FOLLOWING IN DAD’S WHEELTRACKS
Why Shaun Hollamby is recreating history
It all began when Shaun Hollamby went to race meetings as a young child with his father Olly. The family business was Volkspares so it made sense when Olly started racing in Formula Vee in the early 1970s. He progressed to Formula Super Vee and won two titles before retiring from racing in 1980.
Shaun, who was 15 years old when his dad stopped racing, explains: “He was pretty quick considering that he wasn’t testing every five minutes and spending lots and lots of money on it, but probably still a fair bit in those days.
“A big part of the business was reconditioned air-cooled Volkswagen engines and later the water-cooled engines. I started in karts in 1979 and started racing in Formula Vee in 1986.
“Dad put the emphasis on me to look after the car. He was a mechanic by trade and built up a business around that. You wouldn’t want me touching a spanner! I think he was trying to force me to learn how to get on the tools. But that’s never been my thing, really. I usually screw something in the wrong way round.
“I had to try and find the budget to run it and get people along to help out and
I had some really good friends who helped out. I spent a lot of time blowing engines up or crashing. And then I did Formula First for a couple of years and spent a lot of time crashing. I seemed to do it better than most and my average was quite high.”
The entry-level single-seater category also allowed Shaun to compete on a level playing field with some really good drivers and Chris Goodwin became a long-standing friend as a result.
“I remember taking my £500 deposit for a Formula First to Jackie Epstein at Brands Hatch, all made up of screwed up five pound notes that I’d saved,” says Hollamby. “I paid the deposit and then hadn’t told my mum and dad about it. So then I managed to convince them to buy a Formula First after that.
“I remember Kelvin Burt going past me once at Oulton Park in the wet. He probably had a bad qualifying for some reason. But he came past me like I was standing still and I think that was one of the moments that you just go: ‘Yeah, I can’t do that’.
“When you have somebody who’s got talent like that I think that’s a great thing. I appreciate somebody who’s got the talent to do well which is why I help Jake Hill now, because I think he has got the talent to do great things. He loves the history of racing, he’s not one of these guys who doesn’t know anything about the history, he really loves it. He wants to go out there and drive a Porsche 962 Group C car.
“Then I did the inaugural Multisports Championship and I was champion in that, and I cling on to that quite desperately. People at work say well, it doesn’t actually exist, because we can’t find it on the internet, but it did exist and I still have the trophy. It’s still sitting there, but semi-polished, on the desk.”
After racing slicks and wings in the short-lived Formula Forward singleseater category, Shaun accepted that his career as a racing driver wasn’t going anywhere and he focused on business with the acquisition in 1990 of Big Boys Toys.
“We ended up doing the Big Boys
Toys Beetle Cup racing series, which I am actually really proud of. I’m probably prouder of that than anything else that we did in racing because you spent £2000 and you had a kit of parts which was engine, carburettor exhaust, tyres, wheels, seat, rollcage suspension and dampers. You could turn your road-going Beetle into a racing car.
“In about 1997 I got introduced by
Chris Goodwin to work for Formula One Management to do the F1 digital TV side. I said, well, I didn’t really know much about television except for turning it on. But it was a fantastic experience and then I stayed there for about five years. I left the family firm for a while and I ended up being senior director/producer, which I absolutely loved. I was the director of the last race that Murray Walker commentated on, America in 2001.”
Then a family came along with daughters Lottie and Josie. “I’ve just become a grandfather now as my eldest Josie has just had a little boy called Brodie. So I’m now officially a
grandfather, rather than just looking like one. I went back to the family business and took over Big Boys Toys, because my dad was retiring. I wanted to do some racing as well, to make the hassle worthwhile. And so I did the VW Cup and loved it and should have won the championship in 2005.”
Gradually, Big Boys Toys morphed into AmD Tuning, because they were doing more modern vehicles, including remapping, exhaust and suspension work and normal servicing work. “We also ran a Seat Leon in the Dunlop Sport
Maxx Cup, which was really nice. The first year we ran it with me driving it but then we got Simon Shaw to drive it.”
After that, the part-time team looked at what to do next and the only thing that ticked all the boxes was the British Touring Car Championship. Shaun had always wanted to do touring cars, ever since his old friend Chris Goodwin raced in British touring cars in the early 1990s.
