Drivers

Mark Blundell

Promising British driver who started in motocross in 1980 and switched to four wheels in 1984. He had a remarkable debut year winning the Champion of Snetterton title and finishing second in the Junior FF1600 series. He won the top Grovewood Award that year and in 1985 won the Esso FF1600 title and the BBC Grandstand FF2000 championship. He graduated to Formula Ford 2000 in 1986 and won the European title and finished second in Britain.

He then took the unusual decision to jump straight into Formula 3000 and he led his second race but afterwards his career stagnated. In 1988 he joined Lola Motorsport and finished sixth in the European Championship and then moved to Middlebridge but still failed to win a race. In 1990 he quit single-seater racing and joined the Nissan sportscar team, while also becoming test driver for Williams.

In 1991 he drove for the Brabham-Yamaha team and switched to become McLaren test driver for 1992 before moving to the Ligier team in 1993, Tyrrell in 1994 and then into the McLaren-Mercedes team after Nigel Mansell's midseason retirement in 1995. Since 1996 he has been driving in the US CART series and won three races the following season for the PacWest team. He remained active in CART until the end of 2000. There was talk of work as a test driver in F1 but Blundell preferred to become a TV pundit for the ITV channel although he remained racing with the MG Rover Le Mans programme and more recently with Aston Martin.