Occasionally there were blow-ups, to which my response was usually, ‘Sorry mate, but at least it didn’t cost you much.’ I learned an awful lot, some of it through making mistakes. I used my pals as guinea pigs, but was allowed to give them a discounted rate. I had a deal with my boss that I could stay behind at nights and use the cylinder boring and balancing machines, camshaft grinder and so on for my own projects and the company ended up with a reputation for doing high-performance engineering work. Then my mates all wanted to go faster, too – purely horsepower in those days, I didn’t touch the chassis. I managed to land a job with a local automotive engineering firm and quickly took an interest in modifying road cars, starting with my own E93A Ford Prefect. That was a bit of a wake-up call, but my second love was engineering. My parents never had much money and wouldn’t let me go back for a second year to complete my certificate, so I didn’t have the qualifications I needed to pursue my primary goal. ![]() As I was growing up my main ambition was to become an architect, but when I got to high school… lazy isn’t the right word, but I didn’t focus enough. “The family had no real connection with motor sport,” he says, “but Dad took me to watch racing on the Dunedin street circuit when I was about 10, which sparked an interest. To obtain the full story we convene at The Queen’s Head in Weybridge, Surrey, where Dick, 71, orders gammon steak with egg and chips, takes a sip of still water and winds the clock back to 1950s Dunedin, on New Zealand’s South Island.īennetts was instrumental in the early career of many drivers, here with Senna in British F3, 1983 For somebody who originally harboured dreams of a career in architecture, he has achieved an enormous amount in motor racing. Dick Bennetts first came to England in 1972, to help New Zealand racing buddy David Oxton, and didn’t plan to stay more than a couple of years, but almost half a century has since passed and he’s still here, competing on his own terms. Sign up Subscribeįor more than three decades he has been a familiar face at UK circuits, engineer and mentor to such as Ayrton Senna, Mika Häkkinen and Rubens Barrichello and more recently the linchpin behind a string of British Touring Car Championship successes. Sign-up now for access to a limited number of articles.
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