How Renault's arrival saved the BTCC career of its Super Touring king

“Today, it’s nice to be remembered and it’s nice when I remember it, but, you know, it doesn’t change my life. It’s hard to say it was the top touring car championship in the world because it’s not fair on some of the others, but it was definitely extremely high level with all the manufacturers, the money that was spent, the drivers were top class most of them, and we had huge crowds.”

Alain Menu is talking of his status as the only driver to twice win the British Touring Car Championship in its halcyon Super Touring era of 1991-2000. What’s more, he did it with two different manufacturers: Renault in 1997; Ford in 2000.

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It’s a typically frank assessment from the 60-year-old Swiss. He hasn’t changed a jot. He was rarely one for histrionics, but had – and still has – an easy charm, a twinkle in the eye that made him a joy to deal with – and perhaps belied the determination that had evolved through a tough road to the top of his sporting field.

Menu was blown away by his reception at last year’s inaugural Super Touring Power, although regrettably can’t make this weekend’s second instalment at Brands Hatch due to prior commitments. It reinforced this Anglophile’s love for a country to which he initially moved in 1987, battling against a lack of finance through the domestic Formula Ford 1600, Formula 3 and Formula 3000 championships: “Most of my career was in the UK from Formula Ford, so I just love the UK and the public.”

That Menu even raced in the BTCC was via an accidental route into touring cars, sparked – but then almost scuppered – by his own nationality: “At the end of 1990 for the last few races of the British 3000 Championship, I got help from the Marc Surer Foundation, and in 1991 Marc was in charge of all the BMW DTM drivers. BMW organised a test in the summer of 1991 in France. Marc pushed really hard to convince BMW to invite me to the test.

“Originally they were reluctant because of the size of the Swiss market; they were not interested in a Swiss driver. I went to the test, and Steve Soper was there as the benchmark and one of the judges. And then I just waited. I was waiting for months, you know?

Menu was the only driver who won two titles during the Super Touring era, and did so with two different manufacturers

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“Just before that test I had no interest in touring cars. I was just dreaming of Formula 1. But I had no chance because I had no money. But then Marc called me and said, ‘I’ve got great news – BMW are going to sign you up to do the British Touring Car Championship next year, and – and – you are going to get paid!’ I would have driven for free.”

Menu contested two late-season rounds of the 1991 DTM, subbing for veteran Dieter Quester, and then headed for Prodrive, which would run him alongside Tim Sugden in the BTCC the following season. But the David Richards-helmed Banbury squad was hamstrung by its Pirelli tyres, while the Vic Lee-run BMWs, including that of eventual champion Tim Harvey, were on the superior Yokohamas.

“The team was really good but it was Prodrive in its infancy,” recalls Menu. “Even with the rally programme they must have had 40 or 50 employees max.”

"That was another piece of luck, that Renault decided at that time to enter the BTCC, otherwise my BTCC career would probably have been the six or seven races I did in 1992"
Alain Menu

Two of those employees would later become instrumental in his later success at the Williams Renault team: “We had one race engineer who was Mark Ellis, and the team manager was Ian Harrison. But the tyres were crap.

“I remember at Silverstone [the British Grand Prix support], I was fighting for P4 with David Leslie and Tim Harvey and I lost the car with four or five laps to go, and I thought DR [Richards] will go mad at me. And it was the exact opposite. He was, ‘Fantastic Alain, you were pushing so hard, we know the tyres are not up to the job, don’t worry about the spin. Basically, you should not have been where you were fighting for P4.’”

But soon came Knockhill, where Menu had a quad-bike accident in the paddock, smashing his right knee and ruling him out for the rest of the season, and which “I’m still paying for 30 years later. Even if I walk for an hour or two it’s very painful for days.

“My problem is I had that in the summer of 1992, and then at Nogaro at the end of 1993 we went with the Renault 19 for the last round of the French championship, and I had a shunt and damaged the same knee again. I had surgery with one of the top surgeons in Europe, in London. He told me at the time he did a great job but ‘I’m not God so it won’t be as good as it was!’”

