My Life & Cars – Alan Gow, BTCC supremo and 24-hour Citroën 2CV racer
Director of the BTCC, a seat on numerous FIA committees, and a Dacia Sandero at home. We revisit one of evo’s very first interviewees for a catch-up 25 years later
Back in issue one, evo interviewed Alan Gow – perhaps crudely dubbing him ‘BTCC’s answer to Bernie Ecclestone’ – just as he was lifting British Touring Cars to their ascendancy. ‘It was never my desire to work in motorsport,’ he admits a quarter of a century later as he winds back through the journey that’s led him to seats on numerous FIA committees.
‘I first got hooked on motorsport when a friend of my sister’s took me to Calder Park Raceway in Melbourne in my early teens. It was a contemporary race meet: Holdens, Falcons and some Minis. I couldn’t tell you any of the drivers I saw that day but it was new, exciting, and I knew I wanted to get more involved. I didn’t know in the slightest it’s what my life would end up revolving around. I knew I wanted to be around cars, but I thought that would be as a car dealer. Motorsport was always going to be a hobby.’
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Gow did initially follow the trade route, selling cars and managing dealerships in his native Australia while going to sprint events at a local car club with friends to sate his passion at an amateur level. That was until his early 30s, when a business encounter put him in partnership with Peter Brock. Australia’s most celebrated racing driver needed financial help after Holden cut ties with him during the fallout over the infamous Energy Polariser device he’d fitted to some of its road cars. Gow was suddenly at the helm of a race team in the country’s top-tier series.
‘I was thrown in at the deep end,’ he recalls. ‘Peter needed help and I got stuck in. We ended up running the Brock racing team together.’ They scored an unlikely victory at the 1987 Bathurst 1000 – Brock’s ninth win, a record that still stands – their Commodore coming out on top after a pair of Sierra RS500s were disqualified. But it was clear the Ford was competitive, and a visit to Andy Rouse the following year to purchase RS500s for themselves ended up paving the way for the rest of Gow’s career.
‘I was among a group of team owners that formed the Touring Car Entrants Group in 1989,’ he continues. ‘It went on to take over the rights to the Australian championship, which eventually morphed into V8 Supercars. We helped take the sport to a whole new level. But I sold the race business in 1990 and at that stage I had no ties. So I came to the UK. Like a lot of Australians, I came for 12 months just to have a look around and use it as a springboard for travelling elsewhere. I’m still here…
‘Andy always said to look him up if I came over. He wanted to do a business modifying Sierra Cosworth road cars, so I got involved in that – it was similar to work I’d done with Peter – and that proved to be my introduction to the BTCC and then the beginning of TOCA. In the early 1990s it was a very good championship, but it played second fiddle to single-seater series at the time. It had all the seeds in Britain – great competitors and teams, lots of manufacturer involvement – it just needed commercialisation in order to grow.
‘When I first got involved I think we had a 20-minute slot on BBC Grandstand,’ Gow recalls, ‘Murray Walker commentating on some highlights a week after the event. Our TV coverage grew enormously over the decades and we’re now live all day from 11am to 6.30pm on a free-to-view channel. It’s a big part of our success. But you also need the fans there to create the atmosphere. If spectators aren’t at the circuit, it’s not going to be good TV.
‘We could easily put ourselves behind a paywall but we’d lose hundreds of thousands of spectators. Our relationship with ITV is fantastic. At the end of this current contract we’ll have been with them for 25 years. Not many sports can claim that.’
He’s also acutely aware that viewing patterns are changing and that BTCC needs to keep increasing its social media presence to entice younger generations into the sport and to maintain viewer loyalty, helped by the consistency of the series’ grid.
‘BTCC is a destination rather than something drivers do on the way through,’ Gow smiles. ‘Maybe drivers used to do touring cars at the end of their career, or at the beginning before they went off overseas. Jason Plato and Matt Neal competed from the 1990s until very recently, proving you can make a decades-long career out of racing in this championship. With that comes the fans. They can’t get behind a transient grid. Here they follow a driver and the whole championship rather than just attending a sole event.’
Back in issue 001, Gow proudly declared he took more inspiration from NASCAR than Formula 1 when evolving his series. Does that statement hold true? ‘I’m a magpie, I’ll take inspiration from anywhere to improve our sport. I’ve always been inspired by NASCAR. F1 is an incredibly complex and technical sport, ours is not. We’re about entertainment more than anything else.’
