TIM SUGDEN: WINNING IS THE GREATEST FEELING
Tim Sugden was within half-a-lap of finishing on the podium at Le Mans in 1998. Sharing a McLaren with Bill Auberlen and Steve O’Rourke, the McLaren crew performed some heroics among the phalanx of works operations.
It was a long way from the Yorkshireman’s grounding in karting and Formula Ford, but it was the high point of a career wherein he had to wheel and deal his way from being a second-hand car salesman to a professional racing driver with BMW and Toyota in the British Touring Car Championship.
Sugden, who has remained loyal to his Yorkshire roots, went on to operate his own team and manage a number of up-and-coming drivers. He has remained at the heart of motorsport and insists that he hasn’t retired yet. Well, not just yet.
We are grateful that Sugden took time from his busy schedule to take a walk down memory lane.
Question: What got you interested in motor racing in the first place? Steven Nye Via email Tim Sugden: “When I was a kid, me and my cousin, on the first week of the summer break, would be packed off to Grassington in North Yorkshire. Just me and him, his mum and my mum. I was about seven years old. The woman who lived next door to wear we were staying gave me a book to read to pass the time. It was a book about cars and car racing.
“There was just one single page in this book about karting. Literally just one page. But I kept this book for ages and I kept reading this one page over and over again. It said you could start go-karting when you were 12 years old. I showed the book to my dad. He turned around and said ‘that looks expensive, you had better start saving up’. That was his last word on the matter and I never mentioned it to him again.
“I kept looking at this book, every day. I started saving up all my pocket money, Christmas money and birthday money. I did bob-a-job when I was in the scouts – and I had one card which was my scouts’ card where I would mark off the jobs and then another unofficial card for extra jobs that went towards the karting fund. I did anything I could to get money.
“Just before my 12th birthday, I was able to go to my dad and tell him I had £200 saved up. My dad was amazed and that was a heck of a lot of cash back then. Dad realised I was pretty serious and we found this place where you could buy a kart somewhere near Sheffield. We paid £110 for this thing and we didn’t really know what we had bought. It turned out to be a complete piece of shit. Dad was a pretty capable mechanic and he had a couple of mates who had raced. Between us, we just learned about how to race this thing. We took it to my first race in 1976.”
MN: You were very successful in karts weren’t you?
TS: “I won the British Series which was a seven-round championship. Johnny Herbert was second in the year I won it.
“When I finished karting when I was
