Confessions of a Racing Instructor

Men behaving badly, and a never-ending queue of 'billies'.
GARY WATKINS delves into the predictable mayhem

Throw a bunch of twentysomething wannabe racing drivers together, give them a fleet of hot road cars, allow almost unrestricted access to a circuit, then sprinkle in a queue of paying customers wanting to get out on the track for the first time, and what have you got? A racing school any time until the late '90s. Or, to put it another way, carnage and mayhem.

"If you get a group of young blokes working together in any environment, they'll inevitably come up with silly games," says sportscar racer Jamie Campbell-Walter, a regular at the Jim Russell Racing Drivers' School at Donington Park in the mid '90s. "The difference was that we had race-prepped cars at our disposal."

The remarkable thing was that the lunatics were put in charge of the asylum. "We were left to our own devices," adds Campbell-Walter. "We got away with murder."

A strong sense of camaraderie only added to the high jinks, reckons Johnny Mowlem, who spent 12 years instructing at Brands Hatch Racing before his sportscar career took off. "You were racing against a group of people at the weekends and then working together during the week," he says. "There was an army mentality. That meant lots of pranks and any new kid had to earn his spurs."

The presence of members of the public wanting the on-track experience was almost a distraction. 'Billies', as the customers of racing schools were almost universally known back then, were there to play tricks on and to provide entertainment for the instructors.

The term 'billy', just one of those used to described the men and women who turned up at the schools, wasn't as derogatory as it may sound. It's actually rhyming slang: Billy Bunter, punter. Geddit?

These days, an instructor would get sacked on the spot for referring to someone as a 'Billy'. Today, customers are 'guests'. Racing schools have changed dramatically since the lawless days up to the mid '90s, thanks to Health and Safety and the creeping tide of political correctness.

"It was mental in the old days, but now everything has been tightened up," says Phil Ellis, a racing-school veteran and now group chief instructor at MotorSport Vision. "The consequences of something going wrong are much more serious in this day and age.

"Everything an instructor says and does is closely monitored," he explains. "We put our guests in some pretty quick machinery, so the instruction has to be top notch. The experience these days is akin to staying in a first-class hotel. You couldn't say that about the old days."

Whether you regard the old days as good or bad, those who worked at the schools back then retain fond memories. "I'm glad I did it when I did," says Mowlem. "I'm sure it's not nearly so much fun today."

STUDENT PRANKS ON CAMPUS

It's not just punters who have tricks played on them. Ten or so years ago at the Elf La Filiere school, a group of French youngsters managed to persuade a Japanese kid on the same course that he had to unclip the steering wheel while he drove down the main straight.

"We drove the Formula Campus cars that were quite old by then, and the detachable steering wheels were quite hard to get on and off," remembers 2002 FIA Sportscar champion Val Hillebrand, another pupil on the course. "This guy didn't speak much French and some of the others convinced him that he had to take off the steering wheel and hold it above his head to prove that he could get it on and off properly."

"This guy actually did it," Hillebrand goes on. "The instructors on the pitwall couldn't believe their eyes."

FRANCHITTI'S FIRST FLIP

Dario Franchitti has flipped twice this year, but it's not the first time he's gone end over end. Long before the IRL IndyCar Series was a twinkle in Tony George's eye, Franchitti did a backflip at Donington Park. Without the aid of a racing car!

Come the end of the day at the Jim Russell school at Donington, a group of instructors would go out to collect the cones that marked braking, turn-in and apex points. The idea of stopping to pick them up was anathema to a group of hot-headed racers, so the game was for someone to lean out of the side door of the minibus and grab the cones on the hoof. "Dario missed one," remembers Jonny Kane. "Whoever was driving hit the brakes and out went Dario. It was quite a nasty tumble and I'm told he still has the scar to show for it."

UNCOMFORTABLE MOONIE LANDING

David Germain was a handy Formula Ford pedaller and an occasional Formula 3 racer, but mention his name to anyone involved in national motorsport in the early '90s and their mind will immediately flick to an amusing story.

Brands Hatch Racing stalwart Tim Jones, son of circuit commentator Brian, was on marshalling duty on the inside of Druids. He was bored and said as much to the boys back in the control tower over the radio. Cue Germain's attempt to enliven proceedings by pulling a moonie on his colleague - while driving.

"I had a few practice runs behind the pits with my backside hanging out of the window," explains Germain. "That went fine, but what I had forgotten was that I wouldn't be driving in a straight-line up at Druids."

There are various versions of what happened next, but the unembellished truth is just as funny as any version you might hear. "I was probably doing 20-25mph, but as I turned right into the corner with my overalls and boxers around my ankles, I fell onto the steering wheel and couldn't push myself off. So instead of heading off down to Graham Hill Bend, the car took a big arc into the barriers on the inside."

The misdemeanour resulted in a three-month ban from Brands for Germain. "I told them I'd crashed while testing a car," he said. No doubt it would have been more if his bosses had found out how cheeky he was.

