People

Brian Lambert

From Kingston-upon-Hull in Yorkshire, England, Lambert was an apprentice in a Jaguar and Rolls Royce dealership after leaving school. His passion was motor racing and so when his apprenticeship ended in 1969 he went looking for a job in the sport and joined the highly-respected Broadspeed Engineering in Southam, near Coventry. The company was the most famous touring car preparation firm in the business and, when Lambert joined, was running factory Ford machinery. Lambert worked on the Fords until 1975 when British Leyland approached Broadspeed and asked the company to prepare Triumph Dolomite Sprints for the British Touring Car title. Drivers Andy Rouse and Tony Dron dominated their class in the series and Broadspeed boss Ralph Broad talked Leyland into letting him prepare the big Jaguar XJ12Cs for the European Touring Car series. Lambert was a member of the Jaguar team but the cars, driven by Rouse/Derek Bell and John Fitzpatrick/Tim Schenken never lived up to their promise. They were fast but not reliable and in the autumn of 1977 Leyland canceled the program.

At the same time the Shadow F1 team was breaking up with Jackie Oliver, Alan Rees and others leaving the Northampton team and setting up Arrows. Shadow boss Don Nichols had to recruit a new team and Lambert was of them. In 1978, with backing from Villiger, the team ran Hans Stuck and Clay Regazzoni in the Shadow DN9. They scored a couple of fifth places but by the end of the year money was short and none was available to build new cars for 1979. The old cars were reworked and youngsters Jan Lammers and Elio de Angelis were signed up, both bringing much-needed sponsorship. The car was not competitive but de Angelis finished fourth in the US Grand Prix at the end of the year. The Italian then broke his contract and moved to Lotus. The team struggled on into 1980 with drivers Stefan Johansson, David Kennedy and Geoff Lees but the cars were not competitive and Nichols sold the assets of the team to the Theodore operation.

In May 1981 a vacancy arose for a number one mechanic at Williams and Lambert applied for the job. He joined the World Championship-winning crew and stayed with the race team until 1984 when he was put in charge of the new test team, a job which continued until the late 1990s when Tim Newton took over.