When Neal spurned a factory Volvo seat

After Matt Neal impressed in his battle with fellow British Touring Car Championship star Rickard Rydell and Jim Richards for victory in the 1998 Bathurst 1000, Volvo came calling.

An underwhelming season for its second driver Gianni Morbidelli in the BTCC meant the ex-Formula 1 driver had exited stage left and there was now a vacancy for Neal alongside reigning champion Rydell at the TWR-run team.

But Neal instead remained at independent squad Team Dynamics and from there created a BTCC behemoth.

"I got the call but it was no-earner for me - it wasn't one of the big paid drives," Neal recalls.

"I'd been testing with the Nissan [Primera] over the winter at Albacete and then I got the nod to test at Jerez with TWR.

"I went and thought, 'I can't drive this thing'. I was two seconds off Rickard.

"They asked me what I wanted to change on the S40 but I wanted to change nothing. The car does it, Rickard does it, so I wanted to work it out.

"We did a full day there and by the end I was within a couple of tenths. I'd figured it out but it was hard work."

"The team gave me a deadline to make my mind up. I thought, 'Stuff it, I'm going to stay' and the rest is history" Matt Neal

Struggles to adapt to the Volvo's understeer-biased balance hadn't killed the deal, leaving the door open for Neal still to join. But time was ebbing away.

"The sponsorship was already in place with Team Dynamics, who had been speaking to [Australian touring car star] Paul Morris to replace me for 1999," Neal explains.

"The team gave me a deadline to make my mind up and I remember Morris sitting in the office and we were together and I got the call from Volvo.

"I thought, 'Stuff it, I'm going to stay' and the rest is history."

Arguably, the most significant part of that history comes from Donington Park at the start of the 1999 season.

When Neal might have been at the wheel of the factory S40 Super Tourer, he was instead relieving Alan Gow of £250,000 for becoming the first independent driver to win a race in that era of the BTCC.

"We had the big win, which put you on the map," says Neal. "The money was great - although we had to give a third back to Nissan for their employee Christmas fund, which was fine - and then a load went into buying a new truck and starting who we are today.

"[Staying at Team Dynamics] was probably the best move I've done."

Now that Neal is a three-time BTCC champion, it seems the bold decision to let one of the most coveted drives for 1999 pass by was the right thing to do.

In his place, Vincent Radermecker filled the second Volvo seat. As Rydell dropped to third in the points in the face of Nissan dominance, Radermecker ended up winless and only eighth. Volvo withdrew at the end of the season.