The Aussie who never planned to change motorsport

For an Australian who arrived in the UK in 1990 supposedly just for 12 months, Alan Gow’s influence on British motorsport has been remarkable. He has spent the majority of the past 35 seasons at the helm of the British Touring Car Championship, turning the domestic tin-top series into an internationally recognised juggernaut attracting huge crowds and large television audiences.

But he also served 12 years as chairman of British motorsport’s governing body, then called the Motor Sports Association, overseeing a raft of changes. Not bad for someone who arrived on these shores with “absolutely no gameplan”.

“I decided to come over to the UK for 12 months, which is what a lot of Australians did,” Gow recalls. “I had no intention other than coming here for 12 months, having a look around and doing some travelling. At that stage, I was unmarried, and I had sold my race team, so I had no real ties.”

That race team was the former works Holden Australian Touring Car Championship squad he co-owned alongside legendary nine-time Bathurst winner Peter Brock. But Gow’s interest in motorsport had not been lifelong – instead, a chance encounter kickstarted what became a passion.

“A friend of my sister was into motor racing, and he just asked me if I wanted to come along with him to a race meeting at Calder Park,” he explains. “I was 15/16 and I got hooked. Before that I had no interest in motor racing.”

He promptly joined his local car club, initially volunteering to help run events, before taking to the wheel himself. A career in the motor trade, alongside property development, followed and he was subsequently introduced to Brock, the pair becoming firm friends. Gow assumed a senior role within Brock’s team but, in a sign of what was to come, also instigated the Australian Touring Car Entrants Group to operate the ATCC series.

The BTCC has grown into a huge success under Gow's management

Photo by: JEP

The pair then sold up and one of the British motorsport figures Gow knew prior to arriving for his gap year was Andy Rouse – who had previously sold Gow and Brock a couple of Ford Sierra RS500s after the Holden turmoil. “One day I went to see Andy to say hello and he offered me some work,” Gow continues. “As we got to know each other, and as I got to know other people, we came up with the same idea as in Australia; let’s form ourselves into a group to approach the MSA about taking over the rights to touring cars.”

Suddenly Gow had gone from having no plan to taking the reins of Britain’s premier motorsport series, not that it was so premier in those days. The BTCC was at a crossroads and it was the decision to fully adopt the two-litre ruleset that would become known as Super Touring, allied to some clever promotion, that proved game-changing. “We introduced a set of regulations that was open to just about any manufacturer you could think of,” he says. “It was one class of car – before it was multi-class, which was too confusing. It was popular with fans, and it was popular with manufacturers. The races were short and sharp, so it was ideal for TV.”

Super Touring hit a sweet spot, with the enhanced TV coverage building momentum and leading to major marques queuing up to spend big money to enter. Alongside the introduction of some popular regulations, Gow also rewrote the rulebook in terms of the events themselves.

"I wanted to have a break. But no one likes to see their baby not doing well, so eventually I came back midway through 2003. I took it over again and rebuilt it back to health" Alan Gow

“When we took over, the BTCC was a halfway house between a club event and where we are now,” he relates. “The racing was OK but there wasn’t a big number of people going. It was just an event with some other races. We changed the way we did that to make touring cars the headline event. We introduced a set of support races that were strong, manufacturer-backed races that made the whole day more interesting and were the same at any venue. That’s what made our race meetings different from anything else.”

Adding to the “snowball effect” were the popular TOCA video games that helped ensure the BTCC and its cast of star drivers were hitting the mainstream. But Gow was also keen not to lose sight of the bigger picture. “On Fridays we would do school and hospital visits with drivers and teams,” he adds of an element of the race events that continues to this day. “We would invite a ton of school kids along on the Friday to get them excited about motor racing. They could sit in the cars and tell their parents and they would come on the Sunday. No one is born loving motor racing, we’re all introduced to it by someone, so the more we can do to introduce people to our sport, the better it is for everyone.”

For all the wonder of the Super Touring era, and the transformative effect it had on British motorsport, it would not last forever. The bubble burst with spending spiralling out of control and just Ford, Vauxhall and Honda were left by 2000. As thoughts turned to the future, a new player arrived on the scene.

The BTCC built up an attractive support class programme to strengthen its race weekend package

Photo by: JEP

The Octagon consortium was snapping up elements of the UK racing world left, right and centre – including the Brands Hatch group of circuits and an unsuccessful brief tenure at Silverstone. The BTCC was in its sights too. “Octagon made an offer we couldn’t refuse for TOCA,” states Gow.

But the new BTC-T era was not a success and the big marques generally stayed away. It was not long before Octagon began asking Gow about assuming control once more. “I didn’t want to at that stage, I wanted to have a break,” he says. “But no one likes to see their baby not doing well, so eventually I came back midway through 2003. I took it over again and rebuilt it back to health.”

The S2000 regulations got the championship back on track, while the subsequent Next Generation Touring Car ruleset has provided stability. And the championship continues to benefit from enormous free-to-air TV coverage from ITV, something Gow considers vital even amid the decline in linear TV viewing.

Gow’s no-nonsense leadership has been a constant throughout. Asked about his management style, he says: “Whether people like me or not, they’ll tell you I’m a control freak. And I’ve got very good attention to detail.”

That attention to detail has also been turned in broader directions than just the BTCC, including his spell as MSA chairman. “I think they gave me the job to shut me up!” Gow quips in reference to the criticism governing bodies regularly receive. He helped instigate several key changes and licensing was one of the first areas he tackled. “You used to get paper licences and they would ask you to attach a photo,” he recalls. “I said, ‘We’re meant to be a progressive sport, you’ve got to be kidding.’ I quickly introduced credit card-style licences. We also took the governing body from just being governors to also being a promoter.”

The ‘Go Motorsport’ initiative, aimed at attracting a new competitor base, was another development during Gow’s chairmanship, and he was also in charge when the MSA Academy was introduced to support the next generation of rising stars. But his influence has not just been felt at a domestic level. Gow has served as president of the FIA’s Touring Car Commission since 2010, but it is his work with the FIA Foundation – the organisation’s charitable arm – that he is particularly proud of. “It was one of the best boards I sat on because you had a real sense of doing something good,” he says, citing hundreds of free helmets being given to moped riders in Vietnam as one example.

Gow has certainly packed a lot into his career – including success in the 1999 2CV 24 Hours at Mondello Park as a driver – but, despite having recently turned 70, he has no plans to slow down: “While I’m doing a good job and I enjoy what I’m doing, why would I stop? There’s still a lot to do – the championship is nowhere near its peak. I’ve got no intention to stop. The last time I stopped for a couple of years, it wasn’t good for the BTCC.”

Gow returned to the BTCC chief role in mid-2003 after a downturn in fortunes for the series

Photo by: Malcolm Griffiths / Motorsport Images

Among the items on his to-do list is to reinstate a night race into the BTCC, having previously pioneered the concept at Snetterton in 1999. But he also still has ambitions of achieving his long-held goal of bringing a proper street race to the UK.

“We’re the only country in Europe that doesn’t have a street circuit and it does my head in!” he bemoans. “I tried for years to get local governments interested. We did a few demos in Milton Keynes, Newcastle and Edinburgh to try to get support for a street race. Thousands of people attended those, but we couldn’t get the support.”

Should the street race dream become reality, it would be another game-changing achievement from a man who has been in the UK for three decades more than he planned.

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Gow still aims to bring back a night race for the BTCC plus find support for a street race

Photo by: Getty Images