Club Night - Anthony Reid Talk

An Evening With Anthony Reid – BAWA April 10th

Anthony introduced himself as a Scottish racing driver who has now been racing for 40 years. He was not from a racing family, although his father, an architect, had been influenced by Ford’s 1-2-3 at Le Mans in 1966 to transfer his car-buying allegiance from Hillman to Ford. He also had an uncle who had accompanied Keith Schellenberg on the 1968 London-Sydney Marathon in Keith’s 8-litre Bentley and been waylaid by brigands after the car had slid off the road in Turkey. Anthony feels his interest in racing might well have been kindled as he went to Loretto School, as had Jim Clark, and he was very taken with the memorial to Jim at the school.

Having been bitten by the bug Anthony did a Jim Russell racing school course, where he finished ahead of Roberto Guerrero. However, he couldn’t afford to go racing, so spent the next three years working in the oil industry in the Shetland Islands, living in a tent, to earn enough money to get him into racing. He then successfully progressed through Formula Ford and FF2000 to land a Formula 3 drive for 1985. Unfortunately, this turned out a disaster as his team was using the heavy and underpowered Saab engine. At the very first race at Snetterton the three
Saab-powered cars of Anthony, Maurizio Sandro Sala and Julian Bailey took each other out on the first lap in front of lots of Saab people and other sponsors who had been invited along to see the team’s debut.

After that debacle Anthony was struggling for drives for the next couple of years, but in 1989 he had a successful season in the new Formula Vauxhall Lotus single-seater formula, including winning the biggest race of the season supporting the British GP. This led to him being recommended by Tiff Needell to the Japanese Alpha team who were racing Porsche 962s in the World Endurance Championship. The highlight here was finishing in third place at Le Mans in 1990 with Needell and David Sears, beating all the works-supported Porsches.

It was around this time that Anthony almost made it into F1. He had a letter from Eddie Jordan offering him a drive subject to him raising sufficient sponsorship, and he had a company willing to sponsor him. Unfortunately, the company then went bust and the opportunity was lost. Anthony kept the Jordan letter, had it framed and put it on the wall of his toilet.

His Japanese connections then opened the door to what Anthony described as possibly the most enjoyable phase of his career, six years racing in Japan. Here he got drives on merit, not on the size of any sponsorship package, and he flourished, winning the Japanese F3 championship in 1992 against the likes of Jacques Villeneuve and Tom Kristensen, then moving up to Japanese F3000 where he again did well against several future top names. He continued racing sports cars, and also did some touring car racing out there. He described his massive accident at the
130R curve at Suzuka where the marshals assumed he was dead, but Roland Ratzenberger stopped and came to his assistance. He was greatly saddened when Roland died at Imola some eighteen months later.

His Nissan contacts led to them offering him a drive in the British Touring Car Championship in 1996. He thought the BTCC was much better in those days than it is now, with more professional drivers in it than in F1. The pay was good, and he had a great time. After two years with Nissan he moved to the Prodrive team running Ford Mondeos. In 2000 he lost out on the championship by two points after being punted off in the last race.

He then had a spell racing for Martin Birrane, who was running MGs in the BTCC and MG-powered Lolas in the LMP category. At Le Mans in 2002 they were running third until the gearbox broke, but shortly after that MG pulled the plug on the operation due to legal problems.

From 2004 Anthony spent six years racing in the Argentinian TC2000 touring car series for Victor Rosso’s Honda team, including winning the important Buenos Aires 200km race with current multiple World Touring Car Champion José María López, while also successfully racing in the European and British GT Championships.

In addition to his continuing other commitments, since 2001 Anthony has been doing a lot of historic racing, in what he described as ‘other people’s very expensive cars’. These included the 1955 Le Mans-winning Jaguar D-Type, plus numerous Ferraris, Maseratis and other exotica. He was very proud to have been appointed one of the four ‘House Captains’ at the Goodwood Members’ Meetings. He described how being on the podium at one of the Goodwood historic meetings is a little unusual, in that one is approached by Lord March’s butler bearing a humidor
and invited to select a fine cigar.

Anthony concluded his talk by showing film of a race from the 2013 Goodwood Revival, where he and TV personality Chris Harris were driving the Lister ‘Costin’ coupé. After the team had overcome oil pump troubles in practice, Chris performed respectably in the first stint, so when Anthony took over he wasted no time in putting the car into the lead and was soon well in control of the race. Unfortunately it then started to rain. Simon Hadfield in the Aston Martin DP212 had a car much better suited to the wet and came charging up through the field, unnoticed by Anthony’s team who failed to warn him of the danger. Anthony had been cruising, but when the Aston unexpectedly appeared in his mirrors he was unable to hold it off, and the
Aston went on to win.

We’d like to thank Anthony very much for taking the trouble to come along and visit us and wish him luck as his racing career continues in its fifth decade.