REMOTE-CONTROL RACING

Put a racing driver in a car, any car, and he'll want to race it. Down at Brands in the early '90s, it didn't matter if he wasn't even behind the steering wheel. 'Billy racing' involved getting your punter around the track as quickly as possible, and ahead of those your mates were passengering, during his initial run.

"We would pick our billies on the basis of whether they looked a bit racey or not," says Mowlem. "You'd tell them when to brake, turn and accelerate. It was a case of, 'Don't brake, don't brake, BRAKE, BRAKE, BRAKE!' But the rules meant you weren't allowed to grab the wheel.

"Gary Ayles and I were among the worst culprits. I remember going into Druids and my guy going up the inside of Gary's guy, tapping him into a spin. It was straight out of the British Touring Car Championship!"

NO ANGELS ON THE ROAD

Anthony Reid and John Pratt, both regulars at the Silverstone school during the mid '80s, couldn't even wander over to the cafe without turning it into a race. "We'd race each other out on the track," says Reid, "and we'd race the cars from the school buildings to the pitlane." So you can imagine that the mad dash home to Oxford after a day's instructing could be a little manic. Especially if you encountered a group of Hell's Angels on the A34.

"I managed to get past them, but Pratty somehow got caught in the middle of their squadron and ended up tagging one of the riders," remembers Reid. "They gathered around his car and tried to stop him. When he didn't, they pulled out bicycle chains and gave his car a good thrashing."

Pratt, a star FF1600 driver in his time, managed to escape down a side road, at which point the bikers headed off after Reid. "Fortunately, my Peugeot 205 diesel was quicker than a bike around all those roundabouts on the Oxford ring road," says a driver who would later make his name in front-wheel-drive machinery.

DONINGTON FLAT IN FOURTH - EVERYWHERE

Imagine piling into Redgate with your foot flat to the floor, with your only hope of making the corner lying with the mischievous fellow instructor sitting alongside you. That was the game they used to play at Jim Russell at Donington with two punters in the back. The whole lap had to be taken flat in fourth, with the guy in the passenger seat flicking the masterswitch on and off. No braking was allowed.

"You'd be thinking, 'Please turn it off. Please,'" remembers Campbell-Walter. "There were certain guys who would give you no chance of getting around the corner. You could make it through Redgate even if they flicked off the switch at the braking point," he explains. "You'd have to lob it into the corner and hope that the guy next to you turned the power back on so you could boot it around the corner."

And what were the pupils in the back thinking? "The billies loved it."

BLIND MAN DROPS KANE

It was one of the more unusual tasks for an instructor: teaching blind people to drive. The day finished with hot laps aboard Jim Russell's fleet of Vauxhall Astra GTEs. Jonny Kane was working that day, and thought he'd come up with a great idea to give his punter the ride of his life.

"I decided to go over every kerb and rumble strip so that the lap felt really exciting," explains Kane. "My plan went awry at Old Hairpin, when I went just a little too far over the kerb. We went into the gravel, went up on two wheels and almost rolled.

"I tried to shrug it off, saying that we'd just had a 'little spin'. But it is true what they say about the loss of one sense heightening the others. This guy asked me if we had nearly rolled. After we were dragged out of the gravel he refused to get back in the car with me."

PHONE A FRIEND

Gary Ayles's days as a top-line touring car driver were over when this writer rang him one afternoon about a prospective drive that he had been linked with. When the phone was answered, it was clear its owner was in a car travelling at high speed.

"Where are you?" was the obvious question. "The Craners," was his less-than-likely reply. Cue tyre squeal and a downshift, then a new answer: "The Old Hairpin."

Instructing while on the phone was nothing new for Ayles. "Once I did the full personal instruction with my ear welded to the phone," he says, "and that included all the driving!"

BANANA SPLITS

Tommy Field, best known as a Production Saloon racer, famously put a car over the barriers at Brands one icy morning in the early '90s. The reason was ice on the track - or perhaps another slippery substance.

"It was one of those icy mornings where all the instructors used to go out to try to clear the track before we could take the billies out," remembers Germain. "Tommy hit some ice at Paddock, got into the gravel, which was frozen solid, and went straight over the tyres."

"We all rushed down there to see if he was okay and, while he was brushing himself down, someone found a banana skin lying around and shouted, 'Hey, Tommy, now we know what the problem was.'"

LULU MAKES LANFRANCHI SHOUT

The late Tony Lanfranchi was the self-styled chief instructor at Brands Hatch during four decades. So, when pop queen Lulu was invited down the Hatch for a photo opportunity sometime in the late '60s, it was the hard-living Lanfranchi who decided to show her the ropes.

Brian Jones, who had joined the Brands school (then known as Motor Racing Stables) in 1970, takes up what he is sure is more than an apocryphal story.

"Lulu was big news at the time, so it was quite a coup to get her down," he says. "Lanfranchi bagged her, as was his right, and got into the passenger seat. Lulu lurched 100 yards up the pit road, before Tony had had enough.

"He yanked on the handbrake and got out with the words, 'You're on your own now, love!'"