The historic racing ace keeping classic Jaguars winning

Not many people make their car racing debut in a Jaguar D-type, but it seems entirely appropriate for Gary Pearson. He has been one of historic racing's leading exponents for more than a quarter of a century, driving a wide variety of cars, yet is most readily associated with the machines from Coventry.

His father, John Pearson, knew long-time Jaguar Cars boss Lofty England and formed Pearsons Engineering, which is still known for its work restoring and preparing Big Cats.

"It was unavoidable really," says Gary of his life in the sport. "My dad was mechanicking in the early 1960s so I was born into it. He was looking after Peter Sutcliffe's Jaguar E-type and then his Ford GT40s, and Tom Fletcher's Lotus Cortina. The old man also got quite matey with the Team Lotus guys, particularly Bob Dance."

That meant Pearson got to meet some of the sport's heroes when he was still a kid, which made his path even more likely.

"There was a pub in Whittlebury, next to Silverstone," adds the 60-year-old (below). "We used to live there and the old man used to run the cars from the workshops, and the Team Lotus guys used to do bed and breakfast for the British Grand Prix or anything like that. One year, when I was about five or six, there was a fuss and I was brought downstairs, and Jimmy Clark was in the bar."

John Pearson was in growing demand and, after working for others including Aston Martin, he focused on the family business, which Gary joined. There was also some spannering for David Piper, the privateer racer extraordinaire who was one of the prime movers of early historic racing. 'Pipes' was running Ferraris among assorted exotica in the International Supersports races he promoted with Mike Knight of Winfield Racing Drivers' School fame.

Pearson Jr started competing in motocross before turning to car racing.

"I was quite a late starter, mainly because I couldn't afford to race," he says. "I'd done the odd bit of testing and running stuff in. I always wanted to road-race bikes but wasn't allowed to.

"My first race was in a Jaguar D-type at Oulton Park. I went up there with my mate Dave Morris. The old man had entered for the race, but a friend of his had to go to a different event."

"I've always been lucky that the old man had cars, so there have always been family cars to drive" Gary Pearson

So suddenly the 24-year-old Pearson found himself heading to a Vintage Sports-Car Club event at Oulton, one of Britain's more challenging circuits, to make his debut in a 1950s sports-racer with more than 250bhp.

"I qualified quite well and was surprised, but I was scared to death at the start!" he admits. "I drove cautiously and had a nice run with John Beasley's HWM-Jaguar.

"John had a problem with the car at the end of the race and had driven it to the circuit. So we decided to put John's car on the trailer behind our truck and drive the D-type across to John's house... That started a friendship with John that really got me going in historic racing."

Almost immediately, Pearson decided to commit to more competition and bought a Formula Ford Hawke DL11 (below).

"A wreck - no engine, gearbox; a derelict old thing," he remembers. "I couldn't afford to do anything else with it, but once I'd made the commitment the old man and John Harper helped me out."

Pearson spent several seasons in the Pre-1974 Formula Ford series honing his skills - "it was really good fun and competitive, and we used to get half-decent prize money" - during which time he started winning, and sometimes raced his father's Lister-Jaguar.

Then there was a Formula Junior Lola Mk5, which Beasley hadn't got on with. Pearson had a go, loved it and was told to "treat it as his own", so more slipstreaming, wheel-to-wheel action followed.

"That got me into mainstream historic racing on a regular basis," he says.

Pearson, who was still restoring and preparing Jaguars, also renovated a Lotus 22 - previously used for the filming of John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix - which he sold. A step up in performance came when Pearson entered the Historic F2 fray with a Tecno, again owned by Beasley but which he eventually bought.

"It was just a bit of fun while we were restoring and preparing people's cars," he says. "The Tecno wasn't a winning car - well, I couldn't win with it! It was a heavy car compared to the Brabhams, but I loved it."

The 1990s was a key period. Pearson increasingly took over the business, which also moved premises, and he found himself racing more of his customers' cars in two-driver competitions, which were more of a novelty back then.

Expanding outside of Jaguars he raced a Maserati 250F, and shared a Lister with 1970 Le Mans 24 Hours winner Richard Attwood: "It was a good lesson in driving as quickly as you could without wearing the car out - the last thing I wanted to do was hand him a knackered car!

"I've always had my own stuff too and been lucky that the old man had cars, so there have always been family cars to drive."

That experience has served Pearson well. He rarely makes mistakes and his successes in longer races, such as the Royal Automobile Club Woodcote Trophy 1950s sportscar events (sometimes with brother John, below left), show he looks after the machinery too. He's also become one of the most trusted and well-respected figures in historic racing, both on and off the track.

"Gary's not a pushover - he's tough, but always fair," says fellow ace and preparer Martin Stretton, a friend for three decades. "He's someone I'm very happy to race wheel to wheel with and I look forward to the next time I get to race against him. If Gary has a good car he uses it well.

"Gary always seems to be in a good mood! He would lend you anything and he's a real asset to historic racing."

Pearson's experience continued to broaden in the 2000s, including a successful spell in Group C/GTP, but his speciality has remained the cars of the 1950s and 1960s.

It's easy to get the impression that, despite his success, Pearson isn't too worried about racking up the wins. He just loves driving the cars on some of the world's best circuits

"That's partly because that's the era I love and is what I was brought up with, and partly because they were the cars that we had around," explains Pearson.

