Stories from Super Touring. Hello and welcome to this week's
episode of Stories from Super Touring.
We've got no Adam Jones this week, but joining myself and
Levi is another BTCC legend, although this time one from the
other side of the pit lane. His team is also celebrating
their 40th anniversary this year, so I'd like to welcome Ray
Malik to Stories from Super Touring.
Ray, how you doing? Are you well?
I am very well, thank you. Yeah, yes, it is, it is quite a
milestone for us to to be celebrating the 40th anniversary
of of RML. And yeah, it's, it's it's been
an opportunity to sort of reflect on those 40 years and
jog my memory about, you know, quite a few things that happened
during that period. And the Super important part of
that was super touring throughout the 90s.
Absolutely. You know RML very much a project
of your own hard work. But it is true that the Malik
name looking back can be found in racing as far back as the
1930s with your with your father, Major Arthur Malik.
So is it fair to say that the racing bug was already in you as
a child and and and you were immersed in it already from a
very young age? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
It's, it's, it's in my, in my DNA.
So when I was from the time I was in short trousers, all I
wanted to do was was to be in racing.
And well, specifically to be a race driver.
I'd, I'd see my dad driving his, his own cars, cars of his own
design and saw how passionate he was about that and how
successful he was. And I vividly remember a race at
Brands Hatch when I was about 9 or 10 and they had, he had
entered a race in a customer's car which had some problems in,
in qualifying practice, as we used to call it back then.
And he started from the back row of the grid and he had a super
race, came through through the grid and got the lead and won
it, got the lead on the last lap and won.
And, and I vividly remember the the crowd on the South Bank
giving the traditional sort of horns salute, Tooting their
horns as he went by on his on his lap of honour.
And that that kind of got the goosebumps going on me.
And I thought this is what I want to do.
And from that moment on, I was just focused on being a race
driver, to be honest. So yeah, it's in.
It's in my DNA. Yeah, as you were saying there,
you were obviously at the time looking at being a racing
driver. Now most of our listeners would
know you mainly for your work with RML in in Super Touring,
with Vauxhall and and Nissan. But as you say, you were a
successful racer in your own right.
You won the Grovewood Award in 1971, and at what point did you
think about the engineering side and the design side of things in
motorsport? Was it always there or was that
something that came later on? It it was always there because
that's what drove my dad. Arthur was a, a very gifted
engineer. His qualifications were in
electronics actually, but he understood mathematics very
well. So he was, he was one of the 1st
people to recognise the importance of suspension
geometry and race cars, the importance of things like low
centre of gravity, damping theory, those kind of things.
So at the time my dad was really getting into that people like
Colin Chapman and John Cooper and then Terry, Eric Broadly
were doing similar things. So this is sort of mid 60s.
And so I was fortunate enough to witness that and understand
myself first hand where those performance gains could come
from and the importance of vehicle dynamics.
So, yeah, it was, it was from an, from an early age, but, and
I was fortunate enough as a driver to be able to utilize
that engineering understanding of the race car in getting my
own cars to go faster. So that was, it's not not
unique, but unusual in in my era, you know, my, I was growing
up with people like Roger Williamson and Tom Price and
Derek Pearly and people like that.
And I was always fiddling with my car.
I was always talking with the suspension dampers, torsion,
rigidity. They weren't doing that stuff.
They were, they were getting in the car and wringing its neck.
I was doing that, but also trying to optimize and finding
ways of I was engineering a car myself.
And that that led me on to creating an RML group.
Yeah. Talking about RML Group and the
creation of it be naturally we're going to speak a bit more
about RM LS involvement in touring cars and Super Touring
throughout this episode, but it would be remiss of us to not
talk about RM LS involvement in sports car racing and Le Mans as
well. Whilst we're looking back at the
last 40 years sort of it in terms of that, quite a big
history there for for yourselves as a as a, as a team.
Any particular highlights across the last 40 years with the Le
Mans and the sports car side of things?
Yeah, in the same way that Super Touring was dominated my life
for for the 90s, Le Mans Group C did in the 80s.
Really. So that that came about because
in by, by the early 80s, I've realized that I wasn't going to
make it as a, as a race driver. There's, there's another,
there's an interesting story there about how I thought I
might get into F1 in the early 80s, but it but it didn't come
off. So that that wasn't going to
happen. So that coincided with the start
of the Group C series, which was sports car series for Lamont and
the World World Championship, World Sports car Championship
with a set of regulations that were were well designed in my
opinion around fuel consumption and efficiency.
So there were no tuning restrictions on the engines.
All the entrants could use what kind of engine they wanted, race
engine, normally aspirated, turbo production based.
It was purely down to using the allocated fuel in the most
efficient way possible. So that opened up an opportunity
for a load of competitors and manufacturers to come into Group
C in the mall in that period and that included Aston Martin.
So coincided with my decision to step down from single seater
racing, Aston Martin had decided to go back into sports car
racing in Group C. And I knew the guys asked them
well because I'd done an apprenticeship at Aston after I
left school and I'd done some racing and development work with
the DBS V8 Vantage cars. So I'd always kept in touch with
them. So suddenly I was part of the
Aston Martin Nimrod programme and all sorts of things kind of
spun off from there. And yeah, Le Mans became a super
important part of my life. I mean, I, I, I didn't ever win
Le Mans. My class, the best I, I got
personally as a driver was to be second in class in Group C2.
We, we won the World Sports Car championship with our car and me
driving the cost C2 car with the Austin Rover V64V.
That was in 86. And so that that was something
that I was tremendously proud of and very satisfying to do
because that that car was designed by me.
It was, it was my, my, my, my concept, if you like, which is
all all about blow, drag, high efficiency.
