Nathan Freke is a modest individual. But the boss of national racing powerhouse Century Motorsport doesn’t really have much to be modest about.
He is a multiple-champion driver, beating some prestigious names as he did so, and reached the feted McLaren Autosport BRDC young driver award final shootout in 2006. For the most part Freke raced with his own Century team, but these days Freke’s driving ambitions are largely on the backburner as he has led the squad into the status of a colossus.
For years, Century routinely bagged honours in British GT and Ginettas. Then, in the last year or two, it has expanded into Porsche competition with equal success, and all-in the team’s scorecard from last year was scarcely believable. Century claimed a multitude of British GT championship crowns, in GT3 and GT4 and for drivers and the team, and this included the crowning glory of the headline GT3 overall drivers’ title. It also, in only its second Carrera Cup GB campaign, had its Rosland Goldbacked squad winning the teams’ title. Century also made its Porsche Sprint Challenge debut and won, and just missed Ginetta GT Academy title glory.
But even all of that is not the culmination, as Freke has set even grander ambitions. This year Century is embarking on its first full international campaign, with GT World Challenge Europe Endurance and Sprint Cup attacks led by its reigning British GT champion Bronze-graded driver Darren Leung. Century even has none other than reigning Formula E World champion Jake Dennis among its driver strength.
Yet, as we discover, Freke’s – and Century’s – story is far from orthodox, including in that the team was started by Freke’s dad as a humble operation under an awning intended help his son’s karting career by making money from odd jobs. As we sat with Freke in Century’s pristine truck during last weekend’s British GT Oulton Park curtain-raiser weekend, we could not have been further removed from those early days. Freke explains too there was no grand plan, rather it’s a matter of reflecting on what he’s done and trying to get better.
We were extremely grateful that Freke gave his time to answer our questions during another busy weekend for the Century team. And we started with another unlikely tale.
Question: How did you get involved in motorsport?
Derek Fleming
Via email
Nathan Freke: “I was car obsessed as a child and my parents never had any motorsport background and it was pure chance really. There was a local newspaper that was advertising the success of a local kart driver, it was an article on some recent wins that he had, and on the bottom of the article it said if you want to get into karting phone this number. So my parents rang the number and the next thing we were testing a go kart at Chasewater.
“I basically raced karts from the age of nine to about 20, won a lot of championships in that time, and then we moved into cars, which was another story, but also by complete chance really. And Century Motorsport was actually started by my father back in 1996 to help pay for my karting. So he basically started a small service up where he opened
