Patrick Watts

From the British Touring Car Championship to historic endurance rallying in a 400bhp Sunbeam Tiger

- Richard Heseltine

THE PUTDOWN IS devastating. A former Grand Prix star has just been skewered, apparently because he couldn't 'drive a nail through wood. Patrick Watts is on mischievous form, the British Touring Car Championship legend backing up his assertion that certain wheelmen weren't cut out for the cut-andthrust of tin-tops: 'I would say that the main credential for getting into Touring Cars in the 1990s was talent. In F1 it was money, contacts, and smooth-talking. There were plenty of drivers there that bought their way in. If you were in a works team in the BTCC, then you were there on ability alone and getting paid.

Warming to the theme, he adds: 'There was no hiding place, and there were a few drivers who moved over from F1 and couldn't adapt. You have to remember how big it was then. At its height there were, what, ten or 12 works teams? I think some people underestimated just how hard it was.' And with that the tour of his cavernous workshops continues, our genial host stopping only long enough to discuss a particular car, a particular race - or a particular nemesis. Watts is good company, a man who made it to the top the hard way. Few drivers achieved more with less than this Kent star.

In period, he was the man who dragged often third-rate cars kicking and screaming to the front. He did so before a capacity audience during the Super Touring golden era. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he never wanted to race single-seaters. 'I grew up in Faringham, which was within cycling distance of Brands Hatch. Dad was a doctor and he used to officiate at race meetings. Mum wanted rid of me and my brother so we would go with him and sit in the press box at the bottom of the main grandstand. I was always interested in the bucking and twisting Anglias and Cortinas. Those, and the Minis.