An overlooked British talent

Name the most successful British racing drivers of the past three decades. Nigel Mansell, Lewis Hamilton, Dario Franchitti, Damon Hill, Jenson Button, Martin Brundle, Dan Wheldon and Derek Warwick probably spring to mind.

But one that might not is Mark Blundell. You can argue that, unlike those named, he never won an international championship, but his CV still includes victory in the Le Mans 24 Hours (backed up by podium finishes in two of sportscar racing's other blue-riband events, Sebring and Daytona), three Indycar wins at a time when CART was in its pomp and three Formula 1 podium finishes.

By anyone's standards, that's impressive. Doubly so for a Barnet-born motocrosser whose career could so easily have sunk without trace after prodigious early success in Formula Ford.

And yet, Blundell's career hints that more was possible had he been in the right place at the right moment. It tells a story that the four F1 teams he drove for - Brabham, Ligier, Tyrrell and McLaren - could have provided him with race-winning machinery had he been with them at a different time.

A plucky approach to FF1600 brought "a gazillion wins" © LAT

Then again, it was a surprise that Blundell made it to the top level at all. He didn't have the money to drive for a serious British Formula 3 outfit (although he did make several appearances for the TOM'S squad), so took the extraordinary gamble of leaping straight into Formula 3000.

"We, and I say we because it was very much a collective decision-making process between myself, several family members and a couple of friends, didn't come from a motorsport family so maybe looked at things a bit differently," says Blundell.

"Even when we did FF1600, we could never get our heads around why everyone would turn up and do just one race when there were three races on that day, hence why I did a gazillion races and had a gazillion wins.

"After the success in FF2000, we didn't have the budget to go to Dick Bennetts [of West Surrey Racing] or someone like that in F3, but we felt that I could drive a racing car. So the thinking was, what's to stop us going to the next step and learning the trade in a more powerful car and try to make an impression?"

The result was acquiring a year-old ex-works F3000 Lola equipped with a Ford Cosworth engine running mechanical fuel injection rather than the more advanced electronic set-up.

Running initially under the Fleetray Racing banner - effectively a family team - Blundell took an unexpected fifth second time out at Vallelunga.

Then came Spa, where he made his mark internationally. In a race that started wet, but drying, he passed Andy Wallace, Stefano Modena and Roberto Moreno to lead early on and, after being passed by Michel Trolle, regained the lead when the Frenchman pitted for slicks.

Blundell's humble Fleetray Lola leads eventual champion Modena at Spa © LAT

Unfortunately, Luis Perez Sala and Alfonso de Vinuesa had clashed and caused a red flag, meaning that Blundell finished second to Trolle on countback. Even so, it was a sensational performance.

"If it hadn't been for that accident, I would possibly have been the outright winner," says Blundell. "But we'd punched above our weight in a little car and it got me some opportunities - and it definitely got me a chance to go into world sportscars with a major manufacturer and into the Williams F1 team as one of the first generation of test drivers."

Blundell stayed in F3000 for three seasons, finishing sixth overall for the works Lola team in 1988 with three podium finishes, then dovetailing his final campaign with Middlebridge with his Nissan Group C commitments.

He credits the support of David Price, who had tried to run Blundell in F3, and Lola team boss Jean-Francois Mosnier for endorsing his credentials as a driver for the Lola-built Nissan project, and his outings in 1989 and '90 yielded pole at Le Mans and a best finish of second, behind a certain Michael Schumacher, at Mexico City.

But F1 was the target. After testing regularly for Williams in 1990, Blundell accepted an offer to race for the Brabham team alongside Martin Brundle in '91. Hopes were high for the squad, then run by Price, but things didn't work out as planned. That season taught Blundell a valuable lesson.

"When you get an offer, and only a few years before you've been sitting in a little 1600cc car and F1 is the dream, you take it," says Blundell.

"In hindsight it was the wrong decision. I did think it would offer me more, but I didn't really understand back in the day that, at that level, there were going to be budget constraints. You just thought F1 would be full of money."

Brabham was not an easy place to make an F1 debut in 1991 © LAT

Twice Blundell's retainer cheques bounced that season and Brabham struggled.

