DOWN THE PUB

Age: 44 Lives: Stockport Historic FF2000 frontrunner WITH PAUL ALLEN

He raced in Caterhams “I did the Caterham Academy in 2000, so I’ve been racing for 18 years. I spent seven or eight years in Caterham Graduates, then Superlight R400s. Then I had a break and came back and did R300s in 2012 and 2015. I’ve had breaks for the usual budget reasons.”

Jason Redding is a racing mate “Jason Redding and I raced in R300s together and had a lot of battles. We both felt it was time to do something different. Caterham racing is a bit like Sunday karting when you get to an age and think: ‘do I want to be doing this anymore?’”

They looked at Historic FF2000 “We did Radicals for 18 months in the Radical Challenge but the budget was just getting crazy. They’re great cars to drive but very, very expensive. So we just reassessed. Jason likes historic cars and I’d never thought of historics and I’d never raced a single-seater. Apart from the tyres, which are expensive, the budgets in Historic Formula Ford 2000 looked good. It was back to club racing.”

The first season has gone well “This has been my first season so there has been a lot of development work and a lot of learning. I do everything myself, except the engine which is done by David Gathercole. We’re just trying to catch the big four of Andy Park, Nelson Rowe, Callum Grant and Ian Pearson: that’s our mission and we’re sneaking up. There are some really quick drivers at the front and we’re happy to get within a second a lap in the dry. I was matching their pace in the wet at Oulton Park. I used to race against Nelson in Caterhams.”

He’ll be back in 2019 “Winning at Brands was brilliant and I definitely want to carry on next year. The attraction is racing against some quality drivers and I’ve been at the front of league two this year. But I want to be in league one! I have a wife and a four-year-old child and I’m probably the only professor in the paddock. I’m a professor of railway technology at the University of Huddersfield.”