OLIVER GAVIN
THE GT KING SPEAKS TO MN ABOUT HIS GLITTERING CAREER
Five wins at Le Mans is a pretty special achievement, but to complete them all with one manufacturer is something hard to accomplish. But then, Oliver Gavin’s CV has a raft of pretty special achievements. The Bedfordshire racer has five American sportscar titles to his name too, and five wins in the Sebring 12 hours to boot. You can throw in an epic victory at Daytona in 2016 too. There are very few British racers who have a trophy cabinet quite like Gavin.
The six-foot-two-inch tall racer crammed his frame into single-seaters in the 1990s, and raced his way to the cusp of a grand prix career before the doors slammed shut. He decided to go and seek his fortune in the land of opportunity in the USA. It paid off handsomely and Gavin has spent almost two decades as a mainstay of Chevrolet’s GT programmes.
He announced recently that he was stepping aside from the Chevrolet factory team to concentrate on other future activities. It brings the curtain down on a hugely rewarding partnership for the 48-year-old driver and the grand old American marque. He spent some of his new-found spare time tackling the MN readers’questions
Question: Was there motor racing in your family? Where did the interest come from?
John Charles
Via email
Oliver Gavin: “My brother Marcus and I started karting when I was 11 years old and he was 13. My father is an engineer and my grandfather owned and ran two garages in the local town in Bedford. My grandfather was a bit of a whiz with road cars in the 1950s and 1960s – back in those days, they used to go wrong a lot and he had a magic touch with fixing them. I suppose my interest in cars started there.
“My father was looking for an activity to do with my brother and I and we were living in the same village as James
Rhodes [an active karter at the time who progressed through to Formula Renault]. His father was actually our family doctor. Dr Rhodes suggested to my dad that he brought us along to karting at Rye House and that was it. We were hooked and we loved it. In the car on the way home, my dad said we could buy a kart which we could use between us. We just ran that to see how we would get on. For the first six months or so, we just popped it onto the roof rack of the car and went wherever we could to drive it: car parks, big open spaces, anywhere. We didn’t even wear crash helmets. Sometimes we even went to a race track. It was nuts: no health and safety! We got the bug, then dad bought a van, then another kart, and it went from there. I had a brilliant childhood, travelling all around the UK, racing in some great places and some not-so-great places. My brother went on to do some saloon racing, but he was even taller than me and his size was an issue. He ended up doing some two-driver races in a VW Golf GTi, but I never shared with him. By that stage
I was in single-seaters and the laser focus of that seems to be all-consuming.”
MN: Were there any motorsport heroes that you had then when you were making your way into the sport?
OG: “Yes – Gilles Villeneuve.”
MN: That’s the correct answer…
OG: “He triggered my real interest in motorsport. I remember him being killed, I was heartbroken. I had just started getting into watching Formula 1. My dad was an avid Villeneuve fan too and we watched him in every race. I was a Ferrari fan too. I remember going to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in 1983 – we went on qualifying day – and I had all my Ferrari gear: hat, shirt, flag. I was a proper fan boy. But it was a year too late to see Gilles.”
MN sets the scene: Although it was five years old and going strong, Formula First, the 1600cc Ford-powered entry-level category devised by John Webb at Brands Hatch, didn’t feature the prettiest of cars. Their transversely mounted engines made the single-seaters somewhat hair-raising to drive. Gavin, though, clicked with the cars and hit the ground running on his
step to car racing in 1991 with Fortec. Question: Did Formula First actually teach a young driver anything?
James Hilton
Via email
OG: “It taught me how to drive a car with a boat anchor hanging out the back! That thing had a particular driving style. I suppose it is quite similar to driving a Porsche 911, that sort of thing. Whether it was the engine, the gearbox, the [treaded] tyre, the weight distribution…it was a very unique single-seater, but it did generate some fantastic racing. It was some of the best, despite the fact the cars were absolute bricks. You could get such a massive tow in them. It was a lot of fun. You always look back on those first few years of your career, whether it’s karting or whatever, and you have rose-tinted spectacles. At the time, I know there was all kinds of stuff going on [paddock politics], but now I look back on it very fondly.