The Yamaha-engined car was at its most competitive on high-speed circuits, but Blundell managed only five finishes, the best of them a point for sixth in the Belgian Grand Prix. It was Yamaha's first F1 point, but being given a motorbike in recognition of his achievement didn't make up for such a difficult season, even though he compared well to the experienced Brundle.

"I was invited back to Williams to test on two occasions," he says. "It gave me an insight into the mistake I'd made. I went round Imola some 2.2 seconds quicker on race tyres than I did on qualifying tyres in the Brabham."

That informed Blundell's decision to step back from racing and test for McLaren in 1992. Aside from a one-off outing for Peugeot at Le Mans, sharing the winning 905 with Derek Warwick and Yannick Dalmas, it was a year of learning in support of race drivers Ayrton Senna and Gerhard Berger.

As well as completing plenty of miles, that made him an obvious candidate to drive for Ligier in 1993. The French squad had achieved little for the previous half-decade but, with the all-conquering Renault engine and a Williams gearbox, the potential was clearly there.

A podium first time out at Kyalami, behind Alain Prost and Senna, underlined that. But while the French team showed flashes of form, it still disappointed.

"It was a good opportunity and again I was teamed up with one of my best buds in Martin Brundle," says Blundell. "He had an advantage because he had an education and he spoke French, so was one up on me already!

The 1993 Renault-powered Ligier was a promising package © LAT

"But we had some good results, standing on the podium with the likes of Senna and Prost. There was a huge amount that could have been extracted, but in the background there was politics brewing up. Ligier was pretty much funded by the French government and they had two British drivers behind the wheel..."

A second podium, at Hockenheim after a spectacular battle with Berger's Ferrari, was backed up by a fifth place at Interlagos. But the team struggled to extract that maximum from the car, the potential of which was underlined by the 'Brundell Brothers' locking out the second row at Magny-Cours.

At the end of the year, both were out of a drive and, to nobody's surprise, when the blue equipe took to the track the following season it was with two French drivers, Olivier Panis and Eric Bernard.

Blundell was hoping to stay on at Ligier but, although he was still in contention for the McLaren-Peugeot seat that eventually went to Brundle, he opted to sign for Tyrrell.

While team-mate Ukyo Katayama caught the eye with some impressive qualifying performances, the heavier Blundell was the real force on Sundays, finishing third in Spain and picking up fifth places in Hungary and Belgium. But, once again, what was hoped to be a long-term deal ended after one year. Blundell, who was on a retainer with Tyrrell, was dropped to allow a funded driver to take his place.

He again opted to return to testing with McLaren, even though there was interest from what he described as a team that "wasn't capable of getting the job done".

But then came a twist. After filling in for Nigel Mansell in the first two races of 1995, Blundell took the seat full-time when the 1992 world champion walked away following just two outings.

Blundell joins Hill and Schumacher on the 1994 Spanish GP podium © LAT

"Back then, we were running off thousands and thousands of kilometres of testing, so I would build up huge amounts of data and experience," says Blundell.

"I didn't know there was the chance to get into the race car. If I had, I would have made sure that my contract had a bit more remuneration built into it! But I'm sure Ron Dennis knew exactly what he was up to at the time.

"But it was the right team at the wrong time. The 1995 McLaren was possibly one of the worst cars produced in its history.

"We did what we could and held our own, but it wasn't the easiest thing to do. I was on a race-by-race contract, which was felt to be the right situation by the team. I didn't agree with that at the time, and I still don't."

While Blundell's qualifying performances didn't match up to team-mate Mika Hakkinen's, in the races he showed well. In total, he scored 13 points to Hakkinen's 17 and rates his charge from 23rd on the grid to seventh after a crash ruled him out of qualifying at Suzuka - a race where Hakkinen finished second - as one of the best drives of his career.

But Blundell also hints obliquely that things went on at McLaren that year that put him on the back foot. Certainly, the implication is that he was very much the number-two driver.

Blundell's final outing for McLaren, finishing fourth in Adelaide, would be his F1 swansong.

The 1995 season was a tough time to be at McLaren © LAT

"I'd come to an agreement with Sauber and that's where I was going in 1996," says Blundell. "But late on, a new shareholder came in and if you look back, you can work out who it was [Red Bull's Dietrich Mateschitz] and they wanted a grand prix winner in the car.

