Childhood memories of motorsport

Some time ago on my anchor.fm station Motorspit, I had a call-in from a listener asking me when was the moment I knew that being a racing driver was what I wanted to do with my life. The answer is really split into two parts, but for the first part I described two childhood memories of mine that are very clear in my mind and which really represent the beginning of my passion for racing.

The first memory takes me back to my living room of my parent’s two-up two-down house south of Birmingham watching Formula One with my Dad. Going by the cars I remember, I’d estimate it was 1991. My Dad is comfortably over six feet tall so he was like a giant to me at that time. I’ve caught up with him nowadays but I was a tiny kid! Not even tall enough to ride a go-kart on my eight birthday, but that’s another story.

Young Gary and Dad

I was born in 1988 so I was only about three years old watching the TV that day. The two cars I remember watching were Nigel Mansell’s Canon Williams Renault and the Marlboro McLaren of Ayrton Senna. What’s worth remembering is that as a kid at such an impressionable age I was watching grand prix racing in it’s most colourful and captivating era. The cars were wide, low, resplendent in their tobacco-influenced liveries. They were naturally the fastest thing at the time and boy did they look it, they moved around like nothing we see these days. Darting about the track, skittish, bouncing over the bumps in the road, diving over the kerbs, ducking and weaving as they attempted to pass. And all this to the firework display of the titanium skid plate kissing the round every few seconds, showering bright orange sparks into the sky!

1991 British Grand Prix, Silverstone. Image credit motorsport.com

I really miss the colour and the atmosphere of motor racing in the 1990’s. Not only were the car liveries some of the most iconic of all time, thanks largely to tobacco sponsorship, but the circuits that the various championships listed were proudly decorated by the logos of big corporations and local sponsors alike. It gave watching a race a special kind of uniqueness that is sadly missing from today’s series-sponsor package that make every racetrack look more or less the same. Both the cars and the tracks have really lost their authentic character, compared to the vibrancy and diversity of the 1980’s and 1990’s.

The other thing that struck me about watching ‘our hero’ Nigel duking it out with Mr Senna was how much of the driver you could see in the cockpit, working every input on the steering wheel, moving the head to focus on every apex and it gave the driving a real human element that you just don’t get in modern motor racing. Open cockpit cars have so much safety equipment cocooning the driver, set only to get worse with the Halo in 2018, and we might as well have robots in the cockpit and the fans would be none the wiser. It was different in those days, and it made me want to be that guy I could see driving his heart out in the cockpit of this colourful, spectacular racing machine.

Ayrton Senna (Malboro McLaren Honda) and Nigel Mansell (Williams Renault). Image credit osmais.com

I remember asking my Dad; “Dad, who’s the best?” and he replied “Ayrton Senna’. And we sat watching Ayrton and Nigel fight for position and all I could remember feeling was how much I wanted to be the best. To be just like Nigel and take the challenge to the champion, I wanted to race against the best and to beat the best. And even at the tender age of three I had my sights on Ayrton’s crown! I wanted it to be me in that cockpit, more than anything else.

Ayrton sadly wasn't around when I got my first taste of Formula One up close, at the British Grand Prix in 1995. We had a family outing on practice day (Friday), I remember being allowed to take the day of school!

Dad and I at the 1995 British Grand Prix Practice Day.

With a clear passion for Formula One building steadily, seeing the Le Mans 24 hours for the first time was a second milestone memory for me. Again going by the cars I would estimate it to be either the 1988, 1989 or 1990 race. Only being born in 1988 it must have been that I was watching the footage a few years later rather than live on TV, and I also remember having turned the TV off that the first thing I went to do afterwards was to get my toy box out and close the ‘streets’ of my play mat town for a miniature road race of my own, so I was probably a little older, maybe five or six years old. Regardless, I remained every bit impressionable as the day of that first Formula One memory.

The Le Mans circuit is famous for Les Hunadieres, the famous 6.0km back straight on the former route national N138. The defining characteristic of the also-known-as Mulsanne straight up until the end of the 1990’s was how much it rose and fell over it’s length, I describe it in my podcast as being like the spine of a stegosaurus.

Le Mans 1989, Mulsanne Straight. Image from YouTube / EuroSport

What I remember watching was the cars coming out of the Tertre Rouge corner at the beginning of the Mulsanne and heading down this huge hill, accentuated by the vantage point of the television camera. What made it special was that even though Grand Prix racing had it’s largest ever grids during this time, still only twenty six cars made it to the start and the rate of attrition was very high. Yet here we had a pack of forty, fifty cars with headlights ablaze racing around in this huge pack and they were going to do it all day and all night! I remember the dazzling headlights coming onto the straight and all of these wonderful sports cars, Mercedes, Jaguar, Toyota, Porsche, the height of the Group C prototype era.

Sauber-Mercedes C9 Group C Sports Prototype at Le Mans, 1989

I think that due to the fact that Le Mans is a road race added so much to the majesty of what I was observing, the road markings, cafés and street signs being passed by the cars at over 200mph. I always enjoy seeing pictures of circuits like Spa Francorchamps in the period before the road sections were fully closed off, because this kind of additional ‘furniture’ again adds to the character of the circuit. With nearly all of the Le Mans circuit being based on public road it seemed doubly amazing that this was a race and an event to conquer, a real test of man and machine, battling not just the other cars, but the roads themselves, the clock, the weather conditions and all manner of unexpected situations.

I got really turned on to Le Mans as an environment where I would seek a thrill. Watching Steve McQueen’s film Le Mans for the first time a few years later re-affirmed this attraction, the draw that the place has. And funnily enough, watching this movie it wasn’t the racing parts that stood out for me. My favourite scene from that film is when Michael Delaney is driving his Porsche 911 down that french country lane, out of season, between Arnage corner and Maison Blanche, where he stops to reflect on the accident he had suffered during the previous twenty four hours race. That link between the simple country road and the battleground of the Circuit du 24 Heures is what really did it for me. This place is special - for one week per year! I loved that about it.

Writing in 2017, I’ve been to Le Mans four times now as a spectator (not to mention twice out of season). There’s a certain something about it that I just can’t put my finger on. It is a majesty, an attraction, a resplendence and an atmosphere, it’s something that makes it the greatest spectacle in motor racing. Well - in car racing. And whatever it is, it’s what fuels my ambition to one day compete at the Le Mans twenty four hours.

Dad and I enjoying a beer at Le Mans, 2017. He even stole my Team Oreca hat :)