Q&A: Kenny Acheson
Matt James speaks to the humble Northern Irishman who reflects on his career
Sitting proudly at Kenny Acheson’s home is a copy of his multiple title-winning Formula Ford car, a Royale RP24. Acheson had driven a very similar model to a hat-trick of 1600cc championships in 1978, marking himself out as a star of the future.
His path to the top took him briefly into the RAM Formula 1 team in 1983 and then another cameo at the end of 1985, but the grand prix world passed him by.
He made a big impact in sportscar racing, however, and drove some of the era’s most memorable machines, including a Sauber C9, the Jaguar XJR-12 and Toyota’s TS010 .
But, at the end of 1996, he walked away from the sport to set up a hugely successful business in the beauty world with his wife Fiona.
Rarely does Acheson walk down memory lane and remember his on-track achievements. He says he doesn’t like to dwell on what has gone before, so the lockdown purchase of the Royale might seem a little out of character.
He has no plans to return to the cockpit, but just wants to have a glimpse into his personal history parked in his garage.
“There are some cars that you have an emotional attachment to,” he explains. “My kids don’t remember me racing, and buying the car was one of those things: it doesn’t makes sense, but
I could do it and it is nice to have.”
Acheson gave his time to
Motorsport News to allow us to pose the readers’ questions, and the results are intriguing.
Question: Your dad, Harry, raced in Formula Ford too, so how early did you get the motorsport bug?
John Charles
Via email
Kenny Acheson: “My first real love was actually motorbikes. Dad used to race bikes for fun in Ireland in the 1950s and his big brothers did too. He only did it for a year or two but, in the early 1960s, I grew up by getting taken along to road races. The Cookstown 100 is one of the races and I grew up there. I went to the North West 200. My first Ulster Grand Prix was in 1964 at Dundrod. I loved it. My parents knew quite a lot of the riders.
The problem was that people got killed doing it, so I was never enthused to go down that route myself. My parents would never have wanted me to race motorbikes anyway because of the danger.
“My father, when he was 40, bought a Formula Ford car – a Lotus 51, and that was in 1969, not long after
Formula Ford had started. He raced quite successfully in Ireland. That was proper club racing. [Future F1 star]
John Watson was doing Formula Libre and the scene was good, that is what took me down the racing route.
“I had learned to drive on tractors and things like that but, in 1975, I drove the car
and the trailer to Kirkistown and when we got there, Dad asked me if I would like to have a go. I think I got within a couple of seconds of the lap record on my first go. Dad obviously thought that I wasn’t bad and so, for 1976, we shared the car and then, after that, he was there supporting me racing in Ireland. I won the Northern Ireland championship in 1977 in a Crossle 32F, and then Rory Byrne took me over to England.”
MN: There is a rumour that your father only agreed to let you drive the Crossle if you quit smoking…
KA: “No, that’s not true. I never smoked in my life, but my dad was an 80-a-day man up until he was in his mid-40s. He was serious about it. He did say he would back me if I didn’t smoke or drink. It wasn’t a big deal to me, and
I was always a useless drinker anyway but I had never smoked at all. I had enough sense not to do that.”
MN: So how did you make it to the mainland to race?
KA: “Trevor Templeton, who I had raced against in Ireland, came to the mainland and I went and did some events too. Trevor was a really nice guy and my dad said we should go over with him and do some rounds. I did OK, and I won a couple of heats and I think I finished about fifth at the Formula Ford Festival in 1977. My dad had used Minister-tuned engines in Ireland and when I came over for the first time, which was on Easter weekend, my dad was really pleased because David Minister had told him I was bloody good and that I should do more races.
“He said if I came over full-time, he would give me the engines. And then Rory Byrne [who was the Royale designer at the time] asked me over to do a test at Brands Hatch ahead of the Festival in an RP24 chassis. It was free everything: free engines, free car. All I had to do was supply a van and pay the entry fee. What wasn’t to enjoy? I had just turned 20, I was loving it.
