Man of the Century

It's been a heck of a week for Trevor Carlin. On Sunday, his eponymous team celebrated their 100th victory in motor racing with wins in the opening British Formula BMW Championship round at Brands Hatch.

Then, just 48 hours later, Carlin finally decided to go public and confirm that his outfit was one of the 22 teams who have put their names forward for the 2008 Formula One World Championship.

For a man who has lived, breathed and slept on motor racing since his days as a newsagent in St. Albans, even he cannot believe how the two events have somehow managed to come together at the same time.

"I know it is a stupid thing to say in this big, glamorous, rich F1 world, but it is almost a bit of destiny," he says, relaxing in one of his offices at Carlin Motorsport's factory on the outskirts of Aldershot, England.

"It was very nice that it was our junior team, the Formula BMW boys, that got us up to the 100 mark. And then if we get the [F1] entry, then things were really meant to be..."

In less than a decade, Carlin Motorsport have established themselves as one of Britain's leading racing teams. Their 100 victories, ranging from Formula Three, to Porsche Supercup, to World Series by Nissan (Renault World Series), and Formula BMW, have also taken in F3 titles in 2001 (Takuma Sato), 2003 (Alan van der Merwe) and 2005 (Alvaro Parente).

It is no wonder, then, that Carlin Motorsport are so often singled out as an example of a team that should easily be able to make the jump to F1. The kind of budgets required at the moment have obviously ruled them out of seriously considering the jump up to now, and Trevor himself endured a miserable time as sporting director at Midland last year, but things are changing for 2008. And there is every chance that Carlin could be joining Ferrari, McLaren and Williams on the starting line-up at Albert Park in two year's time.

Carlin's success story is fascinating and provides a great illustration of how good contacts and being in the right place at the right time are often as important in terms of making a success in this sport as just being able to run a quick racing car.

PART ONE: FROM RAGS TO RACING

Trevor Carlin is one of the most popular team bosses in British racing. Success has not gone to his head and his feet remain firmly rooted on the ground. At his factory he remains 'one of the boys', and he continuously goes out of his way to ensure that his priority is always Carlin Motorsport and not Trevor Carlin.

Having left school without any specific idea of what he wanted to do, he ended up running newsagents and keeping abreast of motorsport through reading the magazines that came into his shop.

He helped out part-time with Formula Ford team PRS Racing, which was owned by his uncle Vic, before finally landing a full-time job in 1980 that he labels as being 'the general dogs-body'.

Carlin learned a lot and, when the team went into decline after being on the receiving end of the Reynard 83SF in 1983, despite producing their own Sergio Rinland-designed car, he followed his other uncle Steve Hollman to work in the storeroom at Ralt.

After a brief spell with Murray Taylor's F3 team, where he was number two mechanic on Damon Hill's car in 1986, he then could not resist the job offer of being the Ralt spares man in the United States.

"It was a great opportunity," smiles Carlin. "I could go and live in California, and live right on the beach. I did that for a couple of years and it was fantastic."

While Carlin was sunning himself in California, his uncle Steve had done a stint at Eddie Jordan Racing and helped Johnny Herbert to the 1987 crown. Hollman then landed a works Spiess engine deal and set Bowman Racing up - inviting his nephew to come on board.

The team won races in 1988 and took the crown in 1989 with David Brabham but, after choosing to build their own car for 1991, things went downhill.

"The car was too on the limit," recalls Carlin. "It was tiny, so the drivers could not get in it, and they couldn't drive it properly. It was beautifully engineered, but it never saw a wind tunnel and in the end it didn't have a prayer.

"It is quite sad, because as we were building our F3 car through 1990, Eddie Jordan was building his F1 car, and it probably cost Eddie the same to build his F1 car as it cost us to build the F3 car.

"So you can see how you can make the right decision and wrong decision in this sport. Eddie was very brave and saying, 'I am going straight to F1', and we were more conservative and said we would start with an F3 car.

