Formula 1's only Class B champion

Britain's title-free run between James Hunt's 1976 triumph and Nigel Mansell's success in 1992 remains the country's longest wait for a Formula 1 world champion, though it did pick up an F1 title of sorts during that period.

By winning the 1987 Jim Clark Trophy, Jonathan Palmer has the distinction of being Formula 1's sole officially recognised Class B champion. The award was created to give teams not running turbocharged engines something to fight for, and generally featured between four and six qualifiers.

That meant at different times Palmer was up against Tyrrell team-mate Phillipe Streiff, March's Ivan Capelli, Larrousse drivers Yannick Dalmas and Philippe Alliot, Nicola Larini at Coloni and the AGS pair of Pascal Fabre and (for a couple of races) Roberto Moreno.

"I cared very much," Palmer tells Autosport. "That was the championship I was trying to win and I won it. I'm proud of it. It wasn't a walkover, but I won it quite convincingly and that's all I could do at the time."

Palmer was comfortably the most competitive of that contingent in 1987, taking seven class wins and scoring overall points on three occasions to wind up 11th in the drivers' standings.

His main challenge came from Streiff and Alliot, with the trio sharing the first three class wins between them - Palmer won from 'pole' in Brazil before retiring from the next two races as Streiff won in San Marino and Alliot took advantage of Capelli's March engine expiring to triumph in Belgium.

Palmer scored his first outright points with fifth overall and class victory in Monaco, then made it back-to-back B wins in Detroit.

He won again on home soil, but Streiff victories either side in France and Germany kept the pressure on.

Palmer was back on top in Hungary, but then endured a five-race winless run, not helped by a collision in Spain while leading the class battle.

Thanks to Capelli and Alliot restricting Streiff to one victory (in Italy) in that spell, Palmer maintained his advantage and clinched the title with back-to-back wins in Japan and Australia at the end of the season.

There were no official podium presentations for the Class B fight, which Palmer remembers initially as something nobody else seemed to care about - before his memory softens.

"I think it was probably seen by everybody with turbo engines as a slight irrelevance at the back of the field!" he says at first. "A sort of consolation championship. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on it.

"When I finished fifth at Monaco I think people could see it was a pretty good achievement. I think generally it wasn't much on the radar, but they probably had a vague interest."

Fourth place at Adelaide in the season finale represents Palmer's best result in F1. It's no coincidence, like his maiden points finish, that it came on a street course.

That result in Monaco, where Palmer qualified the DG016 15th and rose steadily up the order, was one of several strong performances on the streets of the principality throughout a career in underdog machinery.

"Street circuits were always my forte," he recalls, "I think partly because I would overthink.

"I would think very carefully about the racing and I was pretty intense, which was generally a good thing, but it could become a negative on some fast, long circuits with big braking, in that I'd overthink and make small mistakes, or not be as quick as I could be.

"On a street circuit it was just one frantic blur of activity. Monaco was just bam-bam-bam."

The streets of the principality were kind to Palmer, who ranks the 1988 race as "one of my great performances".

"In '88 the 017 was a bit of a dog of a car and we went to Monaco with a short-wheelbase car and struggled," he says. "I had a gearbox problem and jumped in the spare, which was set up in long-wheelbase trim. I qualified 10th, which was phenomenal in that car, and I got fifth!"

In results terms the 1987 campaign with Tyrrell was Palmer's best in F1, ending with seven points and 11th in the standings. That he was with the race-winning outfit at a time when it was a long way from replicating its former glories is unfortunately fitting for his F1 career as a whole.

An entire generation, including sons Jolyon and Will, only knows Palmer as a successful businessman, championship founder and UK circuit saviour. The British Formula 3 and European Formula 2 title-winning rising star of the early '80s seems like a different man entirely.

Before his time with Tyrrell, Palmer's F1 career from his Williams debut in 1983 - the team rewarded his test-driver efforts with an entry in the European Grand Prix at Brands Hatch - is best summarised as character-building over three seasons with uncompetitive and unreliable RAM and Zakspeed machinery.

It could, however, have been very different.

"I would've liked to have gone straight into a competitive drive," Palmer admits.

"I tested for McLaren at the end of 1981 as the reward for the F3 championship sponsored by Marlboro, and I set a time that would have put me on the second row of the grid for the British Grand Prix.

"Ron Dennis was impressed. I went back in his car to the McLaren factory that evening and met John Barnard, and I think I would have had a pretty good chance of a race seat in 1982, which would have been the magic break. But Niki Lauda came back out of retirement and took the seat.

"So I was back to moving into F2. And I had another opportunity in the first year of that [1982]. Carlos Reutemann threw in the towel at Williams in about May and Frank came down to Thruxton for the F2 meeting to speak to Ron [Tauranac, Ralt boss] to see about me.

"Unfortunately at the time the tyres weren't that good and it was a struggle. I think Ron either wanted to keep me or didn't know how good I was, and told [Frank] I wasn't really ready for F1, so they took Derek Daly instead."

If that was Tauranac's reasoning, it was arguably validated by Palmer's performance in 1983, a season in which he took six wins en route to the F2 title after Ralt's switch from Bridgestone to Michelin tyres. Ignoring his class successes in 1987, they'd be his final experience of single-seater victory.

"The curtains time was when Jean Alesi came to Tyrrell and was quicker than I was," Palmer says of the demise of his F1 career, when he traded his race seat at the end of 1989 for a stint with McLaren as test driver.

"I was looking pretty good to move to Arrows the following year, but Jackie Oliver's enthusiasm understandably waned when he saw me get blown off by Alesi.

"When I joined McLaren after my last year with Tyrrell, I thought my chance now was [Ayrton] Senna or [Gerhard] Berger to not get on well or break a leg or something!

"I think I had reasonable opportunities. I'm not the sort of person that tries to tell people I should have been world champion because I don't think I was good enough to justify a really top drive, if I'm being truthful.

"I gave it my all and made the best use of the talent I had. If luck had gone a bit more my way I'm sure I could have won some grands prix and got some podiums, but overall I'm pretty happy with my lot there.

"I never saw Formula 1 racing as being the be-all and end-all of my career."

And rightly so. Winning the Class B title secures Palmer an unorthodox place in F1 history, and goes some way to making up for the lack of opportunity his junior single-seater career had merited.

The real barometer of success for Palmer has been all that's come in the quarter of a century since he stopped racing in F1.

In that time, he returned to the Le Mans 24 Hours (having finished second in 1985), spent a season in the British Touring Car Championship, established PalmerSport, founded Formula Palmer Audi, FIA Formula 2 and BRDC Formula 4 (now BRDC British F3), saved a quartet of major British circuits and made MotorSport Vision one of the most significant entities in British motorsport.

But all that's another story entirely...