JOE OSBORNE: MASTER OF THE McLAREN AND THE MICROPHONE
In GT racing it is hard to miss Joe Osborne. For the last decade and more he has been a consistent frontrunning presence in GT3 and GT4 competition, in a variety of machines and in a variety of series at home and abroad.
Osborne is a multiple British GT race winner and a European GT4 champion, and has been a McLaren factory driver for the last five years. That’s a multifaceted role in and out of the car, as we discover from him kindly taking the time to answer Motorsport News readers’ questions.
We find out too that Osborne is a rare case of someone who has built a successful motorsport career without having a family racing background to call upon. This is even though Osborne had the peculiar coincidence of attending the same school as another couple of noteworthy modern British motorsport figures.
Osborne is currently chasing the GT Open title in a McLaren 720S GT3 racing alongside Nick Moss at Optimum Motorsport, and these days he also is increasingly well known as a British GT co-commentator. It’s a role in which he is as forthright as he is as a driver.
Fortunately for us too he’s equally forthright in answering our questions…
Question: Ask Joe about his school days and whether he knew fellow Sharnbrook pupils Olly Gavin and Nick Tandy. Also, what did he think of his games teacher, my cousin Lisa, who taught him in PE classes...
Matt James Via email
Joe Osborne: “Yes correct, I would have called her Mrs Rattu, but she was as scary as Matt luckily so I never misbehaved in any of my PE lessons that’s for sure. I think her husband’s now the headmaster, so weird small world.
“And Olly Gavin and Nick Tandy, I don’t remember either of them at school, I think we all missed each other by about a year. It’s quite a bizarre coincidence that you’ve got Olly Gavin, Corvette factory driver all those years, Nick at Porsche, myself at McLaren. It’s a good state school but it’s nothing crazy. I guess the only thing it’s in motorsport valley, Bedford way, but we didn’t have any karting lessons or anything different. You could maybe say that the roads to Sharnbrook were good as you could hone your skills in on the country roads but apart from that I can’t see any other logic unfortunately.”
MN: Have any of you ever bumped into each other in a paddock?
JO: “Yeah with Nick I’ve met him a few times and his late brother [Joe] actually used to work at Bedford Autodrome so PalmerSport, I used to know him, and then Nick I raced a bit against in British GT. Nick actually fired me off in a British GT Snetterton race while I was in the lead and he was in second, and he actually gave me the place back as we came over the start-finish straight, it would be 2012 ish. My respect for Nick was always high but was even higher after that.
“And Olly Gavin actually lives in the village next to me so we see bits of each other, and we did Spa 24 hours together once in a Barwell Lamborghini with Jon Minshaw and Phil Keen. And Olly actually gave me a fair bit of advice when I was moving from karting to car racing as well, so he was super and it’s a small world, whenever I get a builder or a plumber or anything around and they ask what I do they always go ah you must know Nick Tandy or Olly Gavin. So the three of us are all trying to do the same job from the same area basically.”
MN: So when did your own motorsport interest begin?
“Mine was maybe different to the norm, as in it always feels like the normal racing driver way in is their family are involved in it and I didn’t have any family involvement whatsoever in motorsport. It
