DOWN THE PUB

WITH GEORGE DAWS

He followed his father into racing “My dad Neil started racing when I was about eight or nine, so I was pit crew from a young age. He did Formula Junior with a Lotus 18 and did really well with that. He had various Formula Juniors over the years.”

They then got a Merlyn “We got to the point where he wanted to do something different, and I’d just finished university at the time, so he suggested we did something together. So we’ve run the Merlyn Mk6 sports-racing car in Guards Trophy two-driver races and it has worked really well at times.”

“We’ve had 18 months of engine and gearbox problems. We had two or three engine fires on the same weekend at Oulton Park. Last year we had the engine out five times so it has been pretty stressful. Dad lives in Chipping Campden, where the car is based.”

It came good last month “We’ve been so unlucky with different bits but we got it sorted for the end of the season and I had a win at the Walter Hayes Trophy meeting. Fully sorted, it should be a reliable car with the Lotus twin-cam engine and it’s really nice to drive. It is very predictable. It’s a 1964 car and it went to the USA when new and came back in the late 1990s. It was restored by Sherwood Restorations.”

There’s an F5000 in the family “It’s great fun racing with dad. He wanted to do something a bit more scary so he bought a Formula 5000 and it’s the Theodore Racing Lola T332. He tends to do two or three races a year with it. We do most of the work on the cars and now the Merlyn is going better you might see a bit more of the Lola. I’ve only ever raced the Merlyn so far.”

He has a different profession “I’m a psychotherapist and that suits me well. I’ve got a therapy room at home. I enjoyed psychology at school and it followed on. We’ve got some support from Oily Rag Clothing, which is based in Cheltenham and it is run by a good friend of ours. We get a lot of good gear and he gets some stickers on the car.”