“I went along and I knew it would be good fun, but I didn’t really have huge expectations or even ambition. I just wanted to race and, hopefully, win. Of course, you have your dreams, but I didn’t come over thinking I was on a fast track to Formula 1. I guess I had aims, but I was never somebody who was ruthless or fully believed that you could do this for a living.
“As I went to Royale, Rory then went to Toleman and Pat Symonds joined us. We had quite a good little team there with a mechanic called Paul Thompson too, who went on to run me in Formula 3. Paul went on to work for Richard Lloyd and ended up with the Jordan F1 team.”
Question: Just how tough was the 1978 Formula Ford 1600 season up against Michael Roe, Bernard Devaney and everyone else?
Heroes of FF1600
Via Twitter
Question: In those days, FF1600 was so competitive: heats and a final and so many good drivers. You couldn’t afford to have an off day, could you?
David Addison
Via email
KA: “The races were 15 minutes long, you were doing it all the time. You just got on with it. I do look back and think it was a very competitive year. I won three championships and 29 races that year but a couple of the titles I won, I only claimed them by about two points or something: it wasn’t like I dominated. It was good, but it was a long season and I think, counting the heats too, I had 58 starts in total. There were a few races that I guess were easy, but it wasn’t many. Most of them, you were right in the heart of a battle.
“Back then you would go to a meeting and there were maybe 60 or 70 people turning up for the Formula Ford 1600 races. It had the right balance of being for the aspiring drivers like myself and also the more experienced people who had been around for a few years. But I just remember it being a very very long season.”
MN: What happened to you in the
Formula Ford Festival in 1978?
KA: “I raced what was going to be the following year’s car, the Royale RP26, and Roberto Guerrero took me out in the semi-final – which I probably owe him a drink for because the car wasn’t good! Pat Symonds had put a twin somethingor-other on the rear suspension and the car just flexed. The week after the Festival, we went back to the previous year’s suspension and, all of a sudden, the car was better.”
Question: Would you say that the British Formula 3 title in 1980 was the title that got away?
James Hilton
Via email
KA: “Maybe that, or maybe I threw it away! I moved up to Formula 3 in 1979, it was a really good field that year. We were supposed to have the Ralt RT3 but that was delayed so I bought Derek Warwick’s old car [a Ralt RT1]. But I had moved up to F3 and I just had Paul Thompson with me, so we didn’t really know about the category. I didn’t have a budget, so I made my own team. We struggled because the March was quicker and we were inexperienced, and then it looked like the Ralt wouldn’t appear at all. So we went and bought a March 793 – well, my father bought one for me. First race out was Donington Park’s European round and I qualified on the front row alongside Alain Prost but, unfortunately, on the warm-up lap, it was a little bit damp and I was warming the tyres up and I stuck it in the barriers.
“After that, I had a couple of bad races and it took us a month or so to find out that we had twisted something in the chassis. But from July onwards, we were really competitive. I enjoyed it then because it was a small little team and we were in charge of our own destiny. We had some good guys working with us and the racing was great. There were people like Andrea de Cesaris, Chico Serra, Mike Thackwell, Stefan Johansson – some good guys to race against.
“At the end of that year, Murray Taylor was going to form his team for 1980 so I did a deal where he took my guys and we went to Murray Taylor Racing. To be fair, I don’t think it made a great difference because, in effect, it was the same people as the year before. We started the season really well. From July 1979 to July 1980, I won about eight F3 races [including nonchampionship events]. I won the British Grand Prix support race in July and then after that, I never won another F3 race. Admittedly, Johansson got into a Ralt, which helped. The Ralt was about three or four tenths per lap quicker than our March. I had quite a lot of seconds and thirds.
“I remember being at Mallory Park. I
was running second to Stefan with about three or four laps to go and I didn’t need to win. Finishing second to him was like winning when he got the Ralt. But my car broke down and everything tightened up in the points. I remember thinking that was crucial. In the final race I qualified well but started the race on a wet patch of track and Robert Guerrero went past into first place. He was leading, which meant I would have to finish third to win the title. I was behind Rob Wilson, but he was just slow and needed to overtake. I tried a couple of times to get by. Eventually, he didn’t give me room and we touched. I suppose he didn’t have to [give me room], but I’d like to think that if someone else is going for a title, you might respect that...
