The racing comeback artists who resurrected long-dormant careers

The road to becoming a professional racing driver is chocked with pitfalls. Some make it via the conventional route and others on a more circuitous path, but very few end up coming back after a prolonged period on the sidelines.

Here are the personal stories of some determined drivers who have been away from the cut and thrust of competition for years, yet have gone on to forge successful careers. And a couple more who are in the process of doing so.

They all have one thing in common: they never gave up the dream.

Richard Westbrook

Westbrook is now an established sportscar ace, with dual programmes across IMSA and the WEC in prototypes planned for 2022

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

When Richard Westbrook resumed his racing career in the Porsche Supercup in 2002, there were any number of rumours about what he’d been up to in the six years since his single-seater career petered out after a bitza season in Formula 3. Collecting debts in London’s East End and bumming around on a beach in Thailand were among them. Neither was true, but Westbrook had tried various jobs as he struggled to find a new vocation.

“I had a go at a lot of different things, but none of them did it for me,” recalls Westbrook, who is about to return full-time to the IMSA SportsCar Championship with the JDC-Miller Cadillac squad in season 21 of his second career. “I really struggled with not racing; I could barely bring myself to pick up a copy of Autosport.

“In my mind I was never an ex-racing driver. I managed to wangle a couple of Formula 3000 tests, but the teams needed budget so it was never going to happen for me there. Touring cars didn’t float my boat, and sportscar racing wasn’t on the radar for young drivers back then.”

"Sometimes I pinch myself when I think about the past 15 years. I went from scratching my head in Stockwell wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my life to getting paid to do what I love" Richard Westbrook

The catalyst for Westbrook’s return was Autosport’s Marcus Simmons. A regular mini-feature in the mag at that time was called Where are they now?, and Simmons put one together on old mate ‘Westy’, talking about his successes in the Opel Lotus Euroseries in 1994-95 and how he missed out on an F3 drive with the KMS-run Benetton Junior Team in Germany for 1996.

“A friend called me up after reading it and told me I really had to get back racing, so I thought ‘sod it’ and sold my flat in Stockwell to scrape the money together,” recalls Westbrook. “I thought I’d get into the Porsche Supercup, which I remembered from when I was doing Opel Lotus and we were at some of the grands prix as well.”

Westbrook's career stalled after racing in the 1995 Formula Opel Lotus Euroseries before making a comeback seven years later

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Westbrook bought a drive with the Kadach Tuning team and thought he would breeze to some decent results.

“I’d raced in F3 and tested in F3000, so I thought it would be easy,” he recalls. “I had no idea how difficult it would be. I was up against Porsche specialists like Stephane Ortelli and young kids like Timo Bernhard. If you made it into the top six you were doing well.”

The equity Westbrook had in his south London flat only stretched to a partial Supercup season in which he managed no better than a sixth place, but he persevered and “pulled together a few local sponsors” to move to the new Porsche Carrera Cup GB the following year. He mounted up “massive debts” on the way to the runner-up spot in 2003.

He went one better in 2004 and returned to the Supercup the year after. Back-to-back titles in 2006 and 2007 resulted in a Porsche factory drive. Over the years he’s had manufacturer contracts with Nissan, Chevrolet, BMW, Ford, Aston Martin and Glickenhaus. His successes include a class FIA GT2 Championship title in 2009 and victory in GT Le Mans in the Daytona 24 Hours in 2018. That’s not to forget two overall podiums in the US enduro.

“Sometimes I pinch myself when I think about the past 15 years,” says the 46-year-old. “I went from scratching my head in Stockwell wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my life to getting paid to do what I love.”

Alice Powell

Powell reached GP3 a decade ago, but her career hit the skids before W Series offered her a route back in

Photo by: Daniel Kalisz / Motorsport Images

Life for Alice Powell during a three-year period in which the 2021 W Series frontrunner didn’t compete included some pretty mundane work. Her dad is a builder and she skivvied for him to help make ends meet, but she never turned her back on a career that had taken her to GP3 in 2012.