"It did okay, we had a couple of front rows, a few podiums, but like the PRS thing, we were building the cars during the week and then racing at weekends. The money started drying up, so we had gone back almost to square one."

In 1993, Carlin moved camps to long-time arch rivals West Surrey Racing - Mika Hakkinen's team in his British F3 days - running their F3 campaign with Marc Gene, Cristiano da Matta and Pedro de la Rosa. It proved to be another great learning experience for him.

"I really enjoyed it. It showed me a different way of doing things. The way Dick (Bennetts, team boss) does things is fantastic. As an organiser, he is immaculate, meticulous, and the attention to detail on every aspect was brilliant.

"What it did show me was that there was no real magic in this business. West Surrey Racing didn't have a special thing that they kept hidden and then put on the cars to make them fast. They did everything properly all the time, and I really learnt from that.

"If you get a good driver and a decent budget and don't do anything too stupid, you can be successful. So I enjoyed it there, and I helped grow that team."

West Surrey expanded to run more than two cars, and then Carlin helped push WSR towards touring cars, where they landed the works Ford deal for 1996. Ultimately, the team's hopes were dashed by a lack of budget from the Blue Oval, and Carlin soon realised that touring cars were not his forte. He duly quit.

The fruits of Carlin Motorsport, and Carlin's still successful partnership with Martin Stone, were then sewn not by a move into a junior category but by helping the Williams team with a 'Pit-Stop Challenge' road show that they put on around Europe that year.

"Jim Wright (the ex-head of marketing at Williams) was a friend of ours from Formula Ford days, we had sold him a PRS when he was at Eddie Jordan's," explains Carlin.

"Jim told Martin that there was this promotional thing that needed doing for one of his sponsors. It involved having a couple of replica cars all done up in Williams livery, and carting them around Europe with a crew.

"Martin asked me about it because he had never run a team, and he asked me if I could help him cost it. He then said if he got it, would I be interested in helping him with it. I said, 'If we get it, I'll go into partnership with you.'

"He ummed and arrghed but could see the value in it. We got the contract, and we got these trucks all painted up in Williams colours, and hired half a dozen guys. Two of them knew something about motor racing and another one was an electrician.

"So we packed the truck up and a Renault Escape and we toddled around Europe for three months doing the road shows. We had full team kit and race suits, and we would go through 100-200 people in a day. It was great. It was all done with a rock band, and in Hungary I think we had 5,000 people in total.

"At the end of all that, it ultimately gave us a truck and all the pit equipment. We had real pit stop guns and tools, so we pretty much had everything we needed to run a team."

Interestingly, the team also had a temporary base. It was a barn at Missen's Farm in Woking - the site that is now more famous for its slightly grander occupant, the McLaren Technology Centre.

Carlin's first steps into being a racing team were not easy. It was a pretty major task to try and find the then £100,000 (GBP) needed to fund a season in Formula Three, but help came knocking in the form of Henry Stanton and his businessman father. The Stantons were only too happy to buy the equipment and pay Carlin to run them for 1997. The team was go, but then Trevor had trouble thinking up a team name.

"I asked Henry's father if he wanted to call it 'Barnard Racing' after his company Barnard Pipelines, but he said, 'No, you think of a name.'

"So I spent about three weeks going through Autocourse and magazines to find a name. I wanted to come up with something snazzy.

"I didn't want to do initials, I thought that was a bit lame, and then I looked at all the successful teams - you've got Ferrari, McLaren, Brabham, Penske and so on.

"I just thought, all the best teams are ones named after somebody in charge. Doing that gives you visibility straight away, and it also means the person whose name is at the top has got a lot of pressure on himself to protect the team.

"With Pacific, for example, the one I was comparing to at the time, if you weren't in the business, you wouldn't know that Keith Wiggins owned it. So I thought, what the hell, and we called it Carlin Motorsport. Only recently we've been dropping the 'Motorsport' bit off, because I think over time the name survives on its own."

Stanton quit racing in the middle of 1997 and, despite a one-off outing with Jamie Spence later that season, Carlin Motorsport's run in the sport appeared to have come to an end with nothing in the offing for 1998.

