FEATURE : DAVID TOMLIN
Kicking up the dust in Hafren Forest in 2018
The all-rounder
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As well as being a front-runner in Historic Formula 2 , David Tomlin in a real motor sport all rounder as he ’ ll be racing and rallying this season . Paul Lawrence talked to him .
Tomlin , from Martley near Worcester , was a kart racer in his teenage years before university , career and a family came along . “ I didn ’ t come back into the sport until I was 40 and that was in long circuit karting in 1999 and 2000 . I then bought a car for the Ferrari Classic race series . I had a 328 originally and raced in that for several years and then moved on to a 430 .” However , it wasn ’ t just racing that captured his imagination and he was keen to try rallying . Not one to do things by half , David tackled the challenging London to Cape Town longdistance marathon in a Land Rover Defender in 2012 where he met up with racer Grant Tromans .
“ Grant was racing with the Raceworks team and driving a Datsun 240Z on the rally . When you are in the middle Africa you tend to have a few beers together . He said he was racing a Lotus Cortina and said why didn ’ t I get a Cortina ? So I ran that in 2012 and 2013 and it went from there with various cars .”
In his working life , David has built up a successful business making specialist health care chairs . “ I still run an engineering business and work hard and that allows me to go racing .” His 2020 season can best be described as desperately unfortunate as suffered car fires in both July and August . “ I did some races last year but my Formula 2 Motul caught fire at Brands in July and in August at Thruxton my Sierra RS500 exploded after fuel vapour collected in the cockpit . I burned my face and was in hospital for a couple of days . But I recovered from that and raced the RS500 at Silverstone in October and had a win .” Unfortunately , plans for the RS500 this season were recently interrupted by a testing accident at Donington when the steering broke at Starkey ’ s Bridge .
David had previously shown impressive pace in the Motul , finishing as high as fifth overall from the 55-car field at the rain-hit Silverstone Classic in 2019 . In the opening race , he chased Miles Griffiths , Darwin Smith , Andrew Smith and Martin O ’ Connell to the flag . He will surely be a key contender again this season .
However , his passion for rallying has certainly not diminished and in 2018 and 2019 David took to the UK forests in a Group 4 Ford Escort Mk2 . Inevitably , the rallying had to fit around the racing and in November 2019 he tackled one of the most challenging rallies of all , the