Menu's BTCC journey began with Prodrive-run BMWs in 1992, but the tyres - and then injury - held him back

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Crucially, the restructured knee never caused an issue when driving, even though Menu “never left-foot braked”. And his dropping by BMW was not related to any quad-bike shenanigans. “BMW had too many drivers for 1993, and even though I did a good job in that half-season they couldn’t offer me a contract,” he explains.

But Renault UK was on the verge of entering the BTCC. Menu already had a relationship with the organisation through the company he had set up with wife Caroline to supply SNC racewear, and the new-for-1991 Clio Cup UK was a client.

“Tim Jackson [the late head of Renault UK motorsport] contacted me early in 1992 before my Knockhill accident, and told me that it was still a secret at the time but we would very much like to enter the BTCC in 1993, and we are interested in your services as a number two,” he recalls. “I guess also because I spoke French, and people noticed that I had done a good job in the Pirelli-shod BMW.

“When Renault UK signed me up I was still on crutches. I had to go and see one of their own doctors before signing me, to make sure I was not telling them fibs and I was fit to drive. That was another piece of luck, that Renault decided at that time to enter the BTCC, otherwise my BTCC career would probably have been the six or seven races I did in 1992.”

Menu holds Jackson and Renault UK chief Michel Gigou in the highest regard, lamenting “it’s a shame because we won the championship in 1997 and Michel left Renault UK at the end of 1996”. Up until the end of 1994, the programme – initially with the recalcitrant 19, then with the Laguna – had been run by Giles Butterfield’s MCT operation, before Renault pushed the boat out for 1995 and recruited a new touring car offshoot of the Williams F1 team.

Here, Menu was reunited with team chief Harrison and engineer Ellis, not that he viewed this as entirely positive: “In 1992 I didn’t really get on with Mark, because I thought he was very much Tim Sugden-biased. We didn’t really get on, and we didn’t keep in touch in 1993 or 1994.

“Ian was setting up the whole Williams touring car operation, and he asked me to come to his office, and he told me, ‘We are getting Mark Ellis and I want him to be your race engineer’. And my answer was, ‘No way’. ‘Why?’ ‘Well, 1992, we didn’t really get on, he was really with Tim.’

“He said, ‘Listen, Mark really wants to work with you, we can win the championship’. I’m not completely stupid so I went, ‘Yeah OK’, and it was fantastic. Mark is top notch – he’s the best I’ve come across.”

Menu believes he could have won the 1995 title that went to Vauxhall rival Cleland, but made amends two years later

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Menu and Williams finished as BTCC runner-up in both 1995 and 1996 (he had also taken second place in 1994), before sledgehammering their way to 12 wins in 1997 and the title. Not only had Gigou left Renault UK, but Harrison had also departed Williams in order to become a director of the new Triple Eight Vauxhall team; perhaps his absence played its part in a tale Menu tells about the pre-season…

“There was massive development from Sodemo [the French company that built the Renault engines],” says Menu. “They came up with their own ECU and engine management system [to replace the Magneti Marelli kit used by the team]. We tested at Jarama and we kept having niggling issues with it.

“It would work and then it would stop and then it would have a misfire. At the end of the week they had to make the decision and I said, ‘We’ve got a car to win the championship, we’ve got to hit the ground running, and with that system it’s not ready yet – maybe it will be later on during the year, but right now it’s not’.

"We had some reliability issues, my car was finished the day before the first meeting. If not I would have won the championship in 1995, I’m convinced"
Alain Menu

“We all agreed, and then at the meeting nobody said anything! Bernard Mange was there, the big boss from Sodemo, and even Tim Jackson was there, and I had to say it. I said, ‘Look sorry guys, but we cannot start like that’. And yeah, that didn’t go down very well with the French, but I was right – we ended up winning the first four races.”

On a hot weekend at Snetterton in August, Menu became champion. Was it a relief to finally be crowned after coming so close three times?

“It was, but at the same time I knew it was coming maybe two weekends before,” he says. “At the end of the day I hate losing more than I love winning, but when you’ve been second three times that means you’ve been competitive for three years in a row. And to win a championship you also need a bit of luck.