“So, I suppose you could say I threw it away – especially as it turned out that Roberto didn’t win the race and if I had have finished fourth, that would have been enough…”
MN sets the scene: Acheson graduated to Formula 2 in 1981 with Docking Spitzely Racing but, at the seventh round of the season at Pau in France, he suffered a huge accident after contact with Michele Alboreto, which left Kenny with a serious leg injuries.
Question Had you not had that crash at Pau in 1981 what more could you have achieved in your career?
Graham Lister
Via email
KA: “I hadn’t had a good season up until that point anyway. I had a couple of good rounds – at Thruxton I qualified well and I had a good race at the Nurburgring too, but I also had a couple of bloody shocking races too in Italy previous to Pau. I went to Vallelunga and I crashed. I did not have much money and I went to [team boss] Alan Docking. We were wondering if we could continue because of the budget. I sat down with Alan and we drew up a list that ran to several pages of things we needed to fix on the car, which they did. There was new bodywork, all new fixings, all sorts of different things. Alan said we should run the car stiffer at Pau because he thought it would respond better. He was right, the thing just worked. I went out, and all of a sudden, I was quickest – and not just by a little bit, by a lot. It felt so easy.
“Come qualifying, we were just running race tyres and half tanks but the car stopped. But I was quickest at that point. Nobody else went quicker apart from Michele Alboreto.
“I was confident, but it was a really warm day and the biggest worry I had was whether I would have the stamina to do the race. I talked to Michele on the grid and he hadn’t had a great season either. He said ‘listen, let’s not be stupid at the first corner’ and I agreed.
“It was all fine and then early on but a few laps in, he ran wide. I went down his inside. But even before we were out of the corner I was already on the pavement Going past the pits, they were having to lift the pitboards out of the way because I was on the edge of the track. I remember going up the hill thinking ‘you have to move over, [Michele] you have to give me room’. I remember trying to accelerate with him so that he could move and I could then move back onto the track.
“The car’s nose was damaged and I had time to think ‘well, I am quick enough to stop, get a new nose section and come back out and win’. We went all the way up the hill side by side. The choice
I had was either I brake, and he goes over me, or it would be the other way around. I thought he would move but he didn’t and I ended up in hospital.
“Looking back, I know that could have been a great race to win but, overall, you think about it and you know it is not just one day that makes a career. I really don’t think that if I had won that race, my career would have been much different. Ultimately, I still had opportunities, perhaps they weren’t opportunities that were good enough but you would also have to say that I probably wasn’t good enough to have any bigger chances.”
Question: What was your 1982 Ralt F2-Honda car like to drive? How seriously did Honda take it?
Josh Bannan
Via email
KA: “Well that was a very unhappy season! Honda were really good though. That Honda V6 F2 engine was a fantastic engine and the sound of it when you changed down gear was the best I have ever known. Just the sweetest noise.
“Ralt had won the championship the year before [with Geoff Lees]. What
Ron Tauranac did in his lifetime in terms of design is right up there and how he ran things was superb, I get all that. But I don’t think I ever had a conversation with him.
“He obviously had a bit of pressure because the Spirit team had Honda engines too by that point. The year before, Bridgestone had been great tyres, but they had faded and there were all sorts of technical tweaks to the car to get the skirts to work. To be quite honest, what he was trying to do to the cars, it was way above my head.
“The car was very nervous. I had some results though – I got a lucky second at Thruxton when I made the tyres last – and I had a good race at Pau too to finish fifth and got the lap record after a pitstop. There were some problems with a misfire in the middle of the season and it just wasn’t a great year.
“The car was probably not Ron’s best. The tyres were nowhere near as good as the Michelins. There was never a chance of staying on another year because Ron just didn’t rate me at all. That’s fine, he had had a lot more people to judge against, but we just didn’t hit it off.
