Johnny Mowlem has been an ever present for DSC and for the DSC Ed since pre-DSC days, his infamous season in the 1997 Pirelli Porsche Cup that saw a total whitewash, 17 consecutive victories aboard his AFN Porsche-backed 993 saw a fence hanging Goodwin and son in attendance for a couple of rounds, Mowlem utterly dominant throughout.
That though was the end of the beginning for Johnny, or at the very least the start of a chapter in a long career that would see him a key part of the scene for as long as most of us have been involved!
So Johnny, how did it start?
When I was really young, I moved to Spain when I turned three. I don’t have many memories of living in England, but we lived in Crystal Palace before we moved and I remember saying to my mother in Spain later that I could remember hearing engines, and I could remember too feeling excited by that noise. I said to her, “what was that?” And she said: “Every other Saturday or Sunday you could hear the engines from Crystal Palace race circuit.” That would have been the early 70s.
“I don’t know if that’s what triggered it, but I was really into cars as a kid, I had Matchbox cars and Scalextric. I don’t know if it was that or because I was wired differently, but I was obsessed, I always thought I wanted to get into racing. My father didn’t even possess a driving licence, my mum did all the driving! I had no background in motorsport, nobody in my family, nobody had anything to do with it.
“I promised my mother that I wouldn’t do anything that would lead to me not having a proper job. I ended up switching to an international school and taking my O and A levels in Spain and then going to Leeds University in England. I promised my mum that I would graduate before I tried anything in motorsport.
“Then there was a major shock, my dad and grandad died within five days of each other.
“I had no idea it was coming, dad kept the fact he was ill from all of us, but I got a sum of money in inheritance, enough to make a difference, but not an absolutely huge amount.
“Certainly in motorsport terms it wasn’t huge but it did allow me some options. So I finished graduating, took the money and spent three years trying to go racing. I’d been reading up, reading all the books, Nigel Roebuck’s Grand Prix Greats, Gilles Villeneuve was a hero of mine, Senna who was beginning to come through the ranks was a big favourite too. I had a passion but no clue!
“So I graduated and left University, went to a racing school at Brands Hatch, and was given names of teams to talk to.
“I was put in touch with Elden Racing Cars and went to see Brian Hampshire and said, possibly a little naively, “I have a little bit of money”.
“I paid him 15 grand, he would pay me £100 a week to learn from them, I’d learn and work on the cars, and they would run me in selected races. That’s how it all started.
“My first race at Brands lasted two corners, as the engine blew up on the way out of Druids, and that’s when I knew I had the dedication to do it, because it didn’t put me off. And my second race ended with me barrel rolling at Surtees. That blind stupidity kept me going. I assumed that was normal. It took me six years to get a break with Porsche.”
So how did the move into sportscars come about?
“I gave up on Formula One after about 5 years of single seater racing, mostly because I got close but recognised that the final step required vast sums of money that I didn’t have as until then my career had been very hand to mouth!! I maybe didn’t have the money, but I was lucky that I was racing in Formula 3 and Gary Watkins at Autosport, who has been very good to me, wrote a little side bar called Johnny Be Good.
“I won both the races at Brands he wrote about, and I was instructing the next week in a Porsche and got talking to the sales manager down there. I said to him that I do race, but I will stop at the end of the year and go back to Spain. I’m giving up on the dream.
“But there was a Texan there who asked me about the car (a lovely Porsche 993 Turbo) he was driving in, and then he asked me to take him round which was something we absolutely were not allowed to do.
“He went to see the sales manager and clearly had some pull because he let me do it, he just said “whatever you do don’t crash”.
“So I took this American round, he was quite a wealthy customer, and we were halfway round the second lap and he said ‘how long did it take you to get used to this car to be able to drive it like this?’ and I said ‘honestly I’ve never driven this car before.’ I sung its praises, said how amazing it was. When we came back in to the pits, he got out and bought one immediately! At that point the sales manager came over to me, because the guy had gone and told everyone that was there to go on a lap with Johnny instead of drive one round yourself. Then I had a line of about seven people trying to go round with me, much to the annoyance of the other instructors!
“The next day David Wilson from AFN Porsche rang and asked me to come in and meet the managing director of AFN because they ran a car in the British Porsche Cup. They said they would run a brand new 993 in the British Porsche Championship, and that they wanted me to drive for them. They couldn’t pay me, but it would be free. I went home, talked to Fiona. It was admittedly a big step down for me at that time, but I thought it might lead to bigger things like the Porsche Super Cup, where I’d heard there was good prize money and you could earn a living if you ran up the front.