“I did have a very very good season in that first year. I won 11 of the 12 races I competed in in Formula First. I won the championship before the end of the year. Somehow, it all seemed to click. It took me aback a little bit, because karting hadn’t been that easy for me.”
MN: Is the fact you struggled in karting to do with your height?
OG: “I think a bit of it might be. But there is also the fact that my father and I and the people around us, we maybe didn’t really get the most from the equipment at the time. There were others that were better and more switched on at it. When we got to cars, it seemed that the playing field was a little bit more level.”
MN: We remember your debut in
Formula Renault that season midway through 1991 at Snetterton. While all the championship protagonists were ripping lumps out of each other, you went and stuck it on pole at your first attempt!
OG: “Snetterton was my first one, correct. Jason Plato and Bobby Verdon-Roe were battling like crazy over the title. Plato was with Van Diemen and Bobby was with Swift, so it was intense. I joined Bobby in an extra Fortec car. I put it on pole position.
“I think that I flattered myself in getting pole because when it came to the race, it was clear that I really didn’t have enough experience in the car. I didn’t know how to look after the tyres or understand how to race. I didn’t know about the downforce, or even how to start one, and I got swallowed up. Then I did a race at Donington in 1991 too, and that didn’t go to plan either.”
MN sets the scene: To underline the meteoric progress Gavin made through the ranks, he became the third recipient of the McLaren Autosport BRDC Award, which then offered £20,000 to an aspiring young racer making his way through the ranks. Gavin fended off rivals Jonathan McGall, Dario Franchitti, Dino Morelli, Jamie Spence and Guy Smith in 1991. Question: Were you surprised to win the McLaren Autosport Young Driver of the Year so quickly? You’d only been in car racing for a single season...
Jon Wood
Vis email
OG: “As always you go into it thinking that you have got to win. I remember it being the first question that Murray Walker asked me when I got onto the stage: he said ‘what do you think your chances are of winning?’I told him they were one in six! I backed myself, but I think the thing that played in my favour was that I had raced in all of the other cars that they had for the shootout. I had done Formula Ford, Formula Renault and Formula Vauxhall Lotus. They knew they couldn’t test me in those, so they put me in an Alan Docking Racing Formula 3 car. But I had managed to have a sneaky test in an F3 car at Snetterton just before the shootout. I am not sure that was strictly allowed, but we had an inkling it was going to happen so I went out and arranged some experience for myself. When I got in Docking’s car for the test, it was a different chassis but I had a bit of an idea about how it would go. I went out of the pits at Donington on the very first lap on cold tyres and I had the biggest tankslapper coming off of Redgate. I knew it would either all be fine or the whole thing was over at that point if I shunted. I managed to keep it on. And I was quick, which helped.
“All of the driving stuff went well, but when it came to the physical stuff, I just crumbled. I was terrible. The only thing I was alright at was running. It was an eye-opener, and ever since then, I have been as keen as mustard on the training side of things. It taught me a lesson. To win it was really special.”
Question: What was it like meeting Ayrton Senna [at the awards]? AutoTradition
Via Twitter
OG: “I still look back on that night. It was one of those moments in life. It has to be one of the top things that has ever happened in my career. At that point, he was at the height of his powers. I have been to lots of Autosport Awards nights since, but that night: no-one else has ever got the same level of respect as he had that night. He stood up and spoke and nobody moved, everyone seemed to hold their breath while he was talking and you could have heard a pin drop. He captivated everyone with his presence with the way he carried himself and his command of the English language was amazing. It was a real pinch-me moment. I was stumbling over my words when I was talking to him, but I remember him saying that he hoped it was the first of many big awards and trophies that I would receive. It was lovely. He was warm and generous and a really special moment for me.”
MN sets the scene: After finishing as runner up in Formula 3 in 1993 to Kelvin Burt in the Paul Stewart Racing-run car, Gavin decided to make the leap straight up to Formula 3000 in 1994, but it was hard going and he only started three races… Question: Why was Formula 3000 such a struggle for you?
