Despite his 17 starts in the Bathurst 1000, yielding a pair of second places, many of Paul Radisich’s fondest memories are rooted in the British Touring Car Championship’s 1990s Super Touring era. A couple of massive accidents in Australia’s Great Race, where the Kiwi sustained multiple injuries in 2006 and ’08 that ended his professional career, probably don’t help the fearsome Mount Panorama circuit’s cause.
Instead, it is the venue where Radisich claimed a second consecutive Touring Car World Cup triumph that he selects as his favourite. “For challenging tracks, I would say Donington,” he says. “But not just for that [win]. It was always a delight to run there.”
Four wins and four second places from nine starts across the BTCC, World Cup and non-championship TOCA Shootout, made the 2.5-mile Grand Prix circuit an incredibly successful venue for Radisich in 1993-94. He cites the swooping downhill bends of the Craner Curves as a highlight. “Particularly in those cars. Through there it was always a challenge, getting the temperature in those rear tyres. And it’s such a fast, big flowing track.”
Radisich shot to prominence by taking his Andy Rouse Engineering-run Ford Mondeo to third in the 1993 BTCC standings despite missing most of the first half of the season. He then went to Monza and upset the locals by winning the inaugural end-of-season World Cup against the best from Europe and beyond.
After earlier spells in British Formula 3, Radisich wasn’t targeting a return to Europe. He had his sights set on America, where an abortive 1991 campaign in Toyota Atlantic, driving the unfancied Reynard chassis, featured a high point of finishing second to Jimmy Vasser at the Long Beach season-opener. A relationship struck up at Peter Brock’s Aussie V8 team in 1989 proved to be the catalyst to a change in career path.
“Alan Gow worked with Peter Brock; he ran Peter Brock’s show. Peter and Alan asked me to drive for them,” Radisich recalls of the man who would become the BTCC’s long-serving impresario. “I raced for them, Alan and I struck up a good relationship, and then he left to come and work for Andy in British Touring Cars. Alan rang me and he said, ‘I’ve got a drive for you.’ I said, ‘Oh s***, Alan, I’ve got an opportunity to do Indy Lights.’ I’d just about got a budget together to go and do it. He said, ‘Are you crazy?’ Typical Alan, he said: ‘Mate, you’re a bleep, bleep idiot. This is a works drive – you’re going to be a professional paid driver.’
“I had quite a difficult decision to make. I’d spent 10 years driving Formula 3, American Indy Lights and Super Vee, all that sort of stuff. But there comes a crossroads where you’ve got to make a decision about what are you going to do. In hindsight, it was a great decision and I owe Alan a lot.”
Source: Autosport