“I didn’t give up trying to get back in, but I supported myself with coaching and working with my dad,” explains the 28-year-old. “I got all the crappy jobs, unblocking stuff and lifting and carrying. So at least it kept me in shape.

“The racing dream never went away. I was there in the paddock floating around, doing my coaching thing and looking for that opportunity. I kept my hand in with a bit of karting, but even that costs a lot of money these days. So sometimes that meant going to Daytona Milton Keynes to have a mess around in Dmax karts.”

"As the years went by I was getting to the stage where I didn’t think anything was going to happen" Alice Powell

After racing successfully in the club-level MotorSport Vision Formula 3 Cup “to try to keep my name out there and the momentum going” in 2013, Powell landed a paid-for drive in the Asian Formula Renault Series in 2014. She gained the title with five victories, but little in the way of that career momentum.

Powell raced a couple of times in 2015, but then had to sit on the sidelines until the arrival of the W Series in 2019. She came through the selection process and finished third in season one, and was a close runner-up in 2021 after its COVID-enforced year’s hiatus.

PLUS: How W Series' standout star took the challenge to its champion

“If it wasn’t for W Series I don’t think I’d be racing right now,” says Powell, who is looking at options in sportscars before deciding whether to return to W Series alongside her Formula E simulator role with Virgin.

“As the years went by I was getting to the stage where I didn’t think anything was going to happen.”

Michai Stephens

Stephens impressed in Formula Ford as part of the Team USA Scholarship but it took him several years to get his shot in GTs

Photo by: Cleary/BCPix.com

British race fans may remember the name Michai Stephens from the end-of-season Formula Ford extravaganzas at Brands Hatch and Silverstone a few years back. The American made an immediate impact as part of the Team USA Scholarship attack on the Festival and Walter Hayes Trophy in 2014 and 2015. Six years on he’s just finished his first season in sportscars in his homeland – after four years without racing.

Stephens looked like he was set for big things when he was plucked from Skip Barber school racing events to join the scholarship by its founder, longtime Autosport man Jeremy Shaw. The Skippy instructors reckoned the boy was a bit special and, after coming through a shootout to get the Scholarship drive, he finished third in the WHT at the wheel of a Cliff Dempsey Racing Ray (a race won by Wayne Boyd). Without the finance to race the following year, he was invited back onto the scholarship by Shaw in 2015.

That was followed by his first full season of racing in 2016 in the USF2000 series. Shaw recommended him to a team entering the championship for the first time. A disappointing campaign with an operation that, says Stephens, “was even more of a novice than its driver”, was followed by four years on the sidelines.

“I never X-ed myself out of contention,” says Stephens. “I tried to remain relevant and ensure that people could put a name to the face. I worked for various racing schools and doing some private mentoring. I worked with a youth motorsport programme in Indianapolis, as well as doing a nine-to-five.

“I didn’t realise at the time, but I was gaining the skills and growing as a young adult to make sure I was ready for the next opportunity when the door opened. Back in my early days of racing I was an extremely ignorant soul.”

The door opened again for Stephens this year when Shaw – “he’s my guardian angel” – recommended him to a motorsport enthusiast from Canada looking to work with some young drivers on a GT4 programme. After half a season of racing in regional events, JMF Motorsports entered its Mercedes-AMG GT4 run by former IndyCar team Conquest in the GT4 America Series. Sharing with Colin Mullan, they won both races on the last two weekends of the series at Sebring and then Indianapolis.

The experience whet Stephens’s appetite for sportscar racing and, though he turns 30 next month, he reckons he still has time to become a fully paid-up professional: “I don’t believe the industry’s perception of a timeline should define my desire to achieve my dream.”

