MIKE WILDS THE MAN WHO’S BEEN THERE AND DONE THAT
Mike Wilds is like no other racer. Not an exaggeration. The 75-year-old has just started his 55th season of competition, at Donington Park on Good Friday recently, sharing Ron Maydon’s Ginetta G4R in the Masters Gentlemen Drivers contest.
Wilds indeed has competed in 55 of the last 56 seasons, starting in 1965.
And he’s not been racing to make up the numbers either.
His trajectory took him all the way to Formula 1 and several Le Mans 24-hour races. He’s bagged 12 British championship crowns across sportscars, GTs and touring cars, plus helped Ecurie Ecosse to the World Sportscar Championship Group C2 teams’title.
And Wilds remains competitive behind the wheel today.
As we discover too he’s also found time for tuition – in helicopters as well as racing machines – plus has driven Indycar’s pace car and even fulfilled clerk of the course duties… He’s a thoroughly pleasant chap too.
So let’s start with the point that he first managed to make racing pay.
Question: What are your memories of becoming a professional racing driver? John Cavill Via Facebook Mike Wilds: “Oh gosh! How long have you got? John [Cavill] was instrumental in helping my career along with his father Jack.
“My abiding memory of the time I went from racing part time to professional was when I was racing in Formula 3. John and his father Jack bought a March 713S which was the ex-Rose Bearings James Hunt car, and we raced that. I did my first Formula 3 race at Thruxton I think and I had a really good race against a lot of good guys who were racing the works Marches such as Jochen Mass.
“We were going pretty well which got Jack and John thinking that we should get a current Formula 3 car.And I was working for Firestone race-tyre division at the time as operations manager, I was in charge of getting all the trucks to Formula 1 and sportscar races around Europe in the World championship and organising all the tyres to go to SouthAfrica or wherever the other grands prix and sportscar races were in the world. It was a brilliant job and when they were short I used to travel to some races like Le Mans, Targa Florio, acting as a race tyre engineer on the works Ferraris, Lotuses or whatever we were working with.
“And Jack said that he would buy this Ensign but he didn’t really have the wherewithal to run the car so we needed a budget to do Formula 3 because there were so many Formula 3 races: there was the Forward Trust British championship, there was the Lombard North Central British championship, and there was the John Player European championship. Jack really wanted to do them all which was a very expensive operation.
“I’d been