And we we won that world championship by a couple of
points after the season long battle with Spice Engineering,
Ray Bellman, Gordon Spice. I think we won by a couple of
points or something at Fuji in a very wet sort of typhoon race at
Fuji at the end of 86. So that that was very
satisfying. Yeah.
Your final drive at Le Mans was
in 1989 with with Aston and after that you retired from
professional driving. Was it nice to be able to start
focusing on the company RML itself and and develop that and
take a sort of like, you know, taking a back seat from the
driving and and just developing your business Was was that was
that the aim? It was a necessity really.
I mean, at that time, 89, the second incarnation of the Aston
Group C programme had happened. We've moved on from the Nimrod
programme to a much more sophisticated bespoke design,
the AMR one, which was was really quite, quite
groundbreaking at the time and that we formed a new, a new
business, a new company. It wasn't RML then, although I I
took all my guys and my kit and we had a new factory unit at
Milton Keynes in partnership with Peter Livanos, the then
owner of Aston Martin and Richard Williams who'd been my
team manager at Lamont. And he brought his guys up who
were Aston specialist from from London.
So between the three of us, we, we created a new business called
Proteus Technology, which was specifically to run the Aston MO
1 program. And so I, I was engineering
director of that business and I was racing the car as well and
developing the car. And it became pretty obvious
halfway through that first season that it was too much to
do to do all those things. And I needed to concentrate on
the engineering and the car needed that, that the whole
engineering department needed that focus to move it forward.
So that that's what happened. But there was then a rule, a
rule change. As you may recall, at the end of
89, it was announced that Group C was going to move away from
the fuel consumption formula to what was effectively Formula One
engines normally aspirated 3 1/2 litre B twelves.
And yeah, Aston's good enough for our program.
Couldn't afford to go down that route.
So, so the programme was canned and we had to start RML again.
Kind of RML Mark 2/19/90. And at this point the British
Touring Car Championship had started developing its own 2
litre programme formula. At what point did you start
looking at the championship and thinking that this is this is
maybe a route we could go down? I can't remember the exact date
it was, it was pretty soon. I mean, so we, we put our heart
and soul into Lung Wong and were were left in a very, very
difficult position at the start of 1990 to find a way of keeping
the team together to we, we had to find new premises and find a
new income stream. We were fortunate to pick up a
contract with Nissan to look after the development of their
cars for Le Mans for the that was a year that Nissan ran six
cars at Le Mans 2 entered by Nissan Japan on Nismo 2 by
Nissan Europe and two by Nissan USA.
And the guys in America knew us and asked us to take over the
prep and development of the cars for them.
So that was our first contract post Aston Martin and we got
incredibly close to winning that race.
We did some very good development work with the car
over in, in North America before we we, we brought them over to,
to UK. I've spent about six weeks over
there with, with my guys doing aero work and suspension and
chassis work. And we had a car that that that
should have won. We got on pole first, first
night with David Brabham running on on race boost.
The second night, Mark Brundell got pole with that astonishing
lap that you might recall where the the wastegates got stuck
open or something like that. And he did a ridiculous lap,
which was, which was great, but it didn't really help them
towards winning the race. But it was headline grabbing.
And so, yeah, that that race progressed and we got ourselves
in the lead fairly early on and we're swapping the lead with the
TWR Jaguar that eventually won. But we could, we could see how
much fuel they were using and compare it with us and they were
using quite a bit more fuel than us.
We were running it at a pace that we knew could get us to
4:00 Sunday afternoon at that pace.
And we knew that the TWR car was going to have to back off.
So we, we were feeling very comfortable pace wise and fuel
wise. But at about, I think it was
about 7:00 in the morning, Jeff, I think it was Jeff came in and
he said he could smell fuel. We had fuel in the cockpit and
we had a fuel leak and it was deep inside the bag tank and
collector. We tried ripping out the bag
tank, but we weren't able to get it fixed.
So we had to retire the car. But the really annoying thing
about that was that the three teams, Japan, US and and Europe
were of Nissan teams were were meant to share all their
development information and and we were sending back all our
test day reports. Every time we all this look,
look, this is better, you know, we can find it all.
Did you know that this, the bracket's a bit weak, but we, we
were hardly getting anything back, which puzzled us a bit.
But we thought, well, I've been running these cars for a while.
I suppose they, they know nibbles.
But it turned out after the race that Nissan Europe had, in fact
had, had had this fuel tank problem.
It was to do with the fuel collector pot not being properly
secured to the back of the monocoque.
So when there was small amount of fuel in the tank, but a lot
of tank, but the fuel collector was full, the weight was making
it move around. And we we weren't advised about
this and we didn't do enough endurance running to to get it
figured out. So we lost the race.
Nissan lost the race. Nissan should have won that
race, should have won in 1990 if there'd been better
communication between the teams. I've gone off on a on a on a Le
Mans. Not at all.
Rabbit hole? I can't remember what the
question. Was at all?
Not at all. It's great.
So Ray, your entry into the BTCC came in 1992 with a Curia Costa
and the Cavalier. And how did that deal come about
to run that car that season? Yeah.
So after Le Mans in 1990 with with Nissan, we were that was
just a short term contract and we needed to to be finding the
next income stream. And we tried a couple of
avenues. We tried creating our own Rd.
car, the RMLGT E40 and that that was quite successful in its own
right. And we were doing subcontract
manufacturing work, but we realized that we needed to get
back into serious motorsport. And BTCC was clearly on the app.
Super Touring was attracting a load of manufacturers.
So I saw I was knocking on the door of all the manufacturer
contracts contacts that I had. And that of course included
Vauxhall, who were only just down the road in Luton.