"The following year we couldn't get a deal to save our life. We were doing all sorts of road car work, show work, historical work to survive, but then Narain Karthikeyan came along.

"He was supposed to sign with us at the beginning of the year but then got an Opel contract. I could not get Opel engines, so he had to go to Glenn Waters (Intersport). They then had a big fight and we did the last four or five races that year with Narain.

"I rented the car and engine from Mr. Stanton, and at the end of the year we had made enough money to pay him off, so it was ours. We got two podiums that year with Narain, so that was when we started properly. In 1999, we got Karthikeyan and Michael Bentwood and we were a real team."

Carlin Motorsport took little time in establishing themselves as the crack outfit in F3. In 2000, they signed Takuma Sato - a driver Carlin remembers as "this fantastic little Japanese driver who had so much raw speed and excitement."

That first season with the current Super Aguri driver proved a big learning exercise, as mistakes from both team and driver probably cost them their first British F3 crown.

"We were only interested in winning races. We wanted him to be the first Japanese guy to be really strong and win loads and loads of races. Sometimes we made risky calls, which cost Sato points, and we made a couple of mistakes because we were a new team. But once we ironed that out, we were fairly dominant.

"We had the best car and, in the second half of the year, we were fantastic. If we had been a bit more circumspect at the beginning of the year, then we could have won. And then 2001 was incredible with Taku and Anthony [Davidson]."

He is not wrong there. The pair of them won a total of 24 F3 races that year, including the prestige events at Pau (Davidson), Zandvoort (Sato) and Macau (Sato). That level of dominance was not going to be repeated easily, but Carlin followed suit with championships for van der Merwe in 2003 and Parente last year.

PART TWO: THE ART OF WINNING

Carlin is adamant that there is no secret to his success - a lesson he well learned during his spell at West Surrey Racing. In fact, he explains his success in F3 due to the fact that WSR chose to turn their backs on the category after being so dominant for so long.

"I suppose the reason we are continually successful is that we carry on doing it," he says, matter of factly. "It is the old revolving door situation. If you are a good team, then the good drivers tend to come to you with a decent budget, so you carry on being successful."

Perhaps some of the explanation for Carlin's success across many disciplines is that he has done so much himself. From that 'general dogs-body', he worked in a storeroom, he has been a mechanic, he has been a parts manager, a team manager and a team boss.

When asked whether he thinks his multi-disciplined experience in racing has helped, he nods.

"I know it sounds a bit corny, but I think it's like Alan Sugar (self-made English millionaire). I have been watching a bit of The Apprentice (Sugar's show in the UK). How can you possibly do the job he does if you haven't lived the way he has lived? He started off as a barrow boy and he has worked and worked and worked. He started off at the bottom and just worked his arse off to get to where he is. Unless you do the same thing, how can you ever reach that same success?

"You need to know everything about your business, so you cannot get your leg pulled by drivers, mechanics, truckies. I just know how it should be and, if there is a good reason something hasn't happened, then fine. I've made loads of mistakes in my time and will make more, I am sure. But if someone has worked hard, then I can see the good people. I let them get on with it but, if they are not doing a good job, then I tell them."

At a time when junior teams fight for financial survival, Carlin has been able to stay one step ahead of the game. He has shown that he is not afraid to move outside of that core of F3, especially when doing so can help support his success in the premier British category.

"I think it was after the painful time of going bust at PRS and Bowman," he explains. "You are always worried about the bank balance and want to make sure you can pay the wages at the end of the month. You are always looking at opportunities. If there is a way to earn a bit of money to put in the pot, then we will do it."

In 2001, Carlin ran a Formula Ford car for Japanese racer Kazuki Hoshino as well as winning the contract to run a Porsche Supercup team with Vincent Radermecker and Sascha Maassen (who duly delivered win number 37 at Indianapolis).

"Anything else we did was to back up the F3 business. In 2002, we expanded and ran more cars because the demand was there, and in 2003 we did the World Series."

