Matt Neal: king of the independents

Winning in the BTCC was hard enough during the 1990s even if you had manufacturer machinery, so imagine what it was like if you were a privateer. Matt Neal doesn't have to, he was there. And he became comfortably the era's leading independent.

"The first few years I had in the BTCC, I'd have done double backflips just to get into the top 10," says the now three-time champion and mainstay of the factory Honda squad.

"That's how difficult it was for a privateer team against the works boys. These guys who win a race nowadays from a reversed-grid pole and with minimum weight - they haven't got a clue about just how hard it was for us to do what we did."

During what is universally acknowledged as the series' high-point, the decadent era of big-budget Super Touring machinery, the task he faced in clawing his way from back-of-the-grid obscurity to the top step of the podium was nothing short of superhuman.

That he managed it, and in the most Hollywood of fashions on live TV, is testament to the dogged determination of the lanky midlander and the entire Team Dynamics outfit - now running the aforementioned Honda programme - to never quit, no matter how tough the going got.

Neal was the star of the privateers' category - known then as the TOCA Cup and backed for a number of years by French fuel giant Total - winning it in 1993, '95, '99 and 2000 in BMW, Ford and Nissan machinery. Already a favourite among the fans, he became a cult hero during the latter part of the era by regularly putting his Primera GT where a non-works machine had no right.

"People's champion? Yeah, I guess I was, and I admit, I did play up to it," he says. "Everyone loves to see an underdog doing well and when we were up near the front in 1999 and 2000, the way the fans got behind us was just amazing.

"During the pitlane autograph sessions we'd be getting similar crowds to the works boys. It was a bit different when I came back as a works driver with Vauxhall a couple of years later and got booed at Brands Hatch!"

Neal, already a star name in Group N saloon racing, made three appearances in the BTCC in 1991 in Pyramid, TechSpeed and Roy Kennedy-run BMWs, and then under the auspices of Dave Lampit "out of the very unit in Pershore we now occupy as Honda Racing" the following season.

The move that was to set up the rest of the decade came with the formation of Team Dynamics - to run ex-Vic Lee Racing kit - by Neal's father Steve at the end of '92.

"I turned down the Vauxhall Cavalier to do that too," Neal remembers. "It was probably the wrong thing to do, given how we struggled to get an overall result for so many years. But I'd been on BMW Junior Team tests and figured that by aligning myself with them, that I'd have a better chance of a works drive somewhere down the line."

The BMW years were successful enough within the context of privateer competition; the '92 crown was narrowly lost to James Kaye while he did take the independents' title the following season as part of a three-car Dynamics line-up alongside Ray Bellm and Alex Portman.

After a brief sojourn as a Mazda works driver in '94 - a year blighted by a huge accident at Silverstone that caused him to miss a handful of races, and the team's withdrawal mid-season - Neal was back within the family fold.

"We [Dynamics] got told about four weeks before the start of the season that Graff Racing in France were looking to offload one of their Mondeos on the cheap," Neal recalls. "So [long-time Dynamics technical guru] Barry Plowman and I attached a trailer to the back of my car, drove down to France and collected the car. Big-budget stuff!

"And then we won the class first time out at Donington. Fantastic. But that car was good for two reasons; firstly we had a dynamite Cosworth engine and secondly Dunlop - which was down to just Volvo in terms of works teams - helped us out a bit with the tyres and made sure we had rubber that was only one stage below their best.
"We won the title comfortably, but best of all was coming 11th out of 55 cars at the World Cup at Paul Ricard in October."

After a disastrous follow-up season as a two-car operation with 1990 BTCC champ Robb Gravett alongside Neal, Dynamics switched to Nissans midway through 1997 and ran with Primeras of varying specification and age until the end of the Super Touring era.

This, coupled with the arrival of gifted engineer David Potter and the end of a control-tyre deal for the privateers that kept them out of the overall hunt, launched Neal towards the sharp end.

"By that point both me and the team - and even my sponsors - had outgrown the independents' race and we wanted to go after the big boys," he says. "Trouble was, your Gianni Morbidellis and Derek Warwicks - the ex-F1 guys - don't like being beaten by the pikey privateer, so I ended up not even winning the indie title for a couple of years because I'd go after the big boys and end up getting shoved off.

"I had to sacrifice good results and have the odd accident to show these guys that I couldn't be bullied off the track. But you only had to do it once and they got the message."

And then came Donington Park on April 5, 1999, and a famous maiden victory.

"That was the first time we had the same tyres available to us as the works teams, and look what we managed," he says.

"To be on pole, lead, stall in the pits and then come back from fifth to win during the final third of the race... magic. And of course there's the famous picture of Alan Gow handing me the cheque for £250,000 for being the first privateer to win a BTCC race in Super Touring - that was just under a third of our budget for the year when the works Nissan team were spending £12 million!

"There's been some good success for us since then; winning the last international Super Touring race at Estoril in 2001 against the works Alfas and Hondas, and having the three BTCC championships, but that one race at Donington is still the one I get asked about most often and the one I cherish above all others."

For this and more on Super Touring, see this week's AUTOSPORT magazine, out on August 15. Also watch out for our online Super Touring content every day this week.