“I wanted to run well in the British championship and then tell them to run in Porsche Super Cup. The rest is history, we won every race in 1997. That was my breakthrough season, I wiped the floor with everyone and built some momentum.
“Fortunately the Porsche Championship coordinator was rather anti-me as nobody had used the British Porsche Cup which was very much a “Club” championship back then, as a stepping stone to the Super Cup, but I was in the British Championship, being run by Mike Jordan at Eurotech and we were bringing professionalism to it.
“There were people looking for ways to get me thrown out of races and ruin the Championship run. Fortunately it didn’t work!`”
So what next?
“The following two years we did Porsche Super Cup, and in 1999 I had Oliver Gavin as my teammate for a coupe of races.
“I remember at the end of ’98, Allan McNish put me in touch with Tony Callas, who had a new team Reiser Callas, and I went and tested with them in America then raced with them at Daytona, and I finished second in class and ninth overall (here’s the same car at Sebring that year).
“Off the back of that the team asked me to drive for them for the whole season. But I couldn’t, as I’d committed to Porsche Super Cup. And at that point I was being paid by AFN Porsche, so I agreed to do five or six races. Then he said: “How much?” and for a second or two I thought – “damn he wants me to pay, before realising with utter delight that he was offering to pay me! A massive breakthrough.
“That was it. That was February 1999, and from that moment on, I’ve been paid ever since. 18 years.”
How difficult has it been to sustain a two decade long motorsport career?
“I must give Allan (McNish) a proper mention, he’s been so helpful over the years and without that phone call, without that opportunity, he put my name into the hat with Stephane Ortelli, I never would have broken into racing in the USA.
“America at that time offered a really great opportunity that wasn’t available in Europe, and it gives me goosebumps thinking back about that timing and how it could have gone wrong! That was a crossroads.
“It’s very hard to sustain getting paid, I was in so much debt after the first 5 years, so if I couldn’t somehow make it work and get paid I was in deep trouble. I must have owed 250 thousand at 25 years old because I set up a company and I was taking up loans to try and go racing. If it didn’t work it would have taken years to pay that back with a normal job.
“Because of what you have to do in this business to make it, I was always working so hard to make it happen that a lot of people misread me. Not so much my sponsors and supporters and team, but definitely others who I considered to be outside my “inner circle”
“I had an ‘it’s them or me’ mentality, in the early days even in my own team, which was clearly not the right way forward for a sportscar driver! It took years to get round that, but unfortunately that reputation stuck with me in certain areas even though nowadays I like to think that those that I have worked with closely I have developed close personal friendships with.
“In the early days especially I didn’t want to be friends with other people I was racing, because I couldn’t be ruthless with them if I liked them. But then I learnt to become more open and generous, in particular with good guys like Chris Dyson, Guy Smith or Matt Griffin (below in the pair’s ELMS Championship winning season), but it took me a bit longer to get there than it probably should have done! A lot of people misunderstood this and therefore maybe misunderstood my true personality.
“I like to think I’m not as arrogant as some people think I am! I always value people, and I’m loyal, but early on I didn’t think I could show all of my personality because it would be a weakness. Looking back now I do regret that in a way, but if I’d been more relaxed and less intense maybe I wouldn’t have made it!”
But that’s not what we see away from the track?
“I have a very grounded home life. My family mean everything to me. Fiona my wife had a lot of fame early in her life from acting and dancing. She started off in the West End with Catherine Zeta Jones doing Bugsy Malone, and then did Grange Hill. And then she went on to do theatre, and then decided that she didn’t want fame, so she did theatre and commercials.
“When I met her she had significantly more money than me. Early on she lent me money for tyres, so I knew she was a keeper!
“There’s no motorsport in my house outside of my study.
“When I get home I stop being Johnny Mowlem, and become John. I like to think I’m a lot wiser, friendlier, and less obsessed with motorsport and beginning to learn what’s important in life, which is family.
So will you still do some racing?
“I will continue to do stuff with Ivor (Dunbar), I’m not stopping completely. I will continue racing at Pro Am level. I just won’t be selling my wares in IMSA and WEC etc.
“That’s not to say that if something big happens that I wouldn’t do it as a one off, but I’m stepping back mentally, to build up this company, I’m not pursuing those drives.
“I need to focus on this, because I’m missing races that my clients do. And I need to grow it. I’m keen to take the opportunities that are here now, not to regret that I didn’t see the opportunity when it presented itself.