Emma Facey
Via email
OG: “We’d come off the back of the Formula 3 season in 1993 where it had gone pretty well but we hadn’t won. Kelvin Burt was a more experienced and better driver, and I was still learning. I had the speed, but I was struggling to put it all together. We wanted to keep the momentum going and so we jumped out of F3 and into F3000. Pacific Motorsport and its boss Keith Wiggins was trying to get us involved with F3000, but he had his own plans to take his team to Formula 1 by that stage. He was promising us a lot purely because he was desperately trying to get his grand prix team going. He had seen what Eddie Jordan had done and was sitting there thinking that he had beaten Jordan as a team in Formula 3 or Formula 3000, so why shouldn’t he have a shot at F1?
“I ended up racing for the Omegaland team because Pacific couldn’t run us. Keith was saying he could run us in F3000 at the same time as building up his Formula 1 team. We went to the race shop and it was tiny. It was barely big enough to run an F3000 team, let alone create an F1 team too. It dawned on us too late that it wasn’t going to work out, and we had to go and find any drive we could, and it was Omegaland. They promised the earth but didn’t deliver.”
Question: How close were you to making it into Formula 1?
Barry May
Via email
OG: “After 1994, I went back to Formula 3 with Peter Briggs and Edenbridge. All the cards were on the table that season, we knew it had to work for us. Peter wanted us to drive the car, he was grabbing money from all places, we had a little bit from Vauxhall and we were using its engine. It was bits and pieces. We scraped it all together and we just about had enough money – I think Peter was putting some of his own finances into it too. We won, and we beat Paul Stewart Racing and it was a fantastic season.”
MN: It seems like Peter Briggs and you had a very tight relationship?
OG “Yes, we did. He was just a great team owner. If he believed in you, he believed in you absolutely and without question. There were no ifs, buts and maybes. He totally backed you. He is an incredible guy when you think back to all he did in the early days of March and working with Ronnie Peterson and people like that.
And he totally supported me.”
MN: That rescued your career, didn’t it, coming back to F3 and winning?
OG: “Yes, it really did and I have to thank Peter for that and the opportunity it gave me. So I had won the championship and then I went on to the Pacific thing. We had got an agreement with Keith Wiggins, he had told us he was going to put me in F1 for the last grand prix of the season, the Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide. I was going to be in the car that had been raced up to that point by Bertrand Gachot. Bertrand was going to take a sabbatical.
“I got there and did the lot: I was fitted into the car, I had done my interview with Murray Walker, all of it. I’d met all the team. That was on the Tuesday, then on the Wednesday I was back in the car and having another seat fitting, sorting the wing mirrors and things like that. As I was doing the mirrors, I was lining them up and obviously I had a view of the back of the garage. I could see that Keith had turned up with Gachot in tow – Bertrand wasn’t even supposed to be there. I was thinking ‘this doesn’t look good’. Then all the mechanics just disappeared and Keith came to the car and said ‘you’d better get out Olly’. He told me there had been a problem with my Superlicence. He said they didn’t seem likely to get me in the car that weekend. I went straight down to try and find Bernie Ecclestone’s office to try and find out what was going on.
“I was in his waiting room for about 90 minutes and then he came out to see me. He was lovely, charming, but very straightforward though. He said
‘Oliver, we would love to have you in the championship, but you haven’t tested the car, have you?’ I said no – I had done 10 laps in the 1994 car in the rain at Snetterton when it had F3000 suspension on the right side and Formula 1 suspension on the left side…Then Bernie said ‘You have never raced or tested an F1 car properly, have you?’ I said no, although I had done 10 laps in a McLaren around Silverstone in the rain before. Then Bernie said ‘You’ve never driven here, at Adelaide, before, have you?’ I said no. All the stuff he was pointing out was fair enough, straightforward and honest. He said the team was going out of business and they wouldn’t be on the grid next year, and he
said it was too late to get a licence arranged anyway. That was it. Who knows what the real reason was behind it?”