And they, they knew us, the Vauxhall Dealer Sport guys,
which Vauxhall Dealer Sport was the entity through which the
motorsport funds came. There was a levy on each new car
sold in the UK for motorsport. And there was a, a group that
looked at how best to, to spend that money in motorsport.
So they, they, they knew of us because we're not, you know, not
very far from, from Newton and they knew we were keen to, to
get into, into BTCC. So we were able to negotiate the
loan of a couple of Dave Cooks cars from the previous year, ex
works Dave Cooks cars. So the deal was if I was able to
find the running costs, Vauxhall dealer Sport would loan me a
couple of cars and engines and we would run the cars.
So there will be no cost to Vauxhall and I was able to
persuade Hugh McKay to put up the budget for David Leslie and
we were able to get a couple of good pay drivers, people like
Alex Portman, Harry Nuttall, Bobby Verdon Rowe I think as
well. So good, good quality drivers
with the budget and things like getting a contract with with
Dunlop. Dunlop were not kind of flavour
of the month in. BTCC but they knew us well from
our previous work with them. So we got a a full supply of
Dunlop tyres and we're we're their development partner.
So we kind of stitched together a deal on a wing and a prayer
and, and went racing. Yeah.
Talking of you mentioned David Leslie there.
I mean, he was a man who was with you at Lamont, he was with
you at Vauxhall with the Curia Cos, he was with you then later
on at Nissan in the BTCC 2. It seems that he was a major
part of your career and it's, you know, a special man who was
very clearly and sorely missed. Yes, yeah.
And the other bit you've missed there is not many people know.
David became my works manager at RML.
Yeah, after now when was Yeah. So this was, this was after the
Nissan program ended and once again in the cycle of things,
we, we were looking for our next income stream.
So it was David and we, we picked up a contract with the
American Ford Mustang specialist, Celine and I need, I
needed a works manager. And David, would you know, those
of those of you that knew David will will know that he would
always turn his hand to anything.
And at that time that included coming to RML and be responsible
for managing the work. So that was all, all to do with
the facility, the infrastructure, you know, the
security, health and safety. David would come and do that.
So yeah, that's the kind of guy he was.
Well, yeah, he really was a special man, wasn't he?
Sorely missed today. Yes, yeah.
You then also in 1992, had a somewhat indirect involvement in
that dramatic infamous title decider at Silverstone after
Leslie clashed with Steve Super and Steve I think maybe got it a
little bit wrong and thought it was part of a wider Vauxhall
plan that day to try and get John the title.
Was that was that the case or Steve slightly got that one a
bit wrong with his clash of Leslie?
Yeah, definitely got that one wrong.
Yeah. I mean, I, I don't even remember
that. I really don't remember that.
But there's no way we would have got involved with that kind of
stuff. So I think that's a conspiracy
theory. It's got got some legs there,
but no, it's got no roots really.
Yeah, no, in fairness, Steve has has since said that it was
obviously not the case, but that that was in his mind at the
time. It was like Vauxhall, Vauxhall
are trying to get me. Vauxhall walked me out of it.
Yeah. It's quite, quite, quite a crazy
moment. Did you ever, we're talking sort
of going forward into 93 now and you redeveloped these Vauxhalls
from the ground up in 93 and eventually you were regularly
outperforming the works cars of of of John Cleland and Jeff
Allen, which were run by Dave Cook.
Did that ever become an issue at all?
Did did that cause any issues between yourself and Fox or
yourself and Dave Cook with were there, were there any problems
with your performance basically and your race winning
performances? No, no, no, not at all.
No, I mean Box all delighted. So what happened at the end of
92 was I approached Foxhall to with a proposal for us to sell
those to Ex Dave book cars and use the proceeds towards the
development of a of an all new RML design.
And again, the, the proposal was we're not asking for any more
cash then you're running cash. Just if we could use these old
cars, the income from there that will go towards making, making
new ones. And, and we did that.
So that, that enabled us to utilise a lot more of our race
car design and development knowledge in, in designing from
a clean sheet of paper. And that included being able to
do a full FEA analysis and construction of the chassis over
the chassis was much more efficient.
It was, it was the torsion of rigidity was better enabled us
to come up with what at the time was a unique front suspension
system where we took the bending loads out of the MacPherson
strut and lower the centre of gravity.
We we shifted the pedals from being typical pendulum pedals to
floor mounted pedals, pulled it together a stiffer installation
and lower centre of gravity and we, we work.
We partnered with Extract. Mike Ending, the founder of
Extract was a good friend of mine and we've known each other
for a long time. And between us we developed the
first Extract towing card gearbox, which was a sequential
box and that allowed us to lower the lower the engine by about 3
inches, something like that. So it was, it was a major step
forward. But we, in fact, we work with,
with Dave. Dave got news engineers on that
gearbox because part of the deal with Vauxhall was if we came up
with a new gearbox design, we'd share that with Dave, which we
did. So he he utilized that on his
cars for for 93 as well. Yeah, I.
Do I do remember Murray Walker getting very excited about the
sequential box in the coverage one day, you know, saying this
is incredible. Look, he just goes 1234 and he
was getting so excited about it. Yeah, but I mean, it was such a
game changer, wouldn't it? Yeah.
But it's, but it's weird because motorbikes had used that for so
long. It took a long time for for for
the car world to catch on, really.
But it's all the same principles.
Yeah. But yeah, I was very fortunate
to have my gender into to engineer that lot and and it
would and it worked straight out-of-the-box.
Yeah. And it was in 1993 as well that
the fruit of that work really bore there.