“You asked if Pau changed my career, but F2 with Ralt in 1982 probably had a bigger effect because, on paper, I should have had a better shot than I did. It wasn’t a competitive season, but I didn’t make enough of an impact to be kept on and I didn’t enjoy the year.” MN sets the scene: After the F2 chance with Ralt, Acheson started the 1983 season with the German team Maurer, but before the end of the season he was a Formula 1 driver with John Macdonald’s RAM team.
Question: How did your chance to race for RAM in F1 come about?
Barry May
Via email
What did RAM need to be a pointsscoring team?
Ye Olde Autosport
Via Twitter
KA: “RAM needed a driver [after Eliseo Salazar dropped out] and I was able to get a little bit more money together because it was Formula 1. If I stopped F2, it wasn’t much more to put the budget together for F1. Although, I suppose, it wasn’t the chance that you would have wished for, it was a chance. Of course, if the team had been in a better position, then I wouldn’t have had that opportunity. It was easy to look at it and say ‘well, they didn’t have the car and they didn’t have the budget’ and so forth, but if they had have had any of those things, then they wouldn’t have chosen me as a driver. I had to be realistic about it.
“After F3, anybody I ever drove for, I don’t think I was ever first choice. Nobody came to me because they thought I was the answer. On the way up sure you need talent, but you need someone who is going to be sponsoring you and I didn’t have that. There would be drivers who had an association with Marlboro, for example, but with me, there was never anything like that.
“So I know I was fortunate to be given that chance. It ended up not being great. When people ask me what my memories are of Formula 1 – well, first of all, I don’t class myself as an ex-Formula 1 driver! OK, so I could be classed as that, but it was totally unsuccessful and it is probably embarrassing, to be truthful. If you look at the results, I am probably right up there as one of the worst drivers ever in Formula 1 and that is what I say to people. In everything else I did,
I ended up having some measure of success, but not grand prix racing.
Joining RAM was a chance, and it was probably the only chance I was ever going to get.”
MN: What was it that the team was lacking? Was it lots and lots?
KA: “If you look at my record, up until Monza [his fifth F1 entry after four nonqualifications], I was like a second to two seconds off the back of the grid. I wasn’t an Alain Prost or a Nelson Piquet of that time, but nor do I think I was two seconds off the pace of everyone else. But then, at. Monza, [McLaren boss] Ron Dennis lent Johnny Mac one of their Cosworth DFVs because they were getting ready to link up with TAG. All of a sudden, I was driving on the straight and I was keeping up with people. It made me question what we had been doing up to that point! It was hugely different. I didn’t qualify at Monza, but I missed out by just over a tenth of a second.
“So that is one thing that would certainly have helped RAM to climb up the grid a bit: the engines they had in the car up to that point were just not good enough. I think they had a lower spec. At Monza, I remember passing one of the Arrows, and I had never passed a F1 car on a straight line before…it was ridiculous.
“I can’t, though, remember thinking that it was a scary car to drive. It wasn’t a great car, but it wasn’t that bad. They were a great team with some good people though, and we did go testing sometimes.
“We were the only naturally aspirated team on Pirelli tyres too – so you wonder what its incentive was to help us do better. I am 100% convinced that the engines were the big problem until we changed it, and this was in the days before data, so no-one could really see beyond the start-finish line.”
MN sets the scene: After some outings in single-seaters in Japan in the early 1980s, Acheson was at the forefront of a wave of European drivers who headed to the Far East to make a living, with campaigns in F3000, sportscars and touring cars. The Northern Irishman ventured over in 1985.
Question: What are your best and worst memories of racing in Japan?
Russell Scobbie
Via email
KA: “Stefan Johansson had been there the year before, but he came back to race with Toleman in Formula 1, and Stefan and Eddie Jordan arranged for me to get Stefan’s drive in Japan. I had some great races out there, and I ended up doing the Japanese sportscar championship and touring car series too. I enjoyed doing Japan, it was great fun and I think if you spoke to most of the drivers who went out there they would all say the same. It was as enjoyable a time as we’d ever had in racing. We were all living in a hotel in Tokyo, we ate together, we went out partying together, it was great fun. I was out there with Tiff Needell, Eje Elgh, Beppe Gabbiani, the Emanuele Pirro came out, Paolo Barilla, people like that.” MN sets the scene: Once the Formula 1 chances had gone quiet, Acheson cut out a lengthy career as a sportscar driver and was in the fortunate position of driving some of the sport’s truly iconic cars, including Toyota, Nissan, Jaguar and Sauber Mercedes.