Ben Hanley

Hanley's career was resurrected by link up with DragonSpeed, which took him to Indianapolis in 2019-20

Photo by: Geoffrey M. Miller / Motorsport Images

Ben Hanley never stopped racing for the five seasons in which his name seldom appeared in the pages of Autosport. The Brit went back to karting, notched up some decent successes, and earned a living from it. But the itch to race cars never went away from the 2007 Formula Renault 3.5 runner-up during his years out.

The former member of Renault’s driver development programme, a contemporary of Lucas di Grassi among others, was always working towards a return and never stopped driving racing cars: he was regularly called upon by Dallara and Pirelli for a bit of GP3 testing. But his efforts to find his way into a permanent race seat after leaving the French manufacturer’s fold during 2008 were unsuccessful.

“I’m really thankful for the opportunity Renault gave me and the funding that went with it: it allowed me to solely concentrate on driving,” says the 36-year-old, who was on the French manufacturer’s books in 2006, 2007 and into 2008. “But it did create a bit of an issue when it all ended because I didn’t know anyone apart from the teams I’d raced for.”

“I was always actively trying to get racing again,” adds Hanley, who managed a handful of outings in Euroseries 3000 and then Superleague Formula in the two seasons after he left the Renault fold. “I did start looking at sportscars, but whenever I contacted people it was always ‘but you’ve got no experience’. I probably wasn’t very good at selling myself.”

Hanley suddenly became a commodity, something tempered by the knowledge that his silver status was likely to last for only one season

That changed when he linked up with the late Mike Perry, a driver manager best known for working with Michael Krumm for 20 years. It also coincided with Hanley hitting five seasons without a race under his belt, which meant he could get a silver grading under the FIA’s system of driver categorisation.

Hanley suddenly became a commodity, something tempered by the knowledge that his silver status was likely to last for only one season. Perry got him in at Elton Julian’s DragonSpeed squad for the European Le Mans Series in 2016. A couple of ELMS wins and class victories at the Daytona and Le Mans 24-hour classics, always sharing with DragonSpeed patron Henrik Hedman, followed during six years with the team. They included a brief foray into IndyCar and two appearances at the Indianapolis 500.

“Without Mike and DragonSpeed I probably wouldn’t be racing today,” he says. “I never thought nine or 10 years ago that I’d get the opportunity to race an IndyCar.”

Bryce Wilson

Bryce Wilson won the 1997 Renault Spider title after a long racing hiatus

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To describe Bryce Wilson’s first career as a whirlwind is no exaggeration. He finished fourth on his Formula 3 debut in what he thinks was only his seventh car race and disappeared almost as quickly. That was at the back end of the 1970s. The better part of 20 years later the Scot returned to the track, won the Renault Spider one-make series and landed a manufacturer testing deal in British Touring Cars.

Wilson walked away from an F3 drive in 1979, came back for a handful of races in Sports 2000 in 1981, and then spent years regretting his actions. That combined with scrimping and saving for a comeback. Wilson’s explanation for why he turned his back on racing first time around is complicated. He initially says he was “a stupid young man, who needed a kick up the arse”. He then concedes that he was spooked by his abilities at the wheel of a racing car.

“I was frightened, not of crashing or killing myself, but of how easy it came to me,” he says. “It was as if the car was driving itself. I was aware of things that I shouldn’t have been, like faces in the crowd. It concerned me and I was also scared that one day I’d get back in the car and I wouldn’t be able to do it anymore.”

Wilson was picked up from karting by well-known Scottish club racer Laurence Jacobsen, who stopped racing himself to support his new protege. A season in Northern Formule Libre events in a Ford BDX-powered Chevron B29 in 1978 was followed by his F3 debut at the end of the year in a Ralt-Toyota RT1.

After his impressive run in the end-of-season Thruxton non-points race, Wilson was placed with the Ehrlich team for 1979, only to walk away mid-season. There were a handful of races in an S2000 Chevron in 1981, including a victory at Oulton Park, and then nothing until 1996.