After several near misses, the first BTCC race win came for RML
with David Leslie at Froxton. That must have been quite a
special moment that you sort of finally fully breaking, broken
through in the BTCC. It was, yeah.
I mean we, we got, we've got very close at Pembrey I think it
was. And we had a broken throttle
cable and we'd LED a few races and got on pole as well.
So we knew the potential was there.
But yeah, as you know, effectively a private entry
running on a on a wing and a prayer.
It was quite something to beat the people we were beating with
BMW. I mean, that were our nemesis, I
suppose. Really.
There seemed to be a lot of a lot of contact between the front
of BMWs and the tail back end of David Leslie's Cavalier during
that season. Yeah.
No, I remember.
Yeah, it was, you were right. It was at Pembrey where the we
were leading in the throttle went throttle cable went brands
you were leading and Vinkelhawk put you off.
Yeah, put David off. And so yeah, you're right.
It was it was almost a case of will it ever happen?
I remember yeah. You get it every time they oh,
come on, because I always like David Leslie and yeah, it was it
was great to see it finally, finally happened.
But. Yeah.
Good moment. Yeah, Yeah.
Obviously you built up that you quite the relationship with
Vauxhall and then eventually that led to you getting the
works contract in 94 was just natural progression.
I guess that that that they felt that you were, they were
obviously impressed with the work you were doing that that
you were you were the team to lead them on with the Cavalier
fully as a fully works outfit, that must have been quite
special as well. Yeah, it was.
Yeah. I mean, that's I think what's
what sailed it was that box all dealer Sport organized a test
session at Silverstone. It was on on the on the South
circuit with John Cleland driving.
I think it was just John, can't remember, maybe Jeff as well.
So we had our car there and Dave Cook brought along car.
We were running on different tires.
We were on Dunlop. Dave was on Yuck Armour, I
think. So John drove both cars with
both types of tire. So he tried the Dunlops on
Dave's car and he tried the Yokos on our car to figure out
whether it was the tires that was making a big difference.
But he John's conclusion was that the RML car was a bit
quicker and yeah, so we got the contract, which was a shame for
Dave, obviously, but I suppose that's the way the cookie
crumbles. We were determined to find a a
works contract and as well as Vauxhall, we were talking to
most of the others that that would have, would have been
interested. But it was Vauxhall that that,
that came down in our favour. So, yeah, yeah.
So it's always difficult in in the sport when when someone else
loses out. But that did what happened.
And, you know, we fought like hell to to get a works contract
and, and it's unfortunate that that Dave lost his as a result,
but yeah. Yeah, and and as you say, you,
you, you won that contract and then turn up at Thruxton for the
season opener and Alfa Romeo suddenly we like their 15 fives
with these front and rear wings which they were hiding very well
in testing. Do you remember any of your
thoughts at the time when you see you saw these for the first
time with with the add-ons that were that were on the alpha?
I suppose what I thought was why didn't we think of that?
I mean, it was, it was pretty canny of them, but I, I can't
remember the exact details. It was amalgation where I think
you had to offer it was, I don't know if it was a 2 1/2 thousand
or something. Like that 5000 I think. 5000 was
it right? OK, yeah.
So it was quite a commitment really from Alpha, but
nonetheless very effective. And it was a loophole in the
regs. So there wasn't anything we
could do with it because those are the regs and that's what we
have to get on with. Peter Riches saw Peter Allen and
there's probably a bit some lobbying from us that we needed
to find some way of of levelling this this playing field, which
is what happened to 95. And it was 1995, as you
mentioned there, Ray, that the FIA mandated standard Aerospec
for all the cars, the area. They did seem to transform the
Cavalier a bit and give it a new lease of life in its last year
of competition, didn't it? Well, it did, yes, and we were
very fortunate from our sports car experience both in the wind
tunnel and coast down testing. But we understood how to get rid
of lift and generate downforce on the front of a full with,
with nose, which is effectively what a touring car has got.
And there are some tricks, if you want to call it, or
processes, processes that that that we, we learned in sports
car racing that were directly applicable.
And yeah, we've. So we grabbed those new
regulations with relish and it was, it was very effective.
The rear wing was less, less scope for being, you know,
individual if you like or or finding an edge.
But on front wheel drive touring car where you need the down
forces or the get rid of the lift is on the front axle
obviously because all traction and braking is going through
there. So we were we were at a test
down. I think it was Pembrey and the
the works Mondeo was there with what we knew was going to be
some alligated front bumper. So I took the opportunity of
peeking underneath and I could see that it was really quite a
basic interpretation of the rules, which pleased me no end
because I could, you know, these, these moments stand out
in my life, weren't of significant things.
And me poking my head under the front of the Mondeo splitter was
a significant moment because we knew they had a fabulous engine,
but they'd lost the opportunity with that humiliated front
splitter to get the, the downforce that was that was, was
potentially there. And I actually said to myself,
well, we got them beat just by looking at that.
So it's, you know, it's, it sets the hairs on the back of my head
going just just thinking about it now.
But yeah, these these things happen as a result of a lot of
lot of hard work and experience and a team of good engineers
which I was fortunate enough to build around me.
So when that the blood, sweat and tears that go into creating
that team and that these ideas comes to fruition, it's, it's
quite special, really, Yeah. Yeah, John spoke to us about the
first time he drove the 95 Cavalier with the the front and
rear arrow on on, on the car at Brands Hatch.
And I quote, he said to Phil Barker, wash it down, stick it
back in the truck, we're going to win this championship.
Typical John, but were you ever as confident as that going into
the season? Well, yeah, I, I knew we had a
much faster car than the year before.
Yeah, I, I thought we were odds, odds on definitely.