Question: How come you ended up with a testing role for Renault in Formula 1? Russell Scobbie
Via email
OG: “I had done a season in the International Touring Car Championship for Opel in a Calibra in 1996. During that, I got to know a few people and there was an engineer at Mercedes who then went to Benetton. He called me up out of the blue. He asked what I was doing the next day. He asked if I could get to Silverstone the next day. Benetton had a sponsor, FedEx, and they had a car in its colours and they needed someone to come and do 10 laps to show it off to the backers. I was almost the same size as Alexander Wurz, who was the regular tester. Wurz was in Japan doing some work with sponsors, and so they asked me to drive.
“I turned up, jumped in and the car fit like a glove. I did the 10 laps in the rain. They were happy with what I had done, and so they said I should continue running for the rest of the day. At the end of the day, they told me how much there were going to pay me for the day’s work, and it was more than I had ever earned in any day up to that point. Then they asked me to do two more days in the rain...
“From 1997 through to 2006, I drove off and on for Benetton and then Renault. Pat Symonds was there, proper people. I was mostly doing work on the launch systems as well as proper testing, and Renault was known for having some of the best launches out there…”
MN sets the scene: After the race options in single-seaters fell by the wayside, Gavin looked at other avenues to reignite his career. A part-campaign in the
USA was his salvation, and it would lead to an almost 20-year association with Chevrolet.
Question: How did you view sportscars when you did the races in 2000 in the USA? Did you think it was going to be your future?
Jack Crowther
Via email
OG: “Well, I had pretty much exhausted all of my options here in the UK and Europe. Keith Wiggins was the sales director at Lola by that stage, and I called him up. I asked if there was any way
I could get into a sportscar in the USA. He said he could get me in with a guy called Scott Schubot. Schubot had four McDonalds restaurants in Florida. Scott had just bought a B2K/10 Lola, and Keith worked to put me in that car, although I would have to bring some money. I came back home to see my wife Helen, and she was pregnant with my daughter Lilly.
I told her about the opportunity and I told her how much it was going to cost, and it was effectively all of our savings. Helen gave me her blessing and so I took all of our money, in cash, in a briefcase and flew to the US. I gave it all to this guy
Scott and literally watched all of our savings walk out the back of the garage…
“It was one of those weekends: although it didn’t work out completely, I did enough to put myself on the map in the US. I qualified on pole but we had a technical infringement and I had to start from the back and got up to second. Then there were some battles and I gave this guy a puncture. He got me back later in the race and we were taken out. That ended OK, I think we finished fourth. But, off the back of that, I got a relationship going with Jon Field [in an Intersport Lola] and I ended up driving for him for a number of races. Jon said I could drive for him, but I would have to get myself there. I paid for it. Then after a few races he said he would pay for my flights. Then, by the end of the year, he was paying all my expenses and a little bit of money. That led on to opening a relationship with Saleen to drive the S7R.”
MN: Is it right that you got tapped up on the podium at one race by Chevrolet?
OG: “I drove for Jon at Watkins Glen and I think we’d finished second. The trophies were being given out by Ron Fellows [a former NASCAR and Chevrolet Racing driver at the time].He came over and handed me the trophy and asked if I had time for a chat after the ceremony was over. We went behind the rostrum and he gave me the number for Doug Fehan [Chevrolet Racing boss]. Fellows asked me what my plans were for 2002. He told me there could be an option with Chevrolet. I called Doug and the next time I went over to the US, he said that they would love to have me on board because they had been keeping an eye on me. I tested the car at Sebring in November in front of [Chevrolet Racing’s] Gary Pratt, and that was it.”
MN: What did you think of the C5-R when you first drove it?
OG: “It was like a force of nature. I drove the thing down the pitlane and it was so deafeningly loud I thought I had forgotten my earplugs. But no, that was just the car. The vibration, everything. When I released the pitlane speed limiter, the thing was just wild. The torque was amazing, the power…it did move around a bit and you had to tame it, but once you had, the thing was an absolute beast.
