DOWN THE PUB WITH JIM WALSH
Age: 65 Lives: Cambridge 1970s Formula Ford hero
He started with Jim Russell “I had a lot of fun in Formula Ford. We lived in Northampton at the time and it was John Murphy who got me started as he used to work for my father as a mechanic. I used to go and watch him race and then my father gave me the opportunity to go through the Jim Russell School.”
He had to learn fast “It was quite amazing really. There was John Murphy and Syd Fox and all those very quick drivers and when I started practising at Silverstone I thought I was really late on the brakes into Becketts. But then John and Syd would come by me like I was a novice. That gave me a good goal to aim for and it was good when I got up on equal terms with them.”
He raced with the best “I used to love the car control of those Formula Fords and we had some great races. I met a lot of good friends like John Village and Rick Morris and we had some great times. I also raced with Derek Warwick, Geoff Lees, Bernard Devaney and Derek Daly. It was a great time of my life.”
It ended in 1981 “I won the Silverstone Formula Ford championship three times in 1976, 1979 and 1980. The first one was in a Hawke and then two in Royales. I stopped racing in 1981. We were looking for sponsorship to do Formula 3 but I only managed to do one race. The sponsorship deal didn’t get off the ground.”
He had a big accident “I was testing a Pacer at Snetterton and had quite a bad accident when a steering bracket broke. That put me out of action for a few months and I was in hospital in Norwich when I got the news that the F3 deal had fallen through. So I decided to concentrate on work. I was 29 or 30 by then and that was too old. I didn’t start racing until I was 24.”
He saw Senna starting his UK career “The only time I was ever on a circuit with Ayrton Senna was the day I crashed at Snetterton. He was just starting in a Van Diemen and there were only a handful of drivers who could take Russell flat in top and he was one of them. I could see then that he was going to be great.”