The brief was simple. An email to all the journalists on Autocar: pick your favourite racing driver of all time.
What we didn’t expect was quite the repertoire of answers that came back. Covering most eras and a vast spectrum of the sport - from Formula 1 to club racing - it just goes to show how varied motorsport and its followers are. For once, there are no wrong answers: it has led to many discussions and a fair amount of incredulity but, in the end, it’s all about personal choice.
Do you agree with us? Would you go for someone different? Let us know in the comments below.
David Llewellin
You know how the post race/stage interview goes by now, don’t you? ‘Oh, it was tough out there’, or ‘we got the win but it was hard work’ - all of it delivered with the sort of dour and downbeat delivery that suggested they’d just spent the last few hours cleaning the toilets in a nightclub after a particularly busy Friday evening rather than flinging some of the most exciting motorsport machines around the the fastest circuits or down rutted forestry tracks.
Not so Welsh rallying wizard David Llewellin, who’s smiling, garrulous and slightly wide-eyed interview style always gave the impression that he couldn’t quite believe his luck; that here he was, a farmer from West Wales, being paid to drive rally cars as fast as they would go. This infectious enthusiasm made an instant impression on my younger self, my increasing fascination with the sport coinciding with Llewellin’s rise through the ranks of rallying.
With his trademark moustache, Dai (as he was always known) shot to prominence in the Metro 6R4, taking the car’s first international win in the 1986 Circuit of Ireland. That victory proved that behind the smiles and the quips delivered in those lilting Welsh tones (‘Hannua Mikkola, eh? I reckon he could drive a wheelbarrow quickly’), Llewellin was properly fast, beating both the aforementioned 1983 world champ Mikkola and established domestic aces Jimmy McRae and Russell Brooks.
That year also brought some big crashes, including launching the Metro off a 60ft drop and barrel-rolling it to destruction as he hounded Mikkola in pursuit of a debut home win on the Welsh Rally. Yet even as he stood stageside in the driving rain, wrecked 6R4 lying in the valley below him there was that trademark mischievousness in his interview with the BBC’s Steve Rider. “The boys have just rolled it back on its wheels and dragged it out for me to take home (pause for a beat, smile). In a box.”
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Each to their own, but more worthy British rallying contenders of the era also available, like Andy Dawson (a personal favourite after his outrageous lappery of Olivers Mount in Scarborough in the fearsome Chequered Flag Lancia Stratos) or Tony Pond of BL Triumph TR8 fame, plus the above mentioned Russell Brookes or Malcolm Wilson.