Honda BTCC driver Dan Cammish on winning 24 races in a row
Watch our full interview with tin top star
YOU’D THINK winning 24 out of 24 races in a single championship would be the ultimate achievement in racing— that’s the goal of any sport, after all: to win. But for Dan Cammish, who managed the extraordinary feat in 2013 while competing in the Formula Ford series, it proved to be a bittersweet experience.
Talking to driving.co.uk during a series of hot laps around Thruxton Circuit in Hampshire ahead of this weekend’s British Touring Car Championship round, the Halfords Yuasa Racing driver confessed that it was a difficult time in his career, with commentators doubting both the racing skill of his opponents and the legality of his car. So much so that, having won the title, he didn’t bother competing in the final six races.
“The problem with that kind of dominance is that people start to question you as a driver, they start to question the other drivers in the championship, they start to ask questions about all kinds of things,” he said.
Did he hear the word cheat?
“I did hear the word cheat. And it was incredible. It wasn’t very nice in the end because unfortunately I was winning — and sometimes I was driving incredibly well — but I didn’t get any recognition for it.”
Cammish, 30, said that moving to the ultra-competitive Porsche Carrera Cup GB the following year, and winning that series in 2015, silenced his critics.
The Yorkshireman will be hoping to prove to Touring Car fans that he’s a force to be reckoned with, too, in his inaugural year in tin tops. It’s been a steep learning curve, moving from rear-wheel drive Porsches to a front-wheel drive Honda Civic Type-R BTCC machine, but one he’s adapted to “very quickly”, he said. Fast enough to win the championship at his first attempt, he reckons.
As if to prove the point, he was quickest in practice at Thruxton and lines up on the front row of the grid for the first race tomorrow, after qualifying just three-hundredths of a second behind another Honda driver, Sam Tordoff.
Watch our interview above in full. Cammish reveals his touring car hero, which current BTCC racers he’d most like to go for a pint with, answers questions from fans and responds to some quickfire questions, giving us his opinion on electric cars.
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