Same route, different generation
Photo credit : Wayne Pearson
No karting career, three race cars sold before he could drive them, and a first season involving a wall, a race licence and a wheel that ended up on the second floor of a house. Gavin Guthrie's route into Formula Ford hasn't been entirely conventional.
Gavin never showed much interest in motorsport when he was young. That was despite growing up with my own involvement in racing going on in the background. Cars, race weekends and bits of Formula Ford in various states of repair were simply things that Dad did. That started to change when he was around 14 or 15. Formula One became interesting, and then came a few visits to the sort of arrive-and-drive karting centres where anyone can turn up and have a go. He was immediately quite handy.`
Neither of us came from a karting background, but over the next few years we went periodically and the gap between us became increasingly uncomfortable. Eventually, he started challenging me. I maintained that his considerable weight advantage was responsible. Gavin had a different interpretation. I've since lost four stone and we now weigh roughly the same.
The rematch is coming.
From sim to circuit
At around the same time, Gavin was becoming increasingly interested in sim racing. That gave him something that simply wasn't available when I started: the ability to learn circuits before ever visiting them and even get his first taste of driving a virtual Formula Ford before getting anywhere near the real thing. Eventually, I decided the obvious way to find out whether this growing interest would translate into actual racing was to get him into a Formula Ford. So I bought him one.
Then I sold it.
I bought another.
And sold that too.
In fact, being the wheeler-dealer that I am, I managed to buy and sell three cars earmarked for Gavin before he finally concluded that relying on his father wasn't getting him very far. Following an inheritance, he took matters into his own hands and bought himself a Ray GR14. The car was Irish-owned, and so we collected it from Stranraer after it arrived on the ferry. Naturally, I wanted to give it a quick run before Gavin handed over the cash. A couple of increasingly eventful laps of the ferry car park established two useful facts about our latest acquisition.
It had no brakes.
And no clutch.
Welcome to Formula Ford.
First taste
Before the Ray was ready, Gavin had his first proper experience of a racing car in what we believe to be the ex-Richard Morgan 1974 championship and Formula Ford Festival-winning Crosslé 25F. We headed to Blyton Park and, despite truly biblical weather, he acquitted himself well. It was enough to establish that this wasn't simply a passing interest.
By March 2026 the Ray had received some preparation and we headed to Anglesey for Gavin's first proper run in his own car. I was there testing a recently acquired Swift and the plan was straightforward: Gavin would follow me while he learned the circuit and got accustomed to the car.`
That was the plan.
A delay meant he got onto the circuit ahead of me. He promptly put it into the wall. A bent wishbone brought his first day to a rather earlier conclusion than we'd hoped. The following day, fortunately, went considerably better. Gavin took his ARDS test at Anglesey under the tuition of my old friend Alaric “Pod” Gordon, himself an accomplished FF1600 racer. He passed.
There was a certain amount of relief all round.
Silverstone — first race
Gavin still hadn't accumulated anything like the amount of track time I'd have preferred before entering his first race, and so I was reluctant to commit to the opening round of the United Formula Ford championship at Silverstone. As luck would have it, a test day became available there the week before.
Attempt number two at a joint father-and-son test day went considerably better than attempt number one. By the end of it, we decided he was ready to give racing a try and entries went in for the following weekend.
Qualifying was steady. There was just the one spin and he qualified on the back row — which for a first race wasn't necessarily a bad place to be. Before the start I spent quite a lot of time drilling one thing into him: You can't win the race at the first corner. Stay out of trouble and get the laps in.
He listened. I didn't. I attempted to pass too many cars at the first corner and crashed. Do as I say, not as I do.
Gavin, meanwhile, settled down and did exactly what we'd wanted him to do. His lap times improved as the race progressed and he even made a couple of overtakes. Race two was better again. The times came down further and there were some increasingly confident moves as he gained a few places. For a first race weekend, it really wasn't a bad debut.
The less said about mine the better.
Snetterton — a wheel leaves the chat
University meant there was then a break from racing until Snetterton in the summer. Gavin had never driven the circuit other than as a passenger in my Crosslé 9S, so we booked the Friday test day to give him some proper seat time. This time I decided to sit the meeting out and concentrate on supporting him. The fact that I'd blown the engine in the Swift may also have influenced that decision. Testing went well. If memory serves, there weren't even any spins.
Qualifying was encouraging too, giving Gavin a respectable starting position rather than putting him at the back. Carburettor problems meant a change before the race — one of those occasions when having accumulated rather too many Formula Ford spares suddenly seems entirely justified. Unfortunately, starter-motor problems had also plagued us throughout the weekend. Having been directed into the wrong grid position for race one, Gavin stalled and the car wouldn't restart. What should have resulted in him joining the back of the field after the other cars departed on their warm-up lap instead ended with the car being pushed away following a misunderstanding of the procedure.
Race over without completing a lap.
Race two started much better. He got away cleanly and was beginning to show some real pace — by now quicker than his father, although I reserve the right to point out that his car was approximately 40 years younger than mine. And then the left-rear hub sheared. The wheel parted company with the car, left the circuit altogether and eventually struck the second floor of a house nearly 200 metres away. That sounds sufficiently unlikely that fortunately we have both photographic and video evidence. Thankfully nobody was hurt, but it brought a frustrating weekend to an abrupt end.
Time to regroup
At that point we had a choice. We could rush the Ray back together and try to squeeze in another race before the end of the season, or accept that there wasn't much to be gained by doing so. We chose the latter. The car has since been stripped, the engine has gone to Benn Simms Engineering for a refresh, and the intention is to start again properly in 2027 with plenty of testing and, above all, seat time. There's no particular hurry.
Gavin is now 21 and in his final year studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sheffield. Interestingly, his degree is also beginning to overlap with his racing. His dissertation is looking at changes Gavin Ray made to the GR14 design some years ago to improve airflow around the sides and rear of the car. The project will attempt to establish what effect those changes actually had.
Away from the theory, he's increasingly willing to get his hands dirty and his confidence in tackling work on the car himself is growing. He's also keen to learn more about set-up, and our newly acquired set-up floor should provide plenty of opportunity to put some of that engineering theory into practice.
After Sheffield he's decided not to continue down the engineering Master's route, instead planning to study for a Master's in business. A useful combination, I think. Although I suspect he's also had enough of the maths.
Same route, different generation
Looking back, Gavin's route into racing isn't actually so different from mine. Neither of us came through karting and we both arrived in Formula Ford at roughly the same age. I probably showed more interest in motorsport when I was younger, but there was no racing background in my family and I had to find my own route into the sport. My late father wasn't particularly interested in motorsport beforehand, but once I started racing he became an enthusiastic supporter at the circuits. A generation later, Gavin has had one significant advantage that I didn't: access. He's grown up around racing. There have been cars, a workshop, parts and contacts around him, as well as the opportunity to benefit from my experience — even if my habit of selling the cars intended for him perhaps delayed matters slightly. He also has tools that didn't exist when I started. He can arrive at a circuit having already driven hundreds of virtual laps. His engineering studies give him another way of understanding what the car is doing and why. But none of that substitutes for actually driving a racing car.
That's what 2027 is really about: more testing, more laps, learning how to set the car up and gradually building experience.
And if his first race is anything to go by, perhaps continuing to listen to his father's advice — while paying rather less attention to his father's example.
Your author in his Van Diemen RF90 at Oulton park in 1992
