Saluting a driver who helped boost Britain's modern F1 influence

By:

Marcus Simmons

Jan 9, 2020, 2:25 PM

After a disappointing 2019 season in British Touring Cars, Mark Blundell has announced his decision to retire from racing in motorsport. Here, we look back at his early career and salute a driver who engaged in some epic title battles

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The mid-1980s was a terrific time to be a teenaged motorsport fan in the UK.

The British Formula 3 Championship was bursting at the seams after an early-1980s slump in grid numbers. Underneath that on the UK ladder, Formula Ford 2000 had turned into a white-hot arena of talent after its first few years of being populated mainly by FF1600 graduates who hadn't quite been good enough for F3.

For 1985, FF1600 had been rationalised - and enriched - at its top level by the pruning of its four major national championships down to two, with two junior series sitting beneath. Add to that many circuits hosting their own single-venue FF1600 championships of varying quality, with the Champion of Brands arguably the pick of them all.

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Marcus Simmons

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Marcus Simmons is the Deputy Editor of Autosport magazine. As a child he was a regular on the chalk banks of Thruxton – hence his unhealthy obsession with 1970s Formula 2 and F3 – before he became an MSA timekeeper at the age of 17. At 19, his reporting debut for Motoring News arguably overshadowed Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal as the sporting moment of June 1986, and he joined the staff in 1990 after graduating from his degree course in Plymouth. A parallel Formula First career – which was as incident-packed as his childhood exploits in show-jumping and hunter trials – finished when he wrote off his car and put himself in hospital in 1991.

Marcus moved to Autosport in the summer of 1996. Since then he has had two stints as a freelancer and a brief spell as editor of Motor Sport magazine, during which the revered green cover was revived, before he rejoined Autosport in 2008. He lives in Teddington with his wife (who, gratifyingly, grew up within earshot of Castle Combe), daughter, stepson, dog, cat and guitars, and additionally has an adult daughter and stepson.