But as ever, you know, it's, it's, it's a battle and we
battled on through the season and we, we were constantly
finding new ways to making the car a bit quicker.
It resulted in a fabulous championship win.
Out of interest, we were. We recorded an episode a couple
of weeks ago looking back at the season opener 1995 at Donnington
and there was one car, it was Hamish Irvine.
The independent was running without the splitters in the
front and front and rear wing. How much quicker do you think
the front and rear arrow made the cars in in seconds Do you?
How much do you think it made the cars quicker as a guess?
A second. Yeah.
Interesting. Yeah, yeah.
And obviously it would have made sort of tie away better.
So throughout the race, the consistency would have been
better as well. I mean, this wasn't, it wasn't
night and day, but a second, you know, in towing car racing, it's
night and day, isn't it? Yeah, it is.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
In 95 as well, James Thompson came in as John Cullen's
teammate for that year. They've both been on the podcast
with us previously and said that the partnership was tough
between the two of them at times.
Do you remember sort of if it was hard to manage and keep both
of them happy, obviously at 2 very different points of their
career as well, weren't they? So is that a struggle for you to
manage them or? I don't know if it would.
You could describe it as a struggle.
It was a bit frustrating at times, but with John, I mean,
you couldn't really manage John anyway, so you just had to grin
and bear it, to be honest. You know, John's, John, we all
know exactly what you get on the tin.
So and that was fine because you do know what's what you're
letting yourself in for. But yeah, James was, was, was
was young and his, his accident at Knock Hill was awful for all
of us. You know, he did well to bounce
back from that. But we just, we had what we had
a young, up and coming very, very fast driver who was a
threat to John and John being John.
But yeah, we got on with it. Yeah, that that year was the
year that Williams came into the championship as well.
And we're undoubtedly a thorn in your side for you that year.
Was that just a sign of how big the championship and the the
Super Touring Formula was getting at that point that, you
know, the Formula One lead team at the time got involved in in
what was the national championship, which is crazy to
think of now. Yeah, well, yeah, it was, I mean
it was that's, that's part of what what made Super Touring so
fantastic because we had super engineers, world class drivers
and good enough budgets to, you know, squeeze the performance
out of the out of the regulations.
So yeah, it was a fabulous time for for Super Touring.
Did you did you get to have a look at the Cavalier whilst
you're at Brands Hatch for Super Torian Power 2 recently?
Because it was it was there running wasn't it the the title
winning Cavalier? Did you get get a chance to
reminisce and and look back at the car?
No, I don't think I did on that occasion.
No, I did. I did have a look at our 93 car,
93 car from was it was at Silverstone at the festival.
But I do look at the cars every now and then and yeah, you know,
they're like old friends. Obviously, you know, those cars
I was still very much involved in on the drawing board.
But yeah, the 939495 cars, they were, they were the last cars
that I was actually designed parts for.
So and I, so I was very responsible for, yeah, I was
responsible for the whole whole concept of those cars.
And yeah, a lot of a lot of the detail.
So yeah, they're very much old friends, yeah.
In 95 as well it wasn't just Renault that were the title
protagonists with your cells, it was also Volvo who were being
run by your old Le Mans adversaries from 1990.
At TWR there was a highly contentious meeting wasn't there
at Brands Hatch where both your cells and Volvo ended up
protesting each other after on track collisions.
Did it feel like at that point if it was becoming a very tense
title fight or was that just part of competing against some
some very quick outfits at the time?
I don't remember that specific example, but you know, we've,
we've never, never been hesitant about putting in a protest if we
felt that the right thing wasn't being done.
If whether it's Stuart's decisions about the driving
infringements. Or technical interpretations,
you know, from, from our point of view, you need to play, play
by the rules. So if it's, if something's been
misinterpreted or, or overlooked, then it's
appropriate, you know, to, to do what's to do what's necessary.
TWR. We're quite, quite a special
competitor really, Yeah. But not only in 95 were you
obviously battling for that title with a Cavalier, but
you're also hard at work developing the Vectra for the
following year. Is that hard to sort of be
racing one car and developing a completely different model
exactly at the same time? Well yeah, I think.
I think it must have been because the the vector never did
perform as we expected. It was there was some carryover
from from Cavalier, but there was a lot that was different
about it. It still puzzles me why we
weren't able to get it quite as quick as it should have been.
It did. It did coincide with a a rapid
phase of development for RML. So at that time, we, we were
responsible for all of GM's Super touring cars around the
world. So we were supplying all the
global regions with not only the cars, but customer support.
And we and we began the Astra rally program, F2 rally car with
Opel. So there was a lot going on.
And yeah, the Vectra didn't didn't really cover itself in
glory. I think we just got the 11 win.
I think that, yeah, you probably don't have to remember better
than I do, but it was a disappointment, yeah.
That race win that came in 96, as you mentioned, was at
Sneceton, James Thompson getting the win there.
I'm not sure if I ever mentioned it you'll you'll remember it,
but wasn't without controversy because Thompson sort of had a
collision and maybe not Colin off a bit on his way to victory.
Do you remember much that incident and maybe what was said
between John and James after the race, especially considering it
was obviously to get the first win for the Vectra, quite a big
moment for for both of them to have done that.
I don't remember. All I remember was we won.
That's all I remember. Yeah, I really don't.
I don't remember that the. Vectra was never really a winner
in in anybody's hands as a regular race winner anyway.
Was it the design concept of the Current that just limited its
success? That that, you know, that nobody
could really get that winning as as regularly as a Cavalier did?
Well, an interesting thing is that the the Cavalier, the
development of the Cavalier was very much down to David Leslie.