Last winter too, Carlin has also been involved in A1 Grand Prix, running teams for Portugal, Japan and Lebanon.

"It has been good fun," explains Carlin about the A1 GP involvement. "We liked the concept of it. I think there have been a few bugs, and I think it has cost a lot more than the organisers expected. The teams have also not raised as much money as the organisers expected, so their pot was empty. It should hopefully continue, and we would like to run at least one country again."

There is one major category missing from the Carlin CV, though - F3000/GP2. Any successful team in F3 have often wasted little time in making the move to the final category below F1 - although Carlin is one of the most notable exceptions.

"What we would have always wanted to have done was the F3000 of the old days, when it was a Reynard or a Lola. You got your engine package, and even though it was horrendously expensive, it wasn't a single make of car, so a good team with a good budget could make the difference.

"The problem with the last F3000 with Lola was that all I ever heard from the drivers was what a difficult car it was to drive on the limit. It took two or three years experience before you could fight to win a championship, and it had no relevance to the ladder.

"You had an F3 car, which has a beautiful style where you carry the speed and you have to drive with perfection, and F1, which is a similar thing. The more you think about it, the better you can drive, the faster you can drive.

"So F3 and F1 were very similar, but then this Lola thing was just a point and squirt. You needed to brake as late as you could for the apex, throw it in, wait and then get on the power.

"I didn't see any of the drivers learning anything in F3000 and I didn't like the thought of doing it. But when the Dallara World Series came out, everyone I spoke to said it was like driving an F3 car. It had more grip and more power, but the driving style was almost exactly the same. Plus with Dallara, we have got a brilliant relationship with them, and we wanted to work with their product."

Carlin did actually apply for an entry to the inaugural GP2 series last year but, in the end, canned the idea when his negotiations with Midland F1 were at an advanced stage.

"We were going to do it. We lodged the entry for the first year and (series organiser) Bruno Michel said 'you are in'. Then, the Midland thing started to come to fruition, and I thought we would have to set up a whole new team. I thought it would be wrong of me to have my own GP2 team and set up the F1 team for Mr. [Alex] Shnaider (Midland F1 owner).

"When it came to the crunch and it was obvious that F1 was going to happen, I said to Bruno that it was just a conflict of interests and I just cannot take the entry. In hindsight, I put someone else's team in front of Carlin Motorsport and it was probably a mistake.

"But then, if the Midland thing had gone as planned, we would only have done three Grands Prix by now. We were supposed to be doing a whole new team, and I think that would have worked if the money had kept flowing.

"That would have been, in the bigger picture, a much better thing than doing GP2. Now it has gone full circle and we are back to where we were. But we will get there somehow."

PART THREE: MISERY AT MIDLAND

What may happen, ironically, is that Carlin may actually make the move to F1 before they make it to GP2. And that is despite, for a period last year, it appearing that Carlin had had enough of F1.

Towards the end of 2004, Trevor Carlin and Christian Horner were singled out as the men who were next most likely to make the grade in Grand Prix racing. FIA president Max Mosley was keen to champion their causes, mentioning them repeatedly in private briefings about the teams that were looking at joining the F1 grid.

And although both men did consider moving into F1 with their own teams, in the end their chances came after getting awarded jobs with established outfits. Horner became the sporting director at Red Bull Racing and quickly established himself as one of the coming men, while Carlin could not have endured any more a reverse of fortunes.

Appointed as Jordan-Midland's sporting director under Colin Kolles, he found himself frustrated with a lack of finance and a lack of direction at the team - a complete contrast to the successful base he had worked so hard to establish in F3. By Monaco time, last May, he had had enough and he quit in June.

Carlin's time in F1 was definitely not what he had planned when he first contemplated the move with a 'cheeky' letter to Mosley in early 2004.