“I love touring cars; I just think it’s got the right amount of razzmatazz,” he says. “So we ended up doing it and we thought, well, we want to do it with a Volkswagen really. So we found this Golf in Estonia. I went with another mate of mine, Gary Kinchin who I’m known him since we were young. And he’s always been about six foot five.
“We went to get this car in Estonia in the middle of the snow and we thought we were going to end up getting buried at the side of the road, but we got it and brought it back. We thought we were going to run the car on a shoestring or not a lot of money but ended up spending way too much money and gained a lot of experience. I’m never going to be the fastest touring car driver in the world.
But I was really proud of what we actually achieved.
“The support from [BTCC technical guru] Peter Riches, [championship manager] Dan Mayo and [chief executive] Alan Gow was fantastic.
I’ll always remember that because I expected them to be negative and they were the opposite. That’s a big thing, because as soon as you get negativity, it makes it hard to keep moving forward. And they were super positive.”
It was the start of the decade-long BTCC adventure for AmD Tuning, running a variety of cars for a series of drivers and always working hard to move up the pecking order. The arrival of Jake Hill was an important part in the jigsaw.
“I’d helped Jake out since 2010 in Ginetta Juniors. I liked his energy; I liked his spark and I could see a lot of potential in him. Financially, it was always going to be a struggle for him to get the budget. There’s only a few drivers who you realise have got it and that’s important for me because I don’t want to be putting lots of effort into something where they’re not. If they can’t be bothered to go down the gym or can’t be bothered to come down and say hello to the team and bring donuts, if they just want to pay some money and go racing, then that’s not really for me.”
The sea change for 2021 started off as a conversation with David Bartrum about buying two Focuses. “That turned into a conversation to actually merge with Motorbase as AmD and we’d sell one of our cars off, and then we’d run Focuses. Then sometimes things change and it was always in the back of my head that it was coming towards the end of me doing touring cars at some point.
“The main thing I wanted to do with the merger was that it was all going to go smoothly whether I was involved with it or not. I’m pleased to say that it has because we’ve had the first BTCC races and you’ve got Jake Hill leading the championship, Motorbase leading the manufacturers’ championship and Sam Osborne leading the Jack Sears Trophy. So as far as I’m concerned, that’s a job done for me.”
Hollamby’s only BTCC role is now as part of Hill’s management team, helping to make budgets work. However, there is a fresh job on touring car weekends as a presenter for a new TV programme called Pitch BTCC which is run by Susannah Schofield OBE. “I’m still running AmD and I’ve got some great guys there. But then I’m also doing some work back with FOM and I’m doing the Porsche Supercup commentary with Harry Benjamin.”
The modest amount of free time has also allowed him to realise an ambition to and race the March single-seater that his dad raced back in 1980.
“It was a March 80V then for Super Vee. It is exactly the same chassis as the 803 Formula 3 car and he sold it because he stopped racing in 1980 and Mark Bailey uprated the car to F3 spec,” he says. “I’d seen this car for three or four years and I sort of wanted to buy it a couple of times and didn’t quite get there. I thought, right, now’s the time if I’m going to do it. I’m 55 and I can’t leave it till I’m 60 to start doing it. And I absolutely love it. It’s great. There’s there’s a couple of young kids in Classic F3 in Andy Smith and Benn Tilley.
“In the first qualifying session, I saw one of them catching me. I let him pass and tried to latch on and see how we got on. Within half a lap he was gone! I can’t do that at the moment but I love it. I’m working with Dan Eagling from Lifetime Racing and he’s a lovely guy. I love the way they work. It’s fun, but it’s serious. I have had to make sure
I get down the gym to get my backside in the car but I love it and it’s not too expensive.”
There is a plan of sorts to eventually have maybe two or three historic cars. “I’d love to have an historic F1 car, but I think maybe that might be a step too far. I’d love to do the Monaco historic.
“My dad passed away at the end of 2009 when he was 65 and had a brain tumour. That was just came out of nowhere, which was a big shame, because he only retired four or five years before. He always taught me racing cost too much for the amount of fun that you got out of it. He was probably right!”
“I was the TV director for Murray Walker’s last race” Shaun Hollamby
“I was proud of what I achieved” Shaun Hollamby