ROB COLLARD: I AM STILL CHASING MORE SUCCESS
A return of 15 wins in the British Touring Car Championship is something to be proud of. Consistent success in the UK’s toughest series is not an achievement that is easy but Rob Collard spent almost two decades at the coal face of the tin-top battles.
The son of National Hot Rod legend Mick ‘Duffy’ Collard naturally started his career on the short ovals and he was a title winner. But his eye was drawn to the BTCC having watched it during its 1990s halcyon period. He eventually made it to the top table and claimed the Independents’Trophy in 2003 in a self-run Vauxhall Astra. After that, there was a long association, mostly with WSR, which took him to almost 500 starts and three fifth-placed finishes in the points tables.
The family is ingrained in motorsport and it is not just about Rob and Duffy. Rob’s youngest son Jordan has forged a reputation in sportscar racing and was runner-up in British GT4 in 2020, while his older brother Ricky is in the middle of his first full British Touring Car Championship season in the Speedworks Toyota.
Collard took time out of his busy schedule to tackle the Motorsport News readers’ questions, and we are grateful.
Question: You naturally followed your dad into motorsport on the short ovals. Was it an interest he encouraged, or did you discover it for yourself?
Abi Crowther Via email Rob Collard: “I actually started as a schoolboy scrambler. So my first-ever competitive race was a motocross race on two wheels racing for Horsham schoolboys. We had lived on a farm and dad had a dirt bike and I had a dirt bike. All of our friends had them.
“My dad didn’t actually come to my first race, I went with some friends. I have still got a dirt bike now which I go out on. I was about 10 or 12 years old when I started doing that and although I had been around the short ovals with my dad, there was no Ministox or anything like that back then: there was no real starting point for short ovals for a kid of my age then. I was 14 when Ministox appeared and my first race in that was at the old Aldershot stadium. The person who was next door to us in the pits was a young Paul Warwick. We raced together a lot.”
MN: Who was better, you or Paul?
“Well all I will say is
