The two best cars I’ve ever raced were the McLaren F1 GTR and the Formula 3000 Reynard.
I always dreamed of being a single-seater driver. It took me a long time to get through Formula Ford to raise the money and get the deals to do anything.
(pic above from Champion of Mallory Formula Ford Facebook Page)
I went into Formula Renault and had a good year there. Hard to believe now but in those days there were 70 entries in Formula Renault in the National Championship!
Tommy Erdos won it that year Chris Goodwin was second and I was third and won some races.
The other good thing that had happened that year was that I’d got the Junior Team drive with BMW in touring cars.
BMW had done this junior team programme where they taken 50 young drivers from Formula Ford, Formula Renault, Formula Three, shortlisted 16 of us, and everybody that was anybody at the time in national racing was in there. They tested 16 of us at Silverstone over two days and they picked the BMW Junior team to do British Touring Cars and that was me, Kelvin Burt and Kurt Luby.
The deal was we got four races each alongside Frank Sytner in British Touring Cars.
I was so happy to get that deal. I knew that it was a break, I knew that that was a real good chance of getting somewhere because it was always going to be incredibly difficult for me to raise the money to go single seater racing but I knew that if I could get into touring cars or GTs, and I had a chance to have a career.
So it was a big deal for me to get that but I always still dreamt of single seaters.
At the time, my best friend was Richard Dean and he was doing F3000 in England at the time.
I thought I’d love to do a bit of Formula 3000 so tried my best to put a deal together to find sponsors (1991) and I’d got my BMW contract again. They gave us the four races and told us that one of us would be kept on the following year with a full season contract, and luckily enough it was me!
So for the first time in 1990, I had a brand new BMW. I used to ride about in a £75 Renault 12 that used to break down all the time. Without a word of exaggeration this Renault would just stop after about 20 minutes, then 20 minutes later would start up again when it had cooled down.
But I realised after a while if I didn’t run it for 20 minutes if I only ran it for about 12 minutes and then turned it off and waited 10 minutes it would drive for another 12 minutes quite happily and then I could turn it off. So I used to go everywhere with a stopwatch and a load of magazines!
This felt completely normal!
But suddenly BMW chose me and I got a brand new BMW Three Series that they used to swap it every 8000 miles!
So in year two with BMW I thought that my touring car career was starting to go somewhere but still wanted to race single-seaters.
So, I did a deal with Colin Bennett to do the first round of the British F3000 championship in a Reynard and I did a test at Silverstone and that was phenomenal. I mean, I’d never driven anything like that at the time.
I’d gone from Formula Ford and Formula Renault, to a 2-litre Touring Car, but a Formula 3000 car with downforce was just mind blowing.
Nowadays a driver would do sim testing and all sorts of preparation to get used to the levels of downforce that they’d get at the test and be prepared. But you weren’t prepared at all back then. You just have to go out and get on with it, drive to the grip you got.
I remember going through Maggotts/ Beckett’s in that F3000 car, thinking “Oh, yeah, I’m on the limit!” and somebody just drove around the outside of me in another F3000 car and disappeared off into the distance. “Oh, I’m nowhere NEAR the limit!”
I was driving to what felt like the limit the mechanical limit, but was nowhere near the aero limit, remembering this was my first run out of the pits, and you had to readjust.
Once I got used to the aero and how much which speed you could carry, that car was phenomenal.
So we did a really good day at Silverstone and then went to race at Donington. And if you look back at British Formula 3000 at the time, there were some good people who were doing it. Richard (Dean) was doing it. Paul Warwick was doing it. Julian Westwood was very quick at the time in a Lola run by Michael Caine (later to run the EMKA Mclaren).
And we did all right, I think I finished sixth, my pace was good, my fastest lap was good.
In that car, you went down the Craner Curves and everyone said it was easily flat.
I remember going through it flat for the first time and having that feeling that you’ve done it, but your brain hadn’t kept up. You came out the other side of the Craner Curves and felt like, Oh, god, I’m still here! But it was almost like you weren’t in the moment to start with.
But you adjust really quickly, and you get used to these things. But for the first time, I took it flat just with blind faith.
The dream was that we would find some more money and do the second race, but looking back I remember really well. I paid £8000 pounds for the race, but £8000 pounds at the time was a fortune for me.
I remember I had £4000 scraped together and told Colin and he said “don’t worry, give me that and pay the rest when you can.”
We had a good weekend and Colin was all guns blazing to do the second race but I didn’t have the money and, by that time my first race of the year with BMW had gone well and I had a good thing going with Prodrive, David Richards and BMW and And I thought, yeah, my futures gonna be in touring cars rather than bankrupting myself trying to keep it together with enough money to give Colin another eight grand for next week.
You can read HERE about Tim’s experiences with the McLaren F1 GTR, it’s place as one of the best of his career very secure!
Worst Car
Well, I suppose the worst thing I ever drove was the BRM that I drove for John Mangoletsi.
I was driving for Steve O’Rourke in British GT in 1998/99. It was a good time for me and Mangoletsi had asked me if I’d like to do some FIA Sportscars and I said: “Of course I do!”
