“It’s relit my fire for motorsport again,” reflects Carl Boardley after winning the TCR UK title at his first attempt last season in a self-entered Cupra Leon Competicion.
Following four years in the British Touring Car Championship, Boardley spent 2022 largely on the sidelines, demoralised by a difficult 2021 campaign. A ride alongside title winner Ash Sutton in the Infiniti line-up had promised much but failed to deliver. It took a switch to the burgeoning TCR UK series to revitalise the Suffolk racer and deliver his first championship success since an ultra-successful National Hot Rod career.
A long and varied path for the 48-year-old, who has defied doctors’ expectations and battled ill health, began in the non-contact short oval formula of Stock Rods as a teenager, after growing up watching from the terraces of Ipswich’s Foxhall Stadium. Moderate success followed, before Boardley made his mark in National Hot Rods. Within a year of his debut, Boardley had qualified for his first World Final and finished fourth. He went on to win an unprecedented four consecutive world championships over 2006-09, and was already eyeing his next step.
He was tempted onto Rockingham’s 1.5-mile oval for some 2007 ASCAR rounds, but any plans for a full-time switch were halted when the series folded. But, by 2010, it was time to try the Pickups series of Sonny Howard, whose cars he raced in his early NHR days. Engine failures blighted Boardley’s Rockingham debut. But, weeks before his short oval farewell – which ended with a puncture while leading the 2010 World Final – Boardley burst onto the circuit racing scene with a fine showing at Mallory Park. It was his first race weekend involving right turns.
“My plan was to knock the Hot Rod on the head and just to do four or five [Pickup] rounds a year at Rockingham,” he recalls. “We got a new engine done, and Sonny was doing a round at Mallory Park. Then on the Thursday, Sonny rung me up and said, ‘I’ve got a bit of bad news for you.’”
Mallory’s oval was no longer licensed, forcing a switch to the full circuit. Incredibly, Boardley won the second race.
“It was like, ‘It’s not really what I was planning on doing, but this circuit lark is all right,’” he laughs. Two further Pickups seasons brought six more wins.
Source: Autosport