For the past six months, I've had the privilege of interviewing all the Touring Car greats for a new ITV series about the history of the
British Touring Car Championship
(BTCC). Touring Car Legends charts the history of the championship from the first race on Boxing Day 1957 to the present day. The first hour of three will premiere tonight at 8pm on ITV4.
Tommy Sopwith won the first race in 1957
That first race was won by Tommy Sopwith at the wheel of a Jaguar Mk 1. Sopwith is the son of Sir Thomas Sopwith, who gave the world the Sopwith Camel and Hawker Hurricane aeroplanes. "I was spending Christmas with my parents near Winchester and I drove the car to Brands Hatch, put the numbers on it, won the race, and drove back for dinner," he told me. "And you sure as hell couldn't do that today."
Sopwith's father told him to give up motor racing, so in 1961 he took up powerboating instead. He turns eighty this year but clearly hasn't lost his passion for speed. The Mercedes CLS63 AMG in his garage boasts the same number plate as the Jag in which he won at Brands. He's the kind of octogenarian I want to be.
The inaugural championship in 1958 was won by 'Gentleman' Jack Sears in a shirt and tie. "We were more formal back then," he explains. "I was in a habit of nearly always wearing a tie. It never occurred to me to take it off. I just used to tuck it in my shirt." He finished the season tied on points with Sopwith but won a hastily arranged shootout in a Riley. The footage of that shootout at a soaking wet Brands Hatch has been beautifully preserved and is one of my highlights of the series.
Jack Sears took the inaugural title in 1958
Some of the biggest names of the 1960s sadly didn't survive to old age. Jim Clark was the reigning F1 World Champion when he claimed the 1964 Touring Car Championship in a Lotus Cortina before his untimely death at Hockenheim in '68. I did get to speak to his chief mechanic Bob Dance though, who recalls life with Clark and Lotus founder Colin Chapman. The 1960s really was an epic period with Clark, Graham Hill, the Lotus Cortina, the Mini and even a cameo by Steve McQueen, who raced at Brands Hatch.
The gentlemen of the 1960s gave place to the players of the 1970s and the professionals of the 1980s. At the same time, the all-conquering Cortinas gave place to the Capris which gave place to Ford RS500s and the BMW E30 M3s. As someone whose passion for cars was ignited by watching the likes of Andy Rouse and Tim Harvey going head-to-head in RS500s at Donington Park, interviewing the stars of the period could hardly be called work. The younger members of the office couldn't quite understand my excitement as John Cleland came to visit.
Jim Clark leads the pack...
Cleland would be one of the pivotal figures as the BTCC hit the big time with the launch of 'Super Touring' in the 1990s. "There was a period in the mid-nineties when there were more paid drivers in the British Touring Car Championship than there were people paid to drive Formula One cars," says Cleland. The biggest budgets were over £10m a year. "It was just getting silly but we said, 'This is good fun, let them spend the money.'"
The BTCC was now on mainstream TV with commentary from Murray Walker. Visiting Murray's house to interview him for the show was an absolute treat. His office is a den of motorsport memorabilia and he has a Jaguar F1 nosecone doubling as an umbrella holder by the front door. Walker pops up in every episode, even managing to describe Cleland as, "a sort of Scottish cockney sparrow," which is surely a new Murrayism.
In 1992 Cleland's title-deciding crash with Steve Soper was headline news and twenty years on, we've been able to offer fresh insight into what really happened by interviewing all the key protagonists. To this day, Cleland believes, "the man's an animal."
SD1s and Capris? Must be the 70s
A year later, Nigel Mansell showed up for a one-off appearance and promptly crashed spectacularly at Donington Park, creating headlines across the world. Mansell was hit by Tiff Needell, who also happens to be narrating Touring Car Legends. "He may have had a little push," explains Tiff as Mansell hurtles towards the wall.
The third episode of the show describes the end of the Super Touring era and the personal battles that defined the noughties. Matt Neal and Jason Plato both talk openly about their scraps on and off the track. The intensity of their animosity seems a world away from the gentlemanly endeavour of Sopwith and Sears.
Filming Touring Car Legends has been a real privilege. There's some awesome archive footage but it's the characters that really make it. I hope you enjoy it.
Touring Car Legends debuts on ITV4 at 8pm on February 5th, with episodes 2 and 3 following on successive weeks at the same time. The Twitter hashtag is #touringcarlegends.
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