"We read somewhere that Max was going to do the historic race at Monaco, driving an old March or something," he recalls. "Being a bit lateral thinking and a bit cheeky I sent a letter to Max's office, saying, 'Before you do it, if you want to get a few miles in an F3 car to get your eye in, privately and secretly, so when you do it you are fresh and look good, then give us a ring and we will sort it out.'

"I offered to take a car down to Pembrey and give him a blast around. I didn't want any publicity and he thanked us for the offer. It was all arranged, but at the last minute he could not do it because he wasn't doing the Monaco race.

"That established a contact, and a few months later Max phoned us up himself and said he would like to come down and have a chat with us and see why there are not more teams coming into F1, teams like us. We said we would love him to come down but he would have to take us as he finds us.

"Sure enough, he drove himself down and he arrived in a Toyota Prius, very environmentally sound. And he sat here with Martin and myself for three hours and we just chatted about racing in general and all the pitfalls and hurdles.

"I said it was very simple. The desire is there to do it, but financially it has just gone through the roof - even to be on the grid, let alone to be competitive. I said if we could build or lease an old chassis and put a Cosworth in it, then we could probably start to look at doing it. He said that is exactly what he thought, but he wanted to get it from someone else. So off he trundled and it seems, as time goes by, he is sort of getting what he wants.

"I then leaked various stories that we were interested, and Max leaked various stories about us, and that is how the Colin Kolles link came up. He signed me up, but then at the last minute Bernie [Ecclestone] told Shnaider to buy Jordan, and the whole thing changed."

That Jordan buyout ultimately meant things changed for the worse for Carlin. He is not afraid to admit that his time with the cash-strapped team in 2005 was pretty depressing.

"As you can imagine. it was awful. Things have been very tight financially here for years, and when it is your own decisions and your own responsibilities, when the phone rings and someone is chasing money, then you deal with it. You pay it as quickly as you can, and you are doing it for a reason - to get to the top.

"When you go somewhere else and you have got worse problems, people phoning up chasing stuff, and you cannot get a supply of goods because you owe money, then it is soul destroying. You have reached the pinnacle, and you find it is worse than the place you have come from. It is awful..."

Despite the way things eventually turned out with Midland, Carlin remains adamant that had the project gone ahead as originally planned - as a completely new start-up outfit, using a chassis designed and built by Dallara, with the aim of going racing in 2006 - then things could have worked out.

"I still see nothing wrong with the concept we had back then with Kolles, myself and Dallara. I think they could have done a reasonable chassis if they were allowed to get on with it.

"We would have been looking good if we had had a Cosworth and would probably have the performance of Midland today, if not a tad more. Whether financially it was the right way to go about it, buying Jordan or not, I don't know. I don't know which way was cheaper.

"I am very aware, when you are trying to build something like we are doing here, you get an enthusiasm with your workforce. They are mates, and we are growing together. That motivates them and means they don't all want to leg it off and go and work in F1.

"If you try and take over something like Jordan, though, where the workforce have had the shit kicked out of them for five years, all you have got it is bad morale unless you throw bundles of cash at it - but that is not really a solution.

"If we had started the Midland thing from scratch, then we could have built it up. We would have had a fantastic atmosphere and the thing would have rolled on. As it happened, we had to go in into this big negative place that was Jordan and try and turn it around.

"There was no way. It was impossible. They had given up... I feel sorry for the guys up there. This is motor racing. It is meant to be about fun, about the sport side of it, not just the business. It is about winning and being part of a team, and I feel they have not really got that up there anymore, through no fault of their own."

PART FOUR: THE FUTURE AND F1

After the Midland disaster, Carlin returned to his Aldershot base and got back to doing what he does best - winning. His team dominated British Formula Three again last year, helping Alvaro Parente to the crown, and it seemed that his F1 ambitions were pretty much forgotten.

Carlin certainly thought that way, too, until a few weeks ago when he was sent an email from Motorsport News' F1 correspondent James Roberts - who has been close to Carlin since he covered British F3 for the newspaper. That email contained one of Mosley's recent letters to teams outlining the plans for 2008 and the entry process.