“I still think one of my best seasons, if not the best season, was 1995, my first year with Williams. But there we had some reliability issues, my car was finished the day before the first meeting. If not I would have won the championship in 1995, I’m convinced.”

Menu stayed for one more season with Renault in 1998, but that summer came news that he would return to Prodrive in 1999 alongside Anthony Reid (recruited from Nissan). The team had been given Ford’s works deal, with the plan of returning the Mondeo to the front of the field. All the talk at the time was of big-money contracts – perhaps stereotypically when we’re talking of a Swiss and a Scot – but, even now, Menu shrugs that off.

Menu eased to the crown in 1997, taking a dominant double at Croft along the way

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“I had kept in touch with David Richards and David Lapworth [Richards’s right-hand man and Prodrive technical leader] from 1992,” he recounts. “DR was trying to get me back for 1995 with the Alfa Romeos, and before that at the end of 1992 he was talking to Mercedes for 1993. I knew what the plan was, and they were going to do the engines themselves. It was like Williams – a massive undertaking.

“I was talking to different manufacturers, and at one point I had to make a decision, so I took an A4 sheet of paper and I did two columns for each manufacturer, with pluses and minuses. And the Ford one had I think 10 or 12 minuses and two pluses, and I ended up going there… It was a gut feeling. It was not money, because I asked every manufacturer for the same amount. Actually, Anthony probably got more money than me.”

As a prelude to the current BTCC-bestriding double act of Menu’s future protege Ash Sutton and engineer Antonio Carrozza, he insisted on Ellis – who went on to become a key part of Red Bull’s F1 domination – going with him: “Initially he wasn’t that keen, and I was really pushing. I was talking to David Lapworth about it. I said, ‘It doesn’t matter what it costs, you’ve got to get this guy’. And that made the difference, because the team is not just one person for sure.”

Menu took one win in 1999, before a winter of development led by Ellis and George Howard-Chappell produced an all-conquering Mondeo for 2000. He and Reid would also be joined by Rickard Rydell, on ‘loan’ from sister marque Volvo after its pull-out from the BTCC. The grid was small, but the competition was fierce between Ford, Honda and Vauxhall, and also within the teams themselves…

Menu’s second crowning as king of the BTCC, on a dark September night at Silverstone, was the polar opposite to his 1997 title. Three years earlier, it had always looked likely and his only intra-team opposition came from rookie Jason Plato: “It was massive because my two team-mates were top, top drivers. I’m not saying that Jason wasn’t, but 1997 was his first year. And then the last race was at night, and I don’t like racing at night – I’ve never been keen. Plus I went off in race one.

“I was behind the Armco thinking, ‘Shit, I’ve lost it, stupid’. And then I started to do the maths again and thought, ‘Oh no, maybe it’s still doable’. There was massive pressure going into the last race, so that was completely different to 1997 where I was totally relaxed, because if it did not happen for some reason at Snett then it would happen at the next race meeting.”

While Tom Kristensen won the last race of the BTCC’s Super Touring era for Honda, Menu was its final champion. An era had ended not only on-track, but also off-track. Menu became firm pals with Rydell, and says he also got on well with Renault team-mates Harvey and Will Hoy.

After switching to Ford for 1999, he faced off against top-drawer team-mates Reid and Rydell in 2000

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But in a racing context he was a social loner. While his BTCC rivals played golf together, he preferred to spend time with his family.

“I was not part of the gang!” he laughs. “They used to go out for dinner together on Friday or Saturday. Tim tried to get me into golf in 1993, but I think I went twice – it was too frustrating. They would go out together for dinner before a race, all happy as Larry, and on a Sunday then they would shout at one another. I could not see the point.

“Everybody knows Jason and I didn’t have the best relationship – it was OK in 1998, but 1997 not. Now we are good mates. Anyway, driving back home from Snetterton, I’d won the championship, Jason had won his first race. And probably for 20 minutes Chloe [his daughter], who was three years old, was singing, ‘I love Jason, I love Jason Plato’. We could not help but laugh. Kids are great…”

Menu held his nerve to claim the BTCC's final Super Touring era crown in 2000 with Ford

Photo by: James Moy