4 YVAN MULLER

CHAMPION: 2003

Frenchman Yvan Muller was the benchmark in the BTCC for seven seasons, enjoying numerous successes once he switched from Audi to Vauxhall for the 1999 campaign.

Despite that, he only claimed one title, in 2003. John Waterman was Muller’s engineer at Triple Eight Race Engineering. He remembers: “I think Yvan has got that extra 10 per cent of awareness when he is on the track. Where other guys are using 100 per cent of their brain, Yvan only needs to use 90 per cent and can use the spare 10 per cent to think about other things, which makes him a true champion.

“The feedback was difficult, because he also used to race in the Andros Trophy for ice racing and doing very, very well in that. The car is sideways in that all the time – so he never really talked about oversteer in the debriefs unless he was actually facing the wrong direction! That’s not the way to do things in the BTCC because you scrub off too much speed.

“We had to teach him a lot, because his left-foot braking used to be quite strong. And he would even trail-break out of the corner a bit and then wonder why he was slow in a straight line. It was little things like that, but we still had to push him hard.

“On track he was 100 per cent committed, although he did have his off days – and on those days, you would have to give him 30 minutes to calm down before you were able to talk to him.”