Question: Who was the best team-mate you had at Le Mans and why?
Jack Crowther
Via email
KA: “The first Le Mans I entered in was in 1985 in a Porsche 962C with Dudley Wood and Jean-Louis Schlesser and, thankfully, I didn’t actually get to race because the car was dreadful. I went back in 1988 with Sauber Mercedes but
“I don’t think I was ever the first choice...”
Kenny Acheson
I didn’t get to race again as the cars were withdrawn because the tyres kept exploding. So the first time I actually got to do the race was in 1989, again with the Sauber Mercedes team in the C9.
“I had some great team-mates at Le Mans, and that is why I got such good results. Mauro Baldi was great and
I spent the whole year with him at Sauber Mercedes in 1989 [Acheson finished fourth in the points]. I got on really well with him. I do think I was a very good team-mate to have as a number two because I didn’t really demand that I had to be in the car too much or I wanted it to do this or that in terms of handling. But I would like to think that when I got in a car, I was immediately on the pace.
“The year after I shared with Mauro at Le Mans, I was at Nissan and had the allstar F1 crew of Martin Donnelly and Olivier Grouillard. We all got on well.
Two F1 drivers with me? It was all a bit strange, but it detonated its gearbox and we didn’t even really get to start the race.
“In 1991 at Jagurar, I had Teo Fabi and also Bob Wollek. I know what people think about Bob – that he could be difficult – but to me, he was just a really good man. I did a race with him in the USA a year before. I flew over on the plane and he was in the seat in front of me, but he didn’t talk to me. He was quite an intimidating person. We both went to baggage reclaim, and it was at that point he came over to me and said ‘I guess you are coming with me, then?’We drove from Miami to West Palm Beach, and we had one of the best conversations ever. We were talking about his time in Formula 2, about Lancia, we hit it off really really well. What a good man. I couldn’t speak highly enough of him, and it was great to get the chance to drive with him and with Teo too.”
MN: You drove all of the top cars in that era…
KA: “I know: I drove a Porsche, raced Nissans, Toyotas, Sauber, Jaguar…I did Toyotas in IMSA too: I have been around! But I think it is noticeable that I didn’t stick around in any of them, so maybe I wasn’t good enough. I kept losing the drives, but then would fall into something else. I was probably seen to be a good number two driver, I think. If someone needed a triple stint overnight, I would put my hand up and do it. I would do whatever they wanted and I don’t think I was ever off the pace.”
MN: Do you think you could have stuck with one of those teams for longer had you shouted a but louder?
KA: “Maybe, but that is not my character. I was competitive and occasionally I would shout. There are times when there was certainly an Irish temper to me. I remember when I went back to RAM in Formula 1 in 1985 when it needed a driver after poor Manfred [Winkelhock] was killed. I ended up going to finish off the season, and John MacDonald said the reason I was asked was that in 1983 he didn’t really rate me, but having had the following year with Philippe Alliot and Jonathan Palmer, he said he had changed his mind and he did rate me then!
“I did Austria, which was not great, but I remember sitting there thinking there was not much point in me doing F1 because I wasn’t being paid and nobody knew if I was any good. I did a couple more races. I qualified ahead of Alliot and [1980 World champion] Alan Jones at Monza and then the car broke down. I phoned Jonny Mac and told him that I didn’t want to carry on just because this was an F1 drive – and I had been earning money in Japan. He got that.
“My attitude changed over the months after that. It went from trying for the glory, which was being successful in Formula 1, to being professional and if someone was going to pay me money to drive, I would go and do it and do the best job I could. Psychologically you accept that you are not going to be an F1 driver and maybe that little bit of acceptance kicked in at that point.”
