THE PUTDOWN IS devastating. A former Grand Prix star has just been skewered, apparently because he couldn’t ‘drive a nail through wood’. Patrick Watts is on mischievous form, the British Touring Car Championship legend backing up his assertion that certain wheelmen weren’t cut out for the cut-and-thrust of tin-tops: ‘I would say that the main credential for getting into Touring Cars in the 1990s was talent. In F1 it was money, contacts, and smooth-talking. There were plenty of drivers there that bought their way in. If you were in a works team in the BTCC, then you were there on ability alone and getting paid.’
Warming to the theme, he adds: ‘There was no hiding place, and there were a few drivers who moved over from F1 and couldn’t adapt. You have to remember how big it was then. At its height there were, what, ten or 12 works teams? I think some people underestimated just how hard it was.’ And with that the tour of his cavernous workshops continues, our genial host stopping only long enough to discuss a particular car, a particular race – or a particular nemesis. Watts is good company, a man