That letter made Carlin realise just how much the sport was changing to make it more accommodating to the independent teams - as well as the fact that the hurdle of the $48 million deposit had been removed.

"I had no idea at all about what was going on for 2008 until Jimmy Roberts sent me a copy of Max's letter about the applications," reveals Carlin. "I read it, I had it on my desk for a few weeks and then I got the regulations and the application form.

"I read through it all and saw that you didn't have to put any money up, so I thought why not have a look at it. That was it. It was only in the last six weeks that it happened."

While some of the 22 teams who have lodged entries may be doing so as a bit of opportunism, Carlin has revealed that his entry does have the blessing of Mosley - which surely means the team have to be one of the contenders to be granted an entry.

"I spoke to Max before we put the entry in. I had the entry form on my desk, and I sent him a fax saying I was going to call him to outline our plans that afternoon, because I knew he was going to be in the office.

"I wanted to ask him if I was going to waste my time or his time or not, and he actually called us. He said, 'no, I would like you to do it. We feel that you are one of the right teams for this and please put your entry in.' That was it. We sent it off and now we are waiting."

Carlin were due earlier this week to join the other teams in sending a document to the FIA detailing the plans for their team - including budgets, facilities, staff, etc.

A move to F1 will involve expansion, but Carlin already has plans for that underway. He is set to buy Penske's former facility at Poole in Dorset to use as his F1 factory, taking on the 25 staff who work there to add to the 60 he has at Aldershot.

Among those almost certain to rejoin Carlin, should the F1 entry be approved, is Adrian Burgess, who worked for Carlin Motorsport since 1999, then moving with Trevor Carlin to Midland F1, subsequently replacing him there as Sporting Director last summer - until last week, when Burgess quit the team.

Carlin has already put a lot of thought into how his F1 team would run a customer car-engine package.

"The biggest problem I gathered a few years ago, from people like Frank Williams, was that with the supply of a customer car, they don't have the capacity to make all the parts for a second team. It is all totally different bits. So I thought that if we had something like Penske and a high-quality experienced workforce, which exists down there, then we could take control.

"We could take the moulds, the patterns and the drawings, and make our own stuff. We would obviously pay a licensing fee for the intellectual property rights, but we could make it ourselves, which then takes the heat off the F1 team. It makes things more attractive to them."

Carlin says that he has only had 'informal' discussions with teams about the supply of customer cars - but claims that if his team get the go-ahead when the entry list is published on April 28, then his plans for the F1 outfit will swing into action within 24 hours.

"We have discussed the customer car thing with a couple of people, but only very casually," he explains. "It is too early. We are not the sort to dive in and say, 'give us this'. We don't want to waste anyone's times.

"If we get an entry then people will probably be interested in talking to us about it and then it will be a case of finding the right partners to get into bed with.

"But we cannot sit here now and say we have 100 million dollars on the table. If that announcement came out, then I can guarantee I would have 20 people able to work on the project the next day - and two of them would be heavily involved in the marketing side.

"If you look at all the drivers we have run globally and in A1 GP, there are some very good potential sponsors there, and also there will likely be some TV money for new teams as well.

"So all of a sudden you could say we are halfway there within a month of getting an entry. And we can fund from our own activities to get it moving anyway. We would not have to raise one penny. If we do, great; but we could start the ball running without it. We don't need F1 to buy Penske, I think we will be in good shape."

Carlin will face some tough opposition, though, to land what could be just one vacant slot on the 2008 entry list. The major threat is likely to be Prodrive, with their boss David Richards being known to have had discussions with Mosley and F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone about his plans for the team.

Although Carlin acknowledges Prodrive's strengths, he does not believe they will automatically get the nod over his team if it came down to choosing who gets the entry.

"I don't think they have got anything more than we have, apart from a better longer-term reputation. They are very good in rallying, GTs and touring cars, they have a fantastic reputation, but in single seater racing we are probably at a slightly higher level than they are.

"It will be politics that decides who will get a chance, but it would not surprise me if they give one new team as an entry and another as a reserve, to use as a stick to beat teams with."