It’s not stopped BTCC adopting electrification, though – the first touring car series in the world to do so, in 2022, thanks to hybrid technology from Cosworth – while Gow is keenly pursuing the route of fully sustainable fuel. ‘There’s no pressure on us to do so, but it’s logical to keep yourself relevant to the world and marketplace around you. I’m talking about an increased hybrid element rather than fully electric cars, though. It gives you a good sustainability story while keeping internal combustion engines for the noise that we all love.
‘The championship is always open to whoever wants to drive the cars, too. The number of women working in our paddock is enormous – and not on a PR or managerial basis, but engineering. TOCA hasn’t gone out of its way to do that, it’s just happened.’
While it appears a tremendously positive story arc, Gow isn’t easily drawn on specific highlights, even if the Super Touring Power event at Brands Hatch in July 2023 allowed an unashamedly rose-tinted glance at a golden era of BTCC. ‘I’m always interested in the next race. I never sit back and rock in my armchair thinking “well that was a great season”. I went to that event at Brands, though I didn’t get a tear in my eye. It was nice to catch up with some of the old drivers and see the old cars, but I’ve always got my eyes looking forwards rather than backwards.’
It’s a mindset he inherited from friend Peter Brock, who was killed at the Targa West Rally in Perth, Australia, in 2006. ‘He’s someone I miss to this day. I admired him and we became very close mates. Peter’s outlook on life has stayed with me – no matter how much crap was going on in his life, he always had a positive attitude. It’s why you should keep looking ahead, not at what’s happened to you.’
Now 68, Gow shows little desire to wind down. As well as running the BTCC, he oversees tin-top racing across the world as president of the FIA Touring Car Commission. He also sits on a number of other panels, including the World Endurance Championship Committee – helping sculpt regulations for the 24 Hours of Le Mans – and the Motorsport UK Council.
‘I like to think I bring my common sense to discussions, adding an objective and dispassionate viewpoint to series that aren’t my own. Likewise I’ll always listen to people’s views outside of BTCC to improve my own sport.’ Fitting it all in is clearly a challenge – ‘My diary is full every day!’ – ensuring that when Gow wants to dip his bum in the actual seat of a racing car, he needs to be clever about it.
‘Racing was always just a hobby on the side, but I’ve done some fun things. Namely a few of the 24-hour Citroën 2CV races and the C1 24 Hours. I’ve been pretty successful in those while also just having a bit of a laugh. I won the 2CV race in 1999 and came ninth in the C1 race at Rockingham [a circuit Gow dearly misses on the BTCC calendar] with Andy Priaulx, his son Seb and a mate of mine, Richard Solomons. It’s great fun. It feels like switching off. And you might get around eight hours of driving time, which is as much as other people do in half a season of racing.’
That said, the racing car Alan is most gagging to try is a somewhat livelier animal. ‘The Ford Capri RS 3100 that competed in the European Touring Car Championship was just a spectacular car. There was one raced in Australia by a good friend of mine, Allan Moffat. That really appeals to me – I’d love to have a go in one of those.’
Alan is pretty content with the vast array of road cars he’s driven over the years. From a humble Honda Civic in his late teens after passing his test, things only improved. ‘Being in the car trade, I had a succession of cars, including Holdens and an RX-7 when I ran a Mazda dealership. When I worked in property I had cars as diverse as a Land Cruiser, Mercedes S500 and even a Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit. It was second-hand, I hasten to add, and it was a bit of a dog – not one of my better purchases! Through the Brock Special Vehicles operation I had Brock Commodores and Falcons. Then, working with Andy Rouse, I ran Sierras.
‘During the ’90s we had various relationships with the suppliers of our safety cars. I drove Saab Aeros, a Mercedes C43 AMG and supercharged Jaguar XJRs. Porsche now supplies our official cars and I get the great pleasure of driving fast laps for the VIPs at race weekends. I take them around in a Panamera Turbo S and they’re wowed by the way it performs.
‘At home I’ve got a 1966 Alfa Romeo GT Junior which I’ve had for nearly 20 years. I just cherish it. A two-owner car with low mileage from the south of France. I’ve got a 1960 Beetle in concours spec and I’m not really sure why – I don’t use it. Right now I’ve got a Maserati MC20 on my driveway, which a mate has given to me for a couple of weeks. What a spectacular thing that is. It’s sat alongside my Dacia Sandero Stepway, which I use as my everyday car. I bought it brand new for £15,000 and it’s perfect for what I need it to do. I don’t care too much if doors get opened into it in the car park.’ It’s difficult to imagine Bernie having the same outlook.
This story was first featured in evo issue 315.
