DOWN THE PUB
HARRY BARTON Racing newcomer Age: 19 Lives: Leicester
What’s your story so far?
“I watched the film called Le Mans 1966. I always loved cars and my first car was a 1966 MGB. That film made me fall in love with the romance of it. And I turned to my dad and said:
‘You know what? I want to be a racing driver.’ We knew Sam Hancock from other things and we have a small collection of cars. We asked Sam how to get into racing. He said we needed a good coach and a good car, and we asked him whether he wanted to coach me.”
He started racing last April
“It’s not even 12 months ago that we started. The first time I got into a race car was April 8 at Goodwood, in the BMW 1800 I’m racing this season. That went really well and I only did two sessions with my coach and he said I was ready for a race. I went out and got first in class in my first race at Snetterton with the CSCC. Over last season, I did seven races and I got four class wins.”
He has a full 2022 planned
“This is our first full season and we want to do as many races as we can. I’ve got over 20 weekends planned to get as much seat time as I can. We are doing Historic Sports Car Club, Historic Racing Drivers’ Club, Masters and some Motor Racing Legends races as well. It’s all about experience and seat time. I’m just getting up to speed as much as I can and to see how I can fight against these people that have been doing it for years. I want to be at the top of what I do. I’m now about six months into a two-year motorsport engineering course at Loughborough College.”
There are two more BMWs coming
“For the future, we are looking at the GT route and we’ve got some plans here and there. At the moment we’re building a
BMW 2002 to follow on from the pre ’66 1800 and then a threelitre CSL for the year after. My passion is Le Mans and I’d love to do the endurance triple crown, like in the Le Mans film!”
He has a good team
“Retro Engineering was the race preparation company that we found when we first got the BMW. We found that they were just so attentive and their quality of work was really great.”