It was brilliant to drive, great fun. You could get yourself in crazy situations with slides and moments that you thought were never going to work out, but the car would come back to you. Not that you could just
put it in any gear, but it was seven litres and it was V8. It would just yank off any corner with the epic grunt it had.”
Question: Which is your favourite 24-hour race?
Damien Doherty
Via email
OG: “I have to say Le Mans, partly because it has the shortest night. The atmosphere that the race generates is almost mystical.”
MN: Is Le Mans actually a difficult circuit to master?
OG: “It is. You are driving around there with no downforce on the car and the thing is moving around all the time. If the car is hooked up and you are in the groove, it is one of the greatest places to drive – of all the tracks in all the world. But if the car is not right, it is super super scary and really not a nice place at all. If you drop a little bit of performance or you can’t quite get the tyre in the window, or there is one characteristic of the car that isn’t working, you don’t lose a little bit of time, you lose a lot. And then Le Mans can feel like a very very long race. The very first one I did was 2001 in a Saleen and it rained for 18 hours…I was driving down the Mulsanne and night in the rain, and I was asking myself what I was doing. It was nuts.
The water was pouring in through the hinges of the door…”
Question: Was there any driver you always wanted to be paired with but weren’t? And who would you refuse to share a car with?
Malcolm Munt
Via email
OG: “I have been in the same team as Antonio Garcia for so many years and we are great mates, but we have never been paired up for some reason. We travel together and train together, but we’ve only ever had to race against each other, which is a pain in the arse because he is so good!” MN: And who would you not want to share a car with?
OG: “Interesting: probably Darren Turner, because he is too short…”
Question: Which is the most dangerous track you’ve raced at? There has to be one in America?
Donny Matthews
Via email
OG: “A lot of the tracks in the US are riskier than certain tracks in Europe. They have a lot of character and they keep you very honest. And over there, there are only very few times where track limits gets called out anywhere, so everyone is pushing the edge. Houston was pretty dodgy, and Baltimore too was crazy. Their attitude over there is: you’ve signed all the waivers, we are all grown-ups, let’s get on with it!”
Question: Are Aussie V8s as hard as they seem?
Andy Murrell
Via email
MN: You did a couple of races over there and got a podium at Bathurst , but it seems European drivers struggle…
OG: “Yes they are hard. Some of it is the way the spool differential works. It is also the way the suspension and uprights are, the tyres too. Also, there are no driver aids. You are fundamentally putting 600bhp plus through rear wheels on a heavy car with skinny tyres and it is a small window to operate in. Make no mistake, the guys over there who can tame the cars are doing an amazing job. They are really good drivers. It requires such a unique driving style, and you really have to work on it. I loved the racing out there: it takes the good bits of racing in the US and in Europe, and it puts it all together in a raw and fun way. The guys out there are brutally tough and honest, but they love what they do. It was great craic.”
Question: Why is now the time to step down? Which achievement will you back on most fondly, professionally?
Fiona Stevenson
Via email
OG: “I will answer the last bit first. I look back and 51 wins with Chevrolet is something I am proud of. Three in a row in 2004, 2005 and 2006 at Le Mans against Prodrive – be that Ferraris or Aston Martins – is pretty special. When I took the flag in 2015 to get my fifth win at La Sarthe, that will stay with me. The five titles in IMSA was great. Also the win at Daytona in 2016 when I was having to race my team-mate Antonio Garcia for the last half an hour…I knew that the president of General Motors was there sitting on the timing stand and he told us we could race but we couldn’t touch. I knew that if we touched and something went wrong, one of us would have to go back to the garage, collect our things from the truck and not come back again! It was a great win, by just 0.03s.”
MN: And why are you stepping down?
OG: “I had recognised that things were changing at Corvette Racing. With the pandemic and all the other things that have come along, I had to look at what my options were for the future. There is some stuff that is happening right now that is good, promising and great. It will take a little while longer than I had planned to get it up and running, but I will still be around. There will be something for me to drive this year, but I just can’t say what it is right now.”