People

Trevor Carlin

Carlin started out as junior mechanic with the PRS company in Formula Ford in 1980, at the age of 17. Four years later he moved to Ralt where he worked in the production department for two years before moving to Los Angeles where he ran sales operations for cars and parts. He returned to the UK to become team manager of Bowman Racing in British Formula 3, overseeing Gary Brabham's campaign in 1988. The following year David Brabham won the title for the team and ended the year with a win at the Macau GP. The team then built its own car but in 1993 Carlin was offered the job of running the West Surrey Racing F3 team. In 1996 Carlin set up his business to run a pit stop promotion for Williams F1 at F1 events in European and in 1998 that led to the decision to go into F3 with his own team. Carlin Motorsport ran Narain Karthikeyan in the first season and the Indian won two races in 1999. The following year Carlin ran Ben Collins and Takuma Sato and both drivers won races and in 2001 won 18 victories with Sato (who won the title) and Anthony Davidson. There was further success in 2002 with Michael Keohane, James Courtney and Shinya Hosokawa but Courtney lost out in the title race to Robbie Kerr but Carlin fought back in 2003 with Alan van der Merwe winning the title and Jamie Green finishing runner-up. The team also started a team in the Nissan World Series with Karthikeyan and in 2004 Tiago Monteiro finished second in that series while in British F3 Clivio Piccione, Danilo Dirani and Alvaro Parente all won races. At the end of the year Carlin was named as sporting director of Midland F1, which bought the Jordan team at the start of 2005.