That also means he is right in the zone for events at Goodwood, which usually cater for cars campaigned before 1966. Winning at the Revival, which began in 1998, is one of the big targets of most historic racers and Pearson is king. He has 14 wins, well clear of anyone else, plus another at the Members' Meeting in 2014.

He's won at dozens of venues, including nearly 30 victories at the Silverstone Classic, but heading the Goodwood list stands out.

His first victory at the West Sussex circuit came at the inaugural Revival, where he drove the 1953 Le Mans-winning Jaguar C-type and took the Freddie March Memorial Trophy, and he scored two successes at last September's event. There have also been five Goodwood wins in the only remaining genuine BRM P25 (below), the ex-Jo Bonnier 1959 Dutch GP winner.

"I love the circuit and I've been lucky enough to have had some competitive cars there," says Pearson. "The BRM is great there; it's a good-handling car."

One race that has eluded him, however, is the blue-riband RAC Tourist Trophy Celebration. He's invariably in the mix but the cards have never quite fallen for Pearson in the two-driver contest. And yet one of his best memories is from the TT. In 2003 he finished second sharing Carlos Monteverde's Jaguar E-type with Juan Manuel Fangio II.

"He got boxed in and pipped by Mark Hales near the end, but he was such a quiet, pleasant, understated bloke," recalls Pearson. "That's the closest I've come to winning the TT. It's such a competitive race now."

It's easy to get the impression that, despite his success, Pearson isn't too worried about racking up the wins. He just loves driving the cars on some of the world's best circuits.

More serious is running Pearsons Engineering, which now employs 15 people. As historic racing has expanded and become professional, the clientele has changed and Pearson has to cater for some very wealthy customers who are quite different from those his father used to prepare cars for.

"The type of owners are constantly changing," he says. "The old man used to buy and sell these cars when they were worth nothing, out of pure enthusiasm. His knowledge is unbelievable and he's found some important cars. He had the contacts. Now it's successful businessmen rather than his enthusiastic mates.

"It is a tough business. You've got to want to go racing every weekend, and every weekend is an immovable deadline. The calendar is relentless. At a big event, like the Silverstone Classic, we can have 17 cars."

Don't read that as a complaint. He's merely stating the facts. Pearson is very aware of the privileged position in which he finds himself, and smiles a lot when he talks about many of the cars he has driven: "I'm the luckiest bloke I know."

Working for the enemy

For someone so associated with Jaguar, it seems strange that Gary Pearson's main contemporary racing experience came while working against the marque in the Group C days of the world sportscar championship. Pearson worked for top Porsche 962 privateer team Richard Lloyd Racing at races, and sometimes in the workshop, until 1988.

"I learned quite a lot then," he says. "It was funny - being a Jag man, I was the enemy."

"We had to do change the engine in 45 minutes and we did, just. Normally it was about three hours!" Gary Pearson

The team's finest hour probably came with victory at the Norisring in June 1987 (below), Jonathan Palmer sharing with Mauro Baldi. That was one of only two occasions during the championship campaign that the Tom Walkinshaw Racing Jaguar XJR-8s were beaten, and came despite having to build a new car following a fire at Le Mans just two weeks before.

"Richard had a knack of pulling together a really good group of people," reckons Pearson. "He got Nigel Stroud to redesign the front end, and they did the honeycomb monocoque.

"It was a really good car, better than the factory 962s, and we started getting development bits from the factory."

All the experimental bits meant lots of engine changes. That was just as well at the Nurburgring in August 1987.

"When we fired it up for morning warm-up there was water coming out of the engine," recalls Pearson. "We called the Porsche guys over and they said change the engine. We had to do it in 45 minutes and we did, just. Normally it was about three hours."

Pearson has subsequently tested Group C Porsches, but never raced them. He was, however, a regular in historic Group C/GTP races from the moment the movement began in 1999, usually with the turbocharged Jaguar XJR-11.

"The only way you can run those reliably is you can't run a lot of boost," he says. "There was a reason they called it the 'external combustion engine'...

"I loved the first 10 years of [historic] Group C. It's a massive highlight. Having worked in it and watched the cars, you never imagined that one day you'd get the chance to drive them."

And to underline that Pearson really is still a Jaguar man, his "pride and joy" is his XJR-12 (below). It's the chassis that Martin Brundle used to win the 1988 world sportscar championship, then in XJR-9 form, and finished second at Le Mans in 1991 with Davy Jones, Raul Boesel and Michel Ferte.

Cars still on the bucket list

"The biggest box I've ticked was Carlos Monteverde's Porsche 917," reckons Pearson of his favourite racing experience. "That's the icon car of my childhood.

"After we bought it from David Piper we took it to Barcelona for the Masters meeting because there was some testing there. It was nice, but it was a bit soft, the gear change wasn't that nice and it wasn't very comfortable to sit in.

"With a bit of sorting, including taking the seat from the 1970 Le Mans winner, it was magic. Then it was everything you imagined it should be."

So which unticked box is the one he'd most like to address?

"I love the Shadow DN5 (below), particularly a Tom Pryce car," says Pearson with little hesitation.

"I'd like to do something in a 1970s Formula 1 car.

"I have driven a couple Formula 5000s. John Beasley had a Lola T300 and out of the blue one day asked me to drive it at Silverstone. The quickest thing I'd driven up to then was a Formula Junior so that was an experience, but I've never done the 1970s F1 thing."