I didn’t know much about the scene there and he told me he had this sportscar, do you want to drive that?
It was 1998 the then International Sports Racing Series, I did Misano and Donington. Bear in mind Misano at the time went the other way around. It used to go anti-clockwise and it’s clockwise now.
So, you go to Misano and you go to the track and, I’d never driven this car before and I just remember, everything about it was wrong, and everything about it just felt wrong.
The seat position was terrible. The gearbox was terrible. It had a misfire all weekend that we never got rid of but we kind of finished at Misano though, nowhere really in the order, but we did manage to finish and I remember thinking, you’re not doing yourself any good here.
But, at the time, there are other feelings, there were still some exciting parts to the experience, in a new arena and with a career that felt like it was going somewhere.
Somebody was ringing me asking me if I wanted to do it, a race at Misano, at the time it felt good that I was starting to get my name out there, that I was being asked to do some proper things and people were offering me money. It might not have been very much money at the time, but people were saying, How much do you want to drive?
It was a massive step.
It’s easy to underplay it, to turn that corner from people always saying can you bring money to offering to pay it’s a huge step for me it was for me anyway at the time.
Then, of course, John said: “Oh, well you know, it was a shame about the misfire and it went really well. But I think we should have another go. We should do Donington!”
I was like, “right, okay” but was really thinking “Oh ****ing hell it is horrible isn’t it,” but it was an opportunity!
I remember at Donington going down the Craner Curves, it might have even been in free practice, it certainly was before the race because that’s probably why the records show I did only one race, and the suspension broke halfway down the Craner Curves. I think we’d cured the misfire and the car was quick and as I went to turn left something snapped and I had this huge big spin across the grass and into the gravel.
We got it back to the pits and the suspension had pulled out of the chassis.
Dream Car
There was one big thing that got away from me, which was the factory Audi Touring Car deal in BTCC.
It was the end of 1995 and I’d been driving for Toyota for two years and they were pulling out.
So me and Julian Bailey were both out of a drive and I was talking to all the other manufacturers who had pretty much decided to keep their drivers for the following season.
But Audi were coming into British Touring Cars and that was going to be massive!
That was the deal that everybody wanted. I’d been pushing and chasing and again, looking back you know, you didn’t know who to call! It’s so easy nowadays. Nowadays you just go on the internet and research.
Who’s the boss of Audi? Now you get everything, the guy’s email address, phone number, their secretary’s email and phone number.
I remember it was John Wickham that was running the programme. He was the team manager so I called John and long story short, I knew I had a chance. I knew that they wanted a British driver to go alongside Frank Biela and there really weren’t that many different drivers available that were good enough.
I’d had some decent results in the Toyota, some good results and won races in the BMW, so I knew I had a chance.
So I had an interview and I remember I had the worst cold, looking back it was probably flu – I felt awful and had taken every cold and flu remedy available.
And I’d written a race by race report of the season to explain my performance in the Toyota – our best result. Julian and I both had a couple of fourth places. We hadn’t had a podium and I thought, if I was Audi, you didn’t win any races!
So I wanted to have a really good documented idea of what happened during the season. I thought it was professional. So I spent ages typing out this report (literally with a typewriter) and I went for this interview and did, I thought, a pretty good job.
I remember at the time that John Bintcliffe was there, I knew John from Fiestas because he was from Harrogate nearby.
John Wickham had said to me that they were going to interview him, but only because Audi wanted to see somebody from a junior formula. They’re not really serious.
So I drove back to Leeds and I thought I was going to get it. And obviously, I didn’t and they gave it to John. John’s a great guy, but that decision did bother me. But since then I’ve come to a couple of conclusions.
Firstly, they didn’t want anybody that was going to be quicker than Frank Biela, they wanted a pure Number Two, but also it taught me a massive lesson that I try to pass on to all of the drivers I work with now.
That report that I’d written just looked like a list of excuses.
I always tell my drivers if they’re in a situation like that, if you go in for the meeting, if they invited you for an interview, it’s because they’re interested in you, they want you.
You’ve already passed the first step. You’re already there. And once you’re in the door, and you’ve got a chance, all you have to do is be yourself. Be enthusiastic, be positive, be smiling, be happy? But certainly don’t go in with a bloody long list of excuses that you’ve already typed out. Looking back I could kick myself!
I didn’t have a manager, and now that I manage drivers, I look back and I think there are so many occasions in my career where if I’d had a manager if I’d just had somebody to bounce something off that experience, I would never let any of my drivers make that mistake now.
Editor’s Note: in 2020 we lost Tim’s biggest supporter throughout his racing career – his dad David.
David was an excellent individual, cheerful and positive, hugely proud of his lad. Barely a race weekend went by without a note from David to ensure we’d spotted how well Tim had driven, the opposite of a ‘karting dad’, David was always courteous and relevant, but his pride in his lad shone through.
As with so many people we cared about in 2020 the funeral to celebrate his life happened without many that would have been there to say goodbye and thank you.
Since we couldn’t be there to say goodbye this is just a very brief contribution to tell Tim how much we thought of his Dad.
Our deepest condolences Tim.
Rest in Peace David.
