DOWN THE PUB
Formula Junior champion Age: 20 Lives: Sandbach,cheshire
He’s Formula Junior champion “The Formula Junior Championship has been our main thing this year with the BMC. It’s a bit odd thinking that I’ve not won many races but I’ve won my class. My car uses drum brakes so I’m never going to be able to compete with the fastest discbraked cars.”
He followed his dad into racing “Back in the day my dad Richard was very good in Minis and he still loves it. I did some karting and then moved into 500cc Formula 3. It’s a pretty unique way into racing but it was a good start and it got me into places where people started noticing me. Racing and winning at Goodwood was pretty amazing on my first time there in the 500. I won at Goodwood in 2015 and was second to Stuart Roach in the Juniors this year.”
It is a self-run effort “We look after everything ourselves including building the engine. It’s all done by the family. Dad is very hands-on with all of it and I couldn’t do it without him. I’ve not really had a bad race this season. I raced Pat Barford’s Lola Mk3 at the Oulton Park Gold Cup and his frontengined Lola Mk2 at Mallory Park and won that race.”
They have another car “Next year we’re going to rest our BMC as we’ve got another one to build. It’s another rear-engined BMC but it’s a disc-braked car. They were built in America and I think we’ve got the only two in the UK and they weren’t very common.”
He works in the family business “When I’m not racing I do a mix of things and I do some mechanicing for my dad and I do a bit of farming sometimes, which is a bit weird. The family business is working on road cars and doing MOTS and then preparing the race cars in our spare time.”
He was on the overall podium “It’s good to have won Formula Junior this year. I won the class in eight of the 11 races we did. I was on the overall podium at Croft in our car and at Oulton in the Lola. At Castle Combe in October I was second overall to Benn Tilley with our drum-braked car, which was a good result. It’s a pretty significant title in historic racing.”