Ray Mallock BACK TO THE BEGINNING
With RML now in the safe hands of a younger Mallock, its founder can get back to pursuing the passion that started it all, says Damien Smith
First and foremost, ahead of all the team owner and constructor successes, Ray Mallock is a racing driver at heart – and it still bugs him that he never got his shot at Formula 1, especially as he reckons he’d earnt it.
“I won the British Formula Atlantic championship a couple of times” – in 1979 and ’81, when he won all 10 rounds he entered after a disappointing 1980 in the Aurora AFX British F1 championship in which he raced a Surtees, then later a Wolf.
“For the second Atlantic title Bernie Ecclestone had announced the FOCA Cup and the prize for that was an F1 test with Brabham. So we thought, ‘Right, here’s the opportunity to get into F1.’