Julian Bailey (born 9 October 1961 in Woolwich, London) is a former Formula One driver who raced for the Tyrrell and Lotus teams. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
In the 1980s Julian Bailey was one of a group of young British drivers who were termed ‘the Rat Pack, including Johnny Herbert, Martin Donnelly, Mark Blundell, Perry McCarthy and Damon Hill. Each of them would have nicknames: Mark Blundell was ‘Mega’ (because he liked mega cars, mega watches, mega stuff), Johnny Herbert was ‘Little ’Un’, Damon Hill was ‘Secret Squirrel’ (because he played his cards close to his chest), Perry McCarthy was ‘Mad Dog’ (after a cartoon strip character who often turned up carrying the crashed remains of his car under his arm), Martin Donnelly was ‘Yer Man’ (because he would precede everybody’s name with ‘Yer Man’) while Julian was ‘Grumpy’.
Although born in Woolwich, London, Julian Bailey’s family moved to Spain and his interest in racing was started by attending a local kart track. He thought he was doing well in always beating the locals, until later realising that they had been drinking in the bar beforehand and were usually drunk!
At the age of 17 he moved to England to see how he would fare in racing and competed in the Star of Tomorrow Formula Ford Championship; out of ten races he crashed in nine, and won one.
1980 would see him in a Crosslé but he had a bad accident at Snetterton in which his car cartwheeled, and his helmet came off, and he sustained multiple fractures of his arm and leg. He was in hospital for three months and had to return to Spain to recuperate but although an accident like this may have curtailed many drivers’ careers, it only made him more determined.
When he returned to racing, he acquired a FFord Lola and won 1982’s Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch, plus the Townsend Thoresen FFord Championship, and came second in the RAC Championship to Mauricio Gugelmin.
From this he moved into F3, though it was a disappointing season and from here he drove for Madgwick Motorsport, followed by Swallow Racing.
During the 1980s, a Racing for Britain scheme was set up which allowed the public to vote (by sending a coupon with a £1 postal order) for a driver they felt should get the RFB assistance. Julian bought a thousand of these postal orders and sent in coupons using names chosen from a phone directory. However the RFB’s director noticed a spelling mistake he had made on many of the forms so he contacted people named on them and discovered they had never heard of Julian Bailey or RFB. However, by this time Julian was winning races so they carried on with him and he would win fifteen of the twenty five races, plus take five second places and three thirds. However, despite this it was a continual struggle at the time and he was just about eating and surviving, and sleeping on the floor in friends’ houses. Sponsorship kept him going and he eventually raced a Reynard FF2000 for two seasons.
In 1983 he won the Grandstand series and the following year was runner-up in the British Championship. At a wet Brands Hatch race he and Martin Donnelly collided, and they came to blows once out of their cars plus Martin’s Irish mechanic also tried to beat him up afterwards.
Then came F3000 with GA Motorsport in 1986 but at the first race at Donington, he qualified eighth but due to his belts being fastened too tight his legs went dead due to the circulation being cut off and he had to stop after 40 laps. He was third at Enna and following this, despite crashing in practice at Brands Hatch, he took the victory after leading from start to finish and became the first British driver to win in the formula. This led to an offer to drive for Tyrrell and he joined them the following year but unfortunately the 017 was not competitive and he failed to score any points. At the Hungaroring, the Friday practice was wet and he was quickest for most of the session (third behind Mansell and Nannini) but after it dried out he failed to qualify. His best result was in Detroit, where he was classified ninth, but during the race his drinks bottle fell off and, fighting to keep going, with three laps remains he was running eighth but hit the wall.
He left the team at the end of the season then received an offer from Eric Broadley at Lola, who was building a sports car for Nissan. He joined the Nissan sports car team for 1989, with former driver Keith Greene as team manager and Mark Blundell as co-driver and described it as the start of the two happiest years of his life.
Unfortunately in his first race at Le Mans he crashed after four laps (nearly being sacked from the team for this) and at Brands Hatch, he had taken second place from Jo Schlesser’s Sauber-Mercedes but went off. For the second season with them, he and Mark Blundell favoured Martin Donnelly as the third driver but Gianfranco Brancatelli was hired. They started on pole at the first race and were leading during the night but their race ended when G.Brancatelli crashed into another car in the pitlane. Julian would finish third at Spa (with Kenny Acheson), and he and Mark took third at Dijon, and second place finishes in Montréal and Mexico. This was to have been a five-year programme for Nissan but at the end of the season the rules changed and Nissan pulled out.
Without a drive, he was then given the chance of a return to F1, alongside Mika Hakkinen, at Lotus for 1991. He finished sixth in the San Marino GP but was dropped after Monaco in favour of Johnny Herbert.
He joined Toyota in 1992 for the British Touring Car Championship, winning at Knockhill and finishing fifth in the championship in 1993 but they withdrew from the BTCC as a works team at the end of 1995. However he was still contracted to them and for 1996 he drove for Minolta Toyota in the South African Touring Car Championship.
Following this he signed with Lister in GT racing and did 56 races, and 5 years, with them, including Pikes Peak, Brno, Las Vegas and Lausitzring. He won many of them though stated how the Lister’s Jaguar V12 pumped so much heat into the cockpit and at times the soles of his boots would melt and stick to the pedals. At one time, a team sponsor was Newcastle United football club and the car raced in the club’s colours. He was British GT1 champion in 1999, and in 2000 was FIA GT Champion, winning six of the 10 rounds, including Valencia, Estoril, Zolder, Magny-Cours, and the British Empire Trophy at Silverstone.
Since then he has various property interests and become a pub landlord in 2009 after buying The William Bray pub in Shere, Surrey. It was voted by readers of a local newspaper as ‘Pub of the Year 2013’ and after this Julian said he was he looked forward to celebrating this triumph with them in the pub!
In 2008, he was a guest commentator for ESPN STAR Sports for a number of Formula One races plus was also involved with BBC’s Top Gear TV programme for a few years as The Stig; although his identity was supposed to be a secret, many people in racing knew it was him.
His stepson, Jack Clarke, raced in Formula BMW and Formula Palmer Audi, graduating in 2009 to F2 and moved to the British Touring Car Championship in 2014.