So is Carlin optimistic, then?

"I am realistic," he replies. "It would be unlikely that we will get it, but if there were 11 new teams I would say we are definitely in the top half, so that is a 5-1, 6-1 chance. I don't know all of the potential entries, and I have been told by someone that there are a couple of real flaky ones from people you have not heard of. Anyone with an email connection could have lodged an entry.

"I think we are in the top half and, if you look at our history, they know we are professionals and are not in it for the short term. We are going to be doing it for another 20 years in some shape or form.

"Looking at the reality of it, then, I would probably say we are in the top three, and if that was the case, I know they won't publish it like that, or rank it like that, and if we are in the top three then politically we might get it."

If he does not get the green light, then Carlin says that will only give his team more time to learn in the junior categories before attempting to get into F1 again - maybe even as soon as 2009.

"If we don't get it, then we would make a serious play for GP2 for 2007 and we will carry on doing everything else we are doing," he says. "Instead of growing the business straight up into F1, we will grow it sideways.

"In a year's time, we will be in better shape than we are now hopefully and the whole thing should roll on. Then maybe in 2008 or 2009 it might come up again and we will be better for it because of this experience. We are learning all the time about the job."

And of course Carlin would have no qualms about going along with McLaren boss Ron Dennis's suggestions of opening up the entries to any team that wants - even if it means the return of pre-qualifying.

"I would be happy with that. You cannot have it open to everybody, but you could have it open to 15 teams maximum and a waiting list. If you fail to turn up and if you start to embarrass F1 then you are out and someone else is in.

"I would happily go and fight against Midland and Super Aguri and, if that was our first battle, to qualify, then great. We are happy to start at the bottom. We don't want to come in and win, we want to be there first, and over five to ten years work our way up. We would be happy to have a chance."

One thing that definitely will not be happening if their entry is rejected is for Carlin to make a bid to buy another team on the grid. The Midland experience has taught Carlin valuable lessons about the wrong way to go about F1 - and it is a mistake he will not be making again.

"No way," he says when asked if he would look into buying his way on to the grid. "Because of the (Midland) experience of taking over an existing team, we will not ever do that now. Unless somebody came to us with bundles of money guaranteeing finance, then it wouldn't be worth considering, and even then I would want to relocate it to this area anyway.

"All our people are here, and even to move 100 miles for people is hard. You've got people with families, kids, schools. Carlin Motorsport exist because of the people here, not just me. It is the truckies, the engineers the mechanics, the secretaries. We want to create something in this area, it is for them. It is for everyone's future and security. It is pointless to uproot them all and drag them up to Silverstone."

And in those last sentences, you get the true essence of Trevor Carlin. He is as hungry and ambitious as any F1 team boss out there - but has added to that mix the kind of man management and understanding that has helped mould a team that all dance to the same tune.

A happy business is usually a successful business. And no matter how long it takes Carlin to go about winning their next 100 races, Trevor will not change that philosophy one bit.

SIDEBAR: CARLIN'S FIVE MEMORABLE RACES

British Formula Three Championship, Spa-Francorchamps, 1998

"The best one in a way for me, or the most nerve-wracking, was in 1998 when we had Narain Karthikeyan.

"We had a very small budget, and there had been loads of updates for the 1998 car. It was wide track and people had new engines and all that sort of thing. We still had the 1997 car with the narrow track and little Narain driving it.

"We qualified fourth at Spa and the race happened, there was a bit of an incident, and we got up to second. To be honest, I was so nervous because it is such a long lap at Spa, that I couldn't watch.

"I was on the pit wall, I'd watch Narain drive past and then I couldn't stand there for nearly two minutes, so I went and started loading the truck up to keep myself busy. I would then come back out.

"We ended up finishing third and that was Carlin Motorsport's first ever podium. It was quite emotional - all the work we had put into this little lad.