So in my, in my sports card years and before that I did all
of the development work myself. And we talked about the time
when I decided to step back from professional driving and
concentrate on engineering. And at that time I, I handed the
baton over to David for the key role as development driver on AS
on the SNA one, AMR one, because I, I trusted him so much.
We were on absolutely same wavelength.
We grew up together in international racing and sports
car racing. So we had a great rapport and
trust. So it was, it was great that
when we moved into touring car racing, David was able to, to
join me and he, he developed the car.
Interestingly, I, I tried driving the car a couple of
times and I just could not get my head around front wheel
drive. This concept of flooring the
throttle when the back end comes out, just just, it's completely
alien to me. So I've never been able to drive
a front wheel drive car fast. But so David was the constant
thing with starting with the 92 cars, then the 93 and 94 cars.
He worked with me to develop the, the suspension, steering
the and the kinematics. One of my regrets was that I
wasn't able to take David with me into the works Vauxhall
contract. Vauxhall had their own drivers
in, in John and Jeff. So we went over to take David,
David with us. But that Cavalier had David
through and through and I didn't have that benefit with the
Vectra. John, by his own admission was
not a development driver. Yeah, I'm paid to drop to race
cars, not development. And so I think, I think we
really missed that, that link of not having David when we when we
when we did the Vectra. And that that of course changed
for us the following year when we moved to Nissan because I was
able to get David back in my team.
And yeah, that that paid dividends for the Nissan
programme over the next three years.
Yeah, he was well known as a development driver, like you
say, he got the the Vauxhall winning, he got the Honda
winning and then took the first Nissan win as well for you guys.
So yeah, he's, yeah, his, his reputation as a development
driver was second to none. On the subject of that return
for Nissan in 1997 with yourselves, how did that deal
come about you? You obviously also had Anthony
Reed join the team for that year as part of that deal.
Was it, was it an easy deal to to bring about to have them back
or feel like a natural step after your time with Vauxhall?
That changed over to Nissan was was to do with the development
program. I was frustrated that I didn't
have as much influence on the driver lineup as I've had
previously. And Alec Paul approached me
about the opportunity to run the Nissan program and I said I'll
do it if I can dictate who or say who's who's going to be in
the cars. And I chose David and Anthony.
Anthony had driven the the Cavalier in Japan in I think it
was not probably 9394 and he was, he was super at working
with me on, on feedback from, from what's going on in Japan.
He would always, after every test session he would, he would
do me a written report with his notes about what he'd been doing
with dampers and tyres and that kind of stuff.
He was on Michelin tyres. So yeah, I had a very good
relationship with Anthony. So for me, my my dream driver
lineup was Anthony and David. So we were able to get that and
that's that's why we moved over from this end.
Yeah. And you had a, you had a year of
development with the with the Premiera before you hit the
round running in 98, as you say, as we mentioned, David took the
first couple of wins in the first half of the season.
And then Anthony went on this amazing run in the second-half
of the season, didn't he, with them winning race after race.
He actually calls the 98 season the zenith of Super Touring and
says it's the highlight of his career.
Is there a similar feeling for yourselves?
It, it's, it really was a high point of the series and, and and
the era. 98 yeah, I think 99 was better because we we dominated
everything. Yeah, that's fair.
Yeah, yeah. So 9098, what do we, what do we,
what did we win in 98? We.
You won the manufacturers. Manufacturers, but not the
drivers. Not the drivers.
You didn't win the. Drivers.
I think we. Might have.
I think we might have won the teams as well.
Yeah, I think you did. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So not winning the Yeah 99 was the was the.
Yeah. And of course, in 99, Anthony
left you. Yes.
So was that a disappointment? Obviously you've just said it
was your dream driver lineup. Was it a shame that he was then
leaving to go to Ford for 99? Well, we had a three-year
contract with Nissan. We knew that so did so did, so
did Anthony. So there was an opportunity
there for him. So we won't understand in his
way. And Laurent Aiello was available
and. And that was a fabulous change,
yeah. Talking of, of Nissan's sorry
Levi in, in 98 that, that was the first year that there was
another Nissan, but there was a red coloured one that started
sort of getting involved within the worst cars and, and, and
yeah, getting amongst it away from the independence and, and
obviously that was Matt Neil in Team dynamics.
It was obvious that he was running year old cars.
What was the relationship like with you guys and, and Matt and
dynamics? Because at times he could be a
real thorn in the side of of all the works teams.
We, we were fine with it. I mean, we've always been an
organization that has supplied customers with cars and and we
always like to see the cars doing well.
For us, that was a reflection of the fact that we were building
good cars. That's very true.
Yeah, Yeah. But it was great, great to see
them as and we and they had a lot of kind of understanding for
their position to for a private team to be, you know, mixing
with the big boys is always is always good for.
Yeah, for the team themselves, but for the sport, yeah, yes.
Absolutely, yeah, 1998 as well as the year that hit stops were
introduced to the series and the feature race.
Can you remember sort of how much extra work that had to sort
of created for yourself as the team and the amount of practice
that your Nissan team took perfecting that pit stop?
Because that was, that could be in some of the races, a massive
difference in terms of who ended up being towards the front at
the end of the race. Yeah, well, it did.
It introduced. Yeah, another, another level.
Yeah. I'll vividly remember our
practice sessions at the local stock car circuit, the
Brayfield. Is it a quarter mile stock car?
I think it's probably quarter mile.
Yeah, Brayfield circuit. So we used to go there and
practice up. So that was an opportunity of
going out and coming back in the pits into into a hot stop
without, you know, having to Silverstone something like that.
So yeah, we did lots of laps of Brayfield in and out, changing,
changing tires rapidly and yeah, perfecting the the angle of the
on the wheels and the nuts and the guns and all that kind of
stuff. But all part of the teamwork.