“I went back to karting for a couple of years and got a job,” says Wilson. “But there was this thing at the bottom of my stomach saying you’ve got to go racing again. I started saving up to get back out there.”

That took until 1996, when Wilson bought a Renault Spider one-make racer and contested the last few races of that year’s series. He then teamed up with ex-Special Saloon racer Alan Humberstone’s BRC Engineering team and waltzed to the title, winning nine of the 15 races.

Opportunities came to test for Nissan Motorsport Europe, but it was too late for a BTCC shot

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Wilson impressed during a test in a Renault Laguna Super Tourer, part of his prize for winning the title, and then got picked up by Nissan. He was part of the test team at Nissan Motorsport Europe, which built the cars RML ran in Britain, in 1998 and 1999.

"It’s not for me to say how good or not I was, but I think it’s fair to say I had some talent. It’s also fair to say that I wasted it" Bryce Wilson

“I probably left it too late,” says Wilson. “With Nissan there was the hope that testing might turn into a race drive, but Super Touring was dying and Nissan pulled out. It took too long to get the money together.”

After a few years picking up drives here and there, most notably with former NME employee Bob Neville’s RJN squad, Wilson belatedly became a full-time motorsport professional in his forties. He started his own team called If Motorsport, which ran in Radicals before moving into VdV with a Group CN Ligier.

Wilson chose the name for a couple of reasons: “‘If’ is a word you hear a lot in parc ferme, but it kind of referred to my career as well. It’s not for me to say how good or not I was, but I think it’s fair to say I had some talent. It’s also fair to say that I wasted it.”

Wayne Boyd

Boyd chased the single-seater dream and became a race-winner in British Formula 3 before the money ran out

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Wayne Boyd never stopped racing. In the years after his mainstream single-seater career faltered, the Northern Irishman always turned out in the events in which he’d burst onto the scene at the age of 16 in 2007.

For three seasons in 2013-15, the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch and the Walter Hayes Trophy at Silverstone were his only races. He did them, he says, because “I love that stuff, it’s proper racing, but also to keep my name out there”.

His showings at the Festival and the WHT in his 15-year-old Van Diemen in 2007 are central to the story of both his first and second careers. Richard Dean picked up on his speed at Silverstone and put his name forward to driver manager Chas Cole, who took Boyd into British Formula Ford in 2008 and onto F3. After a fallow period, it was Dean who brought him back to race for the United Autosports sportscar squad he’d established with Zak Brown.

Boyd was working with a team for which he did a bit of coaching on an entry into the GT4 class of the British GT Championship in 2016. Dean got wind of it and, at a time when United was gearing up to enter the LMP3 arena, reckoned Boyd would fit the bill as one of the super-speedy silver-rated drivers he was looking for.

“I never gave up hope, but I always told my dad that we shouldn’t get them up too much because then you don’t end up disappointed,” says Boyd, who ended up taking his meagre budget to United for a campaign in the European Le Mans Series with a Ligier-Nissan JSP3 in 2016. “We really were scraping the barrel: I had to sell my road car and my dad made a lot of sacrifices.”

Those sacrifices turned out to be worthwhile. Boyd has been a permanent fixture at United over the past six years and will stay for a campaign in the Michelin-sponsored Le Mans Cup on the ELMS bill in 2022. In those half-dozen seasons, he’s won the LMP3 class of the ELMS and its Asian equivalent, contested the Le Mans 24 Hours and taken in some classic North American tracks on the IMSA circuit.

“I owe it all to Richard and Zak, just like I owed so much to Chas first time around,” he says. “My only regret looking back is chasing single-seater stuff for too long when I should have been looking at sportscars.

“Maybe it all happened for a reason. I don’t things could have ended up much better.”

Boyd has become a stalwart of United Autosports' programmes in LMP2 and LMP3 across several series

Photo by: Art Fleischmann