"There were only four of us there - it was a big, big moment. And seeing Narain on the podium. He was a skinny little thing then, skinnier than he is now. He had these scruffy little overalls on and there he was with his cup."

Macau Grand Prix, 2000

"A bizarre race would have to be Macau in 2000. We qualified first and second. It was a complete lock out and we had been quickest in every session, Narain Karthikeyan was on pole and Takuma Sato was second.

"Taku got the lead at the start and then put it in the wall at Lisboa, and we thought, 'okay, fair enough, but at least Narain is still leading.' He shot off, and on lap six we saw the yellow flags for some yellow bodywork in the middle of the circuit and Narain had done exactly the same thing - crashed into the wall.

"So we started the first race from pole position with a front-row lock-out and we started the second with a back-row lock-out. It was bizarre - complete madness.

"I think we finished 10th and 11th, and Narain had the fastest lap by 1.3 seconds over the guy who had the third fastest lap - Taku was second fastest. We should have just walked it. So that was our most frustrating race, but that sums up the two drivers. They were blindingly fast and super competitive, but made stupid mistakes. We went to Korea and Narain just blitzed it. He was so dominant."

Spa-Francorchamps, British F3, 2000

"We had a fair bit of bad luck with Taku. He qualified on pole here by one second and on the parade lap he was leading and warming his tyres up. We had the old H-pattern Hewland gearbox and Taku somehow managed to get the gearbox stuck in two gears. It was meant to be impossible to do and we have only ever one driver do it and it is Taku. He changed gear so quickly, it somehow got stuck in second gear.

"We were in the pitlane and waiting for him to come around when suddenly we hear this screaming on the radio. It was horrendous, like a banshee wail, and it was this Japanese roaring.

"As all the other guys formed up on the grid, Taku came into the pitlane and the team went to work. I sat next to Taku and he was crying with rage. He was just sitting there and I was saying to him, 'Taku, don't panic. This isn't your fault. We are going to send you out and you are going to get fastest lap. You will have a good race.' He was so angry.

"We fixed it, we sent him out, and it just so happened that the leaders were coming around. He came out just ahead of them, in front of Jonathan Cochet I think it was, and Taku pulled away a second per lap and got the fastest lap by one and a half seconds. If it had been a race he would have won it by 15 to 20 seconds.

"That was hard for Takuma - first, because he is a great driver and he effectively had pole taken off him, and second because he is Japanese and they take disappointment very badly.

"It was all very good for him in the long run, though, because it helped him learn the school of hard knocks in the junior categories. So when he got to F1 it wasn't quite so bad for him. I think if he had it easy all the way up then he would not be able to cope with what he is having to do now."

World Series by Renault, Estoril, 2004

One of our best races was at Estoril in 2004 with Tiago Monteiro and Olivier Pla. It was Tiago's home race, so he had got thousands of supporters there.

"We qualified first and second, and as it happened, it was Pla who made the better start from second. We had used our joker set of tyres so we started on new tyres for this race, and when they took the lead it was like the old McLaren days when it was Prost versus Senna.

"I think we won by more than 20 seconds and they just went around in formation for the whole race. There were no mistakes, and it was just total, total dominance. And in the second race Tiago won, so there was a big party. It is always nice when there is a good reaction from the crowd."

British Formula BMW Championship, Brands Hatch, 2006

"I think last Sunday was pretty emotional, too. We had a very average year in Formula BMW last year, and we questioned our own ability to do the job.

"[Red Bull's] Dr. Helmut Markko gave us the chance with Niall Quinn and then Oliver Oakes, and it really got our excitement going again, because after the first bit of testing we realised these two kids were quite special.

"And to go out and win the race overall and the rookie cup, it was a real buzz. It is nice to enjoy winning. You can get very blase about it, but every race you win is hard. You must not ever think it is easy.

"There was a good bit of team spirit to it all as well, because all the guys from the World Series and F3 teams were sending us text messages (by mobile phone) because they were at home watching it on Motors TV - and they were interested. They all share in each other's success. That was quite a poignant win, because it is the freshest one."

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