Question: What was it like being part of the Sauber Mercedes team? They were awesome cars…
Jon Wood
Via Facebook
KA: “I loved my time at Sauber. It was a privilege for me. You can talk about all the bad luck I had at other things which is questionable but I was lucky to end up there. Mike Thackwell [former F2 rival and Sauber driver] recommended me for the drive. I was racing in Japan, and Max Welti [Sauber team manager] contacted me about Le Mans in 1988. But, after I had been there in 1985 and had such a bad time, I had sworn I would never go back there because it was the first time I had ever been scared in a racing car – and I had only done three laps.
“When Max contacted me, I remember asking Eddie Jordan how much to ask for. I asked for a bit more! I was at Suzuka racing one evening and Welti called me and said that it was all agreed and they wanted me. I said I would get back to them and I went next door to see Eje
Elgh and told him what was going on. I told him I wasn’t going to do it, and he said ‘Jesus, Kenny, if you aren’t going to accept a chance from Mercedes, don’t bother getting in a racing car again’. He was right, of course.
“I was coming back from Japan and the flights were all over the place, so I didn’t turn up at Le Mans until Wednesday lunchtime – and, of course, practice starts on Wednesday afternoon. I had never met the team. I walked into the awning and asked if Max Welti was around, because I had never even met him at that point.
The mechanics said ‘well, who are you?’ So I had to tell them I was their driver.
“Max came over and he asked me what my best result was at Le Mans and I had to tell him that I had never done it. You know when you can see the colour draining from someone’s face? It was like that!
“But actually, I got to start in practice because co-driver Klaus Niedzwiedz was even later getting there than me. I drove around and the car was fantastic. I came back in, and you can tell when you have done something good because all the mechanics were smiling. I said the car was OK, and I was third fastest. The Merc was great but it had too much downforce which was putting too much stress on the tyres, so we withdrew.
“But I got a chance at the end of the season when I was left without a drive in Japan and the final round of the World Sportscar Championship was at Fuji. Jean-Louis Schelsser was battling Jaguar’s Martin Brundle for the title, and Merc wanted five drivers so that Schelsser could get in the car for the third stint [and pick the best-placed one, essentially].
“Fuji is not a difficult track and I had done so many miles around there. I got in, did a couple of laps and I was as quick as anybody. So after that and what I had done at Le Mans, Merc obviously thought they had stumbled across some kind of genius – but I absolutely wasn’t! That’s how I ended up falling on my feet. But, at Le Mans I had gone out early when there weren’t many lap times set and at Fuji, I just knew the track like the back of my hand and I knew how to drive sportscars around there.”
MN: You do seem to be downplaying your achievements…
KA: “Well, I had a certain amount of success, but I guess that is just my mentality. I am more of a glass half-empty sort of guy, but I am not miserable about it. I am happy with what my career has been. People do say I play it down, but how can you be serious about something where I wasn’t top level? Not even second level. Maybe third.”
Question: What caused you to stop motor racing? You had a big crash in a Lister at Daytona in 1996. Was that it?
Emma Facey
Via email
KA: “The reason I stopped is that I ran out of people who would pay me to drive! I drove for Lister’s Laurence Pearce and I had that big crash. I lost the vision in the centre of one of my eyes, but I did go and test after that and I was OK. But my wife Fiona and I had just started a business. I went home after that test and I spoke to her and we were talking about it, but I realised that I just didn’t need motorsport anymore. I was content with what I was doing and so I rang Laurence and told him. It wasn’t because of the crash.
“When I raced for Toyota in 1993 at Le Mans – a race we should have won but we broke down – and I regard that as my last proper race. In 1995 and 1996, I think I was just trying to get it out of my system. My life had moved on, and maybe that is why I can put things into perspective because the person I ended up being is something that would not have happened had I been successful in motorsport.
“I have been successful with my wife in business [running a beauty products firm, which the pair sold just over two years ago]. And honestly, although you do not get the highs and lows that you get in motorsport, I would say I am more proud of what we have done in business