I got the bug again and the kids were grown up a bit so we could get a motorhome and go racing again.”

He had a lot of wins in Formula Junior “Formula Junior was fantastic and we made a lot of friends. I built a Mini for last year and I’m still going to race it but the Formula 3 Brabham came up and the cars look fantastic. It’s a similar format to the Junior and I can fit it in the trailer. From racing it at Silverstone and Cadwell Park, it is phenomenal.” “The car was initially Dean Forward’s car and we bought it from him. The original driver in period was Mike Keens under P&M Racing Preparations. We have put it back to his original blue colour. I’ve got to get used to the clutch starts and everything is a learning curve. You’ve got less power, one gear less and more grip than with a Junior and, roughly, it’s about the same sort of lap time.”

He’s enjoying Historic F3 “Apparently the tyres last for 12 months, so that’ll be a saving. To get a competitive rear-engined Junior these days you need £100,000, but for half the money you can have a competitive 1-litre F3 car. We’ve had a lot of help from Keith Messer who runs the category. He’s given me all the information like gear ratios and you couldn’t ask for more. They’ve been very helpful and very welcoming.”

He’d love to race at Goodwood “A lot of the period drivers are still about and I’ve been given a lot of advice on how to set it up and drive it. It’s been great and some really big names drove them. If they run the race at Goodwood again next year, it would be nice to get an invite. I’ve got all the kit!”

It is a family sport “My daughter Josie, who is 16, has just finished school and we’ve got her a grasstrack car so the plan was to do some of those and we’ll fit in my races in between.”