Column: John Cavill
Founder of British F3 pole awards and long-time supporter of young driving talent
My motorsport introduction was from my father, who in the 1950s did amateur racing in a Cooper 500 then in the ’60s ran other drivers. I did a couple of years’ racing myself, but during ’71 my mother died and I just didn’t have the concentration for it. So I stopped, and I didn’t miss driving so much as I missed being around racing.
I met Mike Wilds in Formula 4 and he was a much better driver than me! My dad and I bought a year-old second-hand March for Mike to race in Formula 3 in 1972, and it all got serious quite quickly as he did so well. Things progressed over the next few years and Mike by the mid ‘70s made it to Formula 1.
After that I would help other drivers with bits and pieces, and these drivers included Tim Sugden and Will Power. In 1981 Jonathan Palmer won a few British F3 races in succession, but then halfway through the year it said in Autosport that he’d run out of money. So I went to the Oulton Park round, introduced myself and I bought his tyres until the end of the season.
He won the championship and his racing career went from there. I stayed in touch with Jonathan and, decades on, he was always great in inviting me to the race meetings he ran. Then for 2013 he said to me he’s starting a new UK single-seater formula, BRDC Formula 4. I thought that’s brilliant and you know that when Jonathan’s running something it’s going to be run properly.
I suggested that I do sponsorship for pole positions: the pole winner would get a cheque and a little trophy, and the driver with most poles in the season gets a bigger cheque and a proper cup. Jonathan agreed but said “you’re going to have to put your name to it because you never put your name to anything, even when you sponsored me!”
I asked if could I put my dad’s name to it instead, because he was the one who got me involved in all this trouble! So it’s called the Jack Cavill Pole Position Cup and we’ve been running it every year since, through BRDC F4 morphing into BRDC British F3. The cash prizes last year were £200 for a pole and £1000 for the end-of-year prize.
I also had a friend David Poole-warren, who used to come racing with me, and he died of cancer. In his memory I asked Jonathan if we can do a team award too, so the team of the Jack Cavill Pole Position Cup-winning driver gets a cup as well as £1000 purely to take the mechanics and team members out. That’s the ‘thank you’ for all the work and long hours they do; I think that sometimes they can be forgotten. We’ve also done that award for a number of years.
Why did I want to give an award for pole positions? Qualifying always excites me.
It’s that urgency; not like in a race where you can have a bit of strategy. It’s getting that one lap and one time in. I went to the Indycar test at Sebring this year I spoke to four-time Indianapolis 500 winner, and six-time Indy polesitter, Rick Mears. I’d never really spoken to him before, and we spoke for about 30 to 40 minutes and it was brilliant, as after I mentioned my qualifying intrigue he told me in great detail how he did his qualifying lap for the Indy 500!
So long as Jonathan’s running British F3 and wants me to do the pole position award then I will. I love doing it and every year I’ll see Jonathan at the Autosport Awards and I just say “are we doing another year?” And he says “yeah I suppose so!”
What I’m doing is absolutely perfect for me because I love to see the young drivers coming on. You go into a paddock and see people who you’ve known either over the years or all these young drivers who you’ve met since 2013. I keep in touch with quite a few of them who are still racing, just on how they are doing. These include Linus Lundqvist, Jake Hughes, Johnathan Hoggard and many others. I went to more races last year than any other year, it just panned out that way. I love going racing and I love having friends from racing and practically every day, with Facetime and Messenger and all that, I’ll talk to somebody from motor racing.
“It’s absolutely perfect for me, I love seeing young drivers come on”