The father and son team taking GT racing by storm

GT Cup title winners Richard and Sam Neary emerged as a race-winning force in British GT in 2021. The father-and-son pairing have done it the hard way with their family team – and 19-year-old Sam is only just getting started on a career he hopes will lead to factory opportunities in the near future

It’s been a long and eventful road to a first British GT win for Richard Neary since his entry into the championship with a BMW Z4 back in 2016.

In the intervening years, he’s had his car engulfed in flames, causing burns to his co-driver Adam Christodoulou (Spa 2018), been hooked into the wall at flat chat (Oulton Park 2017) and suffered heartbreak when a gearbox let go while well-placed to challenge at Silverstone last year. But, when his Team Abba Mercedes-AMG GT3 came across the line first at Donington Park in July, the result was made even sweeter by the fact that his 19-year-old son Sam was at the wheel for the giant-killing performance of the year.

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Author James Newbold

James Newbold is Autosport's Plus Editor, responsible for coordinating website feature content.

In a sign of things to come, having completed his Politics and International Relations degree at the University of East Anglia in 2015, he left his graduation ceremony early to catch the last train to Brussels for the following day's Spa 24 Hours.

After a period as a freelancer, he joined the Autosport staff in 2018 and won the Motorsport UK young journalist of the year award. He initially edited Autosport magazine's Performance and Engineering supplements before joining the website team in his current role in 2020.

A keen enthusiast of anything that can be categorised unusual or niche, he enjoys unearthing little-known stories across all branches of motorsport, but has spent most of his career covering sportscars and is a regular part of the Le Mans 24 Hours reporting team.

He lives with his wife and children in Plymouth, England.