DAVID ADDISON: TALKING A GREAT MOTOR RACING GAME
Getting a front-row seat to some of the finest action on the motorsport globe would be a dream for so many enthusiasts. Being able to get up close to the action and speak to all of those involved would put anyone right in the heart of the spectacle.
David Addison has that envied role. For the last 10 seasons, he has been the main race caller for the British Touring Car Championship that has, this year, returned to prime time mainstream broadcasts on ITV1 alongside exhaustive coverage on ITV4.
While that has brought Addison into the living room of a whole host of fans new to his commentary style, there were decades of graft that went into getting him into that position in the first place, which he explains here.
As well as his broadcast roles with the Stephane Ratel Organisation voicing the GT World Challenge Europe (among many of its other contests) alongside ex-Formula 1 driver John Watson and sharing the talking duties on the BTCC with 1992 title winner Tim Harvey, he still turns his hand to trackside commentaries when his limited time allows. And even short oval fans aren’t unused to his voice either. There can’t be many motorsport followers who get as excited about the Banger World Final at Ipswich as they do the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.
He took time out of his busy schedule in the build-up to last weekend’s Thruxton BTCC rounds to tackle your questions, and we are grateful.
Question: How did it all get started for you? How did the passion come from?
Jake Sanderson
Via email
David Addison: “I suppose, like a lot of small boys, I had an interest in cars. There was a lady called Margaret Simpson who, to this day, is still chief marshal at Oulton Park, and she knew my grandmother. She and her husband were involved, and they knew that I had an enthusiasm for cars and it was decided I should go along. They got us tickets for a meeting at Oulton Park at the end of the 1977 season – the last meeting of the year.
“I hated it and cried all the way through. It was just BARC clubbie, but I just remember it was noisy. I recall walking across the old Eagle Star bridge over Deer Leap just as this grid of cars set off on a warm-up lap. There was all this noise and bustle, and I just didn’t like it. I am sure at that point, my parents thought ‘good, good, that’s got that out of his system, then…’
“A few weeks later, all the toy cars came out at home and I lined them up in a three-by-two formation on the sitting room floor, just like I had seen on the grid at Oulton. Mum and dad realised that the bug hadn’t quite left me…
“From the start of 1978 onwards, I wanted to go racing as often as I could. I don’t know what the tipping point was from crying about the noise to falling in love with it, but it came. Then it became this all-consuming thing. I wasn’t interested in going to watch football like my other mates were. I wanted to go and watch motor racing.
“Mum and dad had been to spectate at Oulton Park because it was a local track and that is the sort of thing you used to do. There was no-one in the family who had raced and there was no background really. In the end, although my mum used to take me to spectate regularly,