As you say, you fondly remember 1999 and as we move on to it,
was Laurent only the only ever choice for you to replace
Anthony, or were there a few others that you were considering
giving the drive to? No, I think it could pretty
pretty quickly came down to the wrong.
Turned out to be the right choice.
It did. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was quite amazing how quickly he settled into the team.
He brought his own race engineer with him and I interviewed them
both in a, in a, so, you know, in a fairly formal way, but I
was, you know, because that's important to kind of set the
scene, if you like, with anyone coming in, whether it's an
engineer or a driver, that they're part of the team.
And they did well. Well as as a, as a team.
It was huge competition, of course between David and and
Laurent, but Ludo and Laurent did integrate very well with us
and that was important. You know, taking work was such
an important ethos at Iron L. Yeah, yeah, it was impressive.
Leron's debut season, his only season in in the BTCC.
He he he comes in, takes ten wins and done well, you know,
Nissan dominate the championship and he takes the title.
Did you expect we? Not.
Really. No, no, it's, it's, I think
having spoke to him at Brands Hatch recently, even he was
quite shocked at how quickly he settled into the championship.
And it's was it nice catching up with Lauren at Brands Hatch
since you'd seen him, but. No, I haven't seen him for quite
a while. So it was good to catch up with
him and for, yeah, for him to be reflecting on, on just how
precious that 99 season was to him, how important it was to
him. So that was nice.
But that year also coincided with a change of base model on
the Nissan. We went from independent rear
suspension to a beam axle. And a lot of people were
concerned about that, about how it's going to ride the bumps.
But I've grown up with live axle race cars.
All my dad's cars were were live axles and so I so I knew the
inherent potential of the of the beam rear axle because you don't
have any Canva change or toad bump steering.
So it gives you quite a few more opportunities actually.
So if you if you use it properly.
And then there's the Nismo guys were very, very involved in in
the detail integration of that rear suspension into the race
car. That 1999 season was also the
last year of your relationship with Nissan in the British Tour
and Car Championship after they were due at the end of the
season. You already mentioned that the
contract was a three-year contract from 97.3 to 99.
Was there sort of any plan or or any knowledge that that could be
extended or was it always sort of known that it it would be the
three years and the results she got after that were the results
she got after that I. Was always clear, it was, it was
three years. We we did, we did speak to
Vodafone quite a lot about providing some kind of support
on a private tier basis. So there was the potential to
carry on using those cars with that sponsorship.
But it it, it didn't have enough traction and yeah, so it, it
didn't happen. That's a shame.
That's really interesting actually that that those that
you could have continued into into 2000, how do you think the
Nissans would have fared against the 2000 competition and that in
in particular that Monday that had the huge budget that it
supposedly spent on it. I'm I'm sure we we would have
been competitive again. Fine, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, sure, we would have been.
Fast forward in a few years now obviously that was the end of
Super Touring, but your involvement in touring car
racing didn't end there. You you had a brief stint with
Sayat before another well known operation that one of the
operations you're most well known for probably in in this
world is it's your time with Chevrolet in the world touring
cars. I love those cars.
I love the Super 2000 cars. They were great, the beautiful
cars. Again, I'm sure fond memories
for you because you ended up dominating the World
Championships for for several years with those cars.
We, we did. It was a fabulous time for us
and you know, fabulous contracts.
So that came about through our old GM Con contacts and in
particular Nick Riley, whose name might be familiar to, to a
number of people. Nick Nick passed away earlier
this year, sadly, and it was his memorial last week up in up in
near Liverpool. But Nick had been the MD of
Vauxhall when we were winning in BTCC.
He then went on to be be head of GM in, in Europe and Asia
Pacific and I'd always kept in contact with Nick about what was
going on. He he was a big, big believer in
motorsport being a great way of promoting brands.
And we used to meet up every year at the Geneva Motor Show
and chew the club and talk about what was going on.
And WTC suddenly came on on the scene in 2005 and that coincided
with Nick wanting to develop the Chevrolet brand globally outside
of North America. So it was a a beautiful fit, It
was a great fit and Nick knew us well.
He used to spend quite a bit of time up in Wellingbury, had a
house house there, so he used to pop in from time to time.
So he knew exactly about how the nuts and bolts of RML worked.
And we were able to do a deal effectively on a handshake for
us to take full responsibility of all the operational elements
of designing, building, developing the car, choosing and
managing the drivers and the engines as well.
And that was, that was something we, we, we never had in any of
our other contracts. We we with the Nissan amp box or
there were all those elements that we didn't have full control
over. So it was a very clear cut set
of responsibilities. We we went racing and the
Chevrolet marketing people leveraged the, the, you know,
success. So it was, it was, it was, yeah,
very satisfying and a very efficient way to run a race
programme. When when you get outside
influences, very often in motorsport you get marketing
departments who have their own ideas about choice of drivers or
even, you know, what you should be doing with development and
where you should be spending your money.
And that can just in, in my experience, that's caused
unnecessary friction and a bit of lack of direction sometimes.
But with Nick Riley and the contract we put together, we had
very clear objectives and a decent budget.
So we just gone on with it and yeah, very proud of being able
to go head to head with the likes of BMW again and beat them
fair and square, yeah. So it was also around that time
when you were running the Chevrolet programme in, well,
touring cars, that you also submitted an application to be
one of the new manufacturers in Formula One ahead of the 2010
season. Was that process like, because
it's, it was, I don't think we've really ever seen it before
or since where you've had multiple manufacturers on the
promise of a budget cap apply to be in the sport and, and the FIA
essentially chose to, you know, accept which ones they wanted.
