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After the end of the 2007 BTCC season
Matt Neal, Tom Chilton, Anthony Reid and myself did a motorhome racing feature with
Top Gear. I think Matt ended up on his roof, so it probably wasn’t the best way to build a relationship, but it was good fun and hopefully we can do more things like that this year. It was good for the TV, good for the entertainment it provided and good for the British Touring Car Championship. It raised the profile of the sport in general – a lot of people were coming up to me and saying ‘hey, you were on
Top Gear’ – and it was a good laugh as well.
Since then I have recently been selected by the members of the BRDC as one of the 14 top young drivers – or
Superstars – in the UK, which is a great privilege. It’s obviously a great opportunity, and I think it’s a great incentive for any young driver to be given access to these guys like
Damon Hill and Derek Warwick – people who have been around for such a long time and who have huge knowledge of the sport. It’s so difficult in motorsport to key into that from the outside. It’s a great help to be on the inside and be able to talk to them.
I think the major advantage for everybody in the scheme is networking – to be able to meet the people who have been there and experienced all this first-hand. There’s no substitute for that; it’s the old saying that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. These guys I think can really help the sport move forward and bring young talent through. Hopefully that will continue.
Last year was a difficult year for us in the BTCC. Obviously we did it on a very small budget, but we still banged in some good results. Now we need to improve from where we were then.