"The only guy knocking around who had won a grand prix was Johnny [Herbert]. I wasn't the right guy at the right time and didn't fit in.

"At that point, I got a little disillusioned with F1 and the politics and decided to investigate the States. I was lucky that Mercedes-Benz gave me the support of an engine deal to take there, so that's where I headed."

The deal was with PacWest Racing, initially running Cosworth engines in 1996, but switching to Mercedes the following year. It started disastrously, with a brake failure pitching Blundell into the wall at the Rio oval. The sickening 122g impact could have killed him.

"When you lose your brakes at 200mph and you are facing a concrete wall, it's never going to be a good outcome," says Blundell.

"That did put me back, and later on in my Champ Car career I had another technical failure that led to a fractured neck. It wasn't easy in terms of the physical downsides.

"But the upside was that when we could compete it was some of the best racing I've done, like Formula Ford at 200mph! I won on a street circuit [Toronto], a road course [Portland] and a 500-mile race [Fontana]. They were all highly rewarding."

There were great moments in America, but much of that period was a struggle © LAT

The PacWest team was nowhere when Blundell joined. But in 1997, during the second half of the season, he was the main challenger to the all-conquering Alex Zanardi.

Those three wins, including the famous victory by 0.027s over Gil de Ferran at Portland, lifted him to sixth in the championship.

But thereafter the team dropped off and Blundell's final three years in Indycars were a struggle, a real frustration for a driver who had shown himself to be potentially of title-winning calibre.

"On our day, we were as strong as anybody and punching above our weight," says Blundell.

"But the team wanted to expand and as it went into Indy Lights, with ambitions of doing bigger and better things, the team got diluted.

"It wasn't working and it didn't come together again."

Blundell did lead his final race at Fontana briefly before an engine failure, but that was it. There were possibilities with other teams, but sponsor clashes meant nothing came together.

After occasional outings at the start of the century, showing particularly well for MG at Le Mans in its rapid, lightweight LMP675 machine, and then Bentley in 2003, his attention switched to other things.

"I walked through the door when the TV opportunity was there," he says of switching his focus to broadcasting with ITV's F1 coverage. "If I hadn't, someone else would have done.

Blundell became an integral part of ITV's Formula 1 coverage © LAT

"If I was going to race, it had to be with a manufacturer-linked programme. The media side was one platform, so I looked at sportscars to keep my hand in.

"I still get the mickey taken out of me with 'DI Blundell' [in reference to irreverent website Sniff Petrol's characterisation of him], but I'm OK with that.

"I always tried to deliver in a way that people could understand, in layman's terms, as that's what I could relate to. But TV did give me a profile in the UK so I can't moan too much about that!"

He also moved into management, first in partnership with Brundle and then with current outfit MB Partners. And while he's dabbled in sportscars in recent years, this is his main focus.

"I can give them some guidance, support and wisdom because I've been there and done that and did make the wrong calls at the wrong time," he says. "I get as much enjoyment out of my guys that I manage getting results - like Tom Blomqvist and Nick Yelloly. That's where the buzz is for me now.

"I'm not one of those guys who looks back on stuff. If you went to my house today, I'm pretty sure you would have no idea of me having ever been a racing driver as there's not much reflection of it. The reason for that is when I went home, I went home and I was a dad.

"At the same time, do I look back and say I made some good choices? Yes. Do I say I made some bad choices? Also yes. But I'm not going to dwell on it. Considering I'm just a village boy, I didn't do too bad!"

BLUNDELL'S CAREER IN NUMBERS

Nissan was among the manufacturers Blundell starred for at Le Mans © LAT

LE MANS
Seasons 1989-90, '92, '95, 2001-03
Teams Nissan, Peugeot, Gulf McLaren, MG Lola, Bentley
Starts 7
Wins 1
Best qualifying 1st

FORMULA 1
Seasons 1991, 1993-95
Teams Brabham, Ligier, Tyrrell, McLaren
Starts 61
Best finish 3rd (3 times)
Best qualifying 4th
Points 32
Best championship 10th ('93, '95)

CART (INDYCAR)
Seasons 1996-2000
Team PacWest Racing
Starts 81
Wins 3
Best qualifying 2nd
Points 219
Best championship 6th ('97)