I mean, what was the work that had to go into that process and
and sort of was it disappointing when that that didn't quite go
your way or did you expect that maybe some other applications
would be considered to be better applications in that process?
Yeah. So this this sort of happened
over quite a short period of time.
But yeah, it was 2010. We've just won the World Touring
Car Championship with Chevrolet. And as ever, I was talking to
Nick Riley about what other opportunities there might be.
And this one came up in Formula One where Max and and Bernie
were obviously concerned about the number of entries and they
needed to encourage some new newcomers to come in.
So the idea of the of the budget cap came up and as I remember
rightly, yeah. So the budget cap cars would be
allowed to run with some slightly different regulations.
I can't remember exactly. It was slightly different arrow
might have been different weights or something, but there
was. If I can't even remember what
the budget cap numbers were, you might from your notes.
F 140,000,000. 40 million, right?
OK. So yeah.
So yeah, if you're ever come up with.
So the basic idea was if if, if you're going to go racing on 40
million and you're going to try and compete against Ferrari.
I don't know what they were on at the time, 200 million.
Well, I don't know, but against unlimited budget then the FIA,
we're going to give you some breaks to enable you to be
competitive. So I talked to Nick about that
and he said, yeah, that sounds, that sounds interesting.
Let's, let's see where this can go.
So that's that's what encouraged us to put an entry in an
application. So we put in an application and
that was seriously considered by Bernie.
But fairly soon that budget cap of 40 kind of disappeared and we
realized that actually this was not going to not going to work
for us. So yeah.
And looking at the performance of the three teams that did come
in compared to the rest and, and and they were never really as
you say on a on a fair footing and didn't last for very long.
No. Well, they didn't.
I'm sure they didn't have any any breaks at all, no?
No, and probably do you do you look back and think, yeah,
probably best avoided. Yeah, yeah, I think so.
I mean, yeah, yeah, Formula One is, yeah, to get involved in
something like that. Now, in retrospect, it would
have been what was Bernie's book?
The Piranha Club, wasn't it? So obviously, as we said at the
start of the show, it's 40 years now of RML.
What, what, what does, what does Ray Malik do now?
What do you do these days? What do you are you, are you
heavily involved in RML still? I'm not.
Heavily no. No.
You've passed on management to your son, I believe.
That's right. Yeah.
So yeah, I am, I am retired now. I still, obviously I still have
an interest and I'm an ambassador for RML and the brand
and enjoying, you know, enjoying that role without the
responsibility of getting the budget in and, you know,
building and keeping the team together.
So I'm I'm doing ball racing, I'm enjoying my former junior
racing a lot. And my wife and I are taking the
opportunity to do all the sorts of things that we've had to kind
of, you know, put to one side. But it's a, it's a pleasure for
me to see RML going from strength to strength again.
You know, we've had some, some difficult times, difficult
years, but right now it's in a fabulous place.
We, we don't rely just on motorsport anymore.
And the whole Motorsports seen as a business has has changed so
much since since we we were doing all our winning.
And yeah, so you need a different business model and the
business model now includes motorsport.
We retain our links with BTCC through the continuous supply of
the chassis and suspension, steering parts and that kind of
stuff and support all, all the BTCC events.
So there's, there's always an RML presence with our truck and
spares. We've got a new sports car on
the in the design stage at the moment which will be hitting the
track probably later this year. So motorsport is still very much
part of our DNA, but EV is, is a hugely important part now.
So battery build and development and battery management is
something that's core of our business and that that really
came about through our work with Nissan at Lamont with the Z odd
car 0 emissions on on demand. So we created that whole
powertrain, which was an internal combustion engine, 1.6
litre, 3 cylinder, very, very light and efficient, but backed
up by an EV system. And we're, we're still, that's
still the only car to have done a racing, racing lap at the mall
on, fully on EV power alone. No one else has done that.
So, so it was off the back of that that we developed the EV
business, which is an important part of the diversification
that's that's happening now. We've got one final question.
We're normally joined by a third Co host, Adam Jones, but he
can't make it this evening and he's wondering, looking back at
the Super Touring era of touring car racing, is there 1 moment in
particular that you have it as a favorite moment?
I think it was probably clinching the the drivers
championship in 95 with John. Yeah, yeah.
Ironically, that is 2026 years to the day.
It's what? Is it really funny?
No 29, Yeah, there. We go, oh right, OK, we'll
celebrate that then. Yeah, it's, it's, it is on this
day that you you won at at Alton Park.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that, I mean, that was,
that was a combination of yeah, a lot of hard work.
And it's not, it's not just the winning on on track, it's it's
being able to share that with the rest rest of the team.
You know, I had some fantastic engineers, you know, the likes
of Phil Barker and Stuart Ailing and Junior and Cooper and yeah,
so many good guys that, you know, we grew up together and we
strove together and we and we won together.
So winning that first championship was a combination
of of all that hard work and yeah, very satisfying.
We've taken enough of your time up already, Ray, and we'd just
like to say thank you so much for coming on Stories from Super
Touring this evening and sharing your valuable memories with us.
Well, it's been a pleasure and thank you for the opportunity.
Thanks. And as always, we'd like to
thank you guys as well at home for listening.
Next week we'll be back with another episode looking back at
the 1993 Bank Holiday meeting at Brands Hatch, where Paul
Radisich took his first BTCC win for himself and for the Ford
Mondeo. It was also a pretty iconic
victory for Ford in general in Touring cars as they took their
250th win. Photographer Greg Denton will be
joining us for that one, so make sure you tune in next Monday for
more stories from Super Touring. Until then, we'll see you next
week. Goodbye.