Cyclist Sir Chris Hoy, Britain’s greatest ever Olympian with six gold medals, was guest on the final Fuelling Around podcast powered by Adrian Flux and hosted by Jason Plato and Dave Vitty.
The series has already featured luminaries from the worlds of sport, show business and music with, in no particular order, Maxi Jazz, Amy Macdonald, Kelvin Fletcher, James Martin, Ricky Wilson, Suzi Perry and Steve Jones joining the boys to talk about their obsessions with motor vehicles.
Sir Chris Hoy MBE shares that obsession and ironically his Wikipedia page describes our greatest ever track cyclist as a British racing driver and “former” track cyclist, a point not missed by Plato and Vitty.
He represented Great Britain at the Olympics and World Championships and Scotland at the Commonwealth Games. He is eleven-times a world champion and six-times an Olympic champion. With a total of seven Olympic medals, he also bagged one silver, Sir Chris is the second most decorated Olympic cyclist of all time.
Sir Chris explained that as his cycling career was coming to a close he developed a passion for motor racing, initially inspired by the exploits of his hero, the hugely successful Scottish rally driver Colin McRae.
Sir Chris and a need for speed
His need for speed on the motor racing circuit began when he attended a novice track day at Oulton Park with Jaguar in 2008 he said.
At the end of the day he was hooked on racing and he went out and bought a Caterham 400, a car, which, he confessed, had more power than he had skill.
Describing his feelings behind the wheel of a racing car he said: “You go into a weird separate world.
“Your whole body is completely absorbed by it and you have no other feelings than for the car and the track. Even pain doesn’t register. I just love the raw intensity of motor racing.”
Sir Chris spoke with great fondness of his track exploits as he went from taking part in four or five novice track days each year, to the inaugural season of the Radical Sportscars SR1 Cup and then eventually the 2016 Le Mans 24 Hours.
At Le Mans he shared a Ligier JS P2-Nissan with Andrea Pizzitola and Michael Munemann finishing 17th overall and 12th in class.
The eclectic cars owned by Sir Chris
Sir Chris also tells Plato and Vitty of his general love for cars which developed from owning a Scalextric set with Porsche 911 cars as a child and how we worked his way through a BMW 318 as a 22-year-old, a TVI Golf Mk4, an Audi A4, BMW M3, Jaguar XKR (which was updated every years thanks to his relationship with the manufacturer) and a Nissan GT-R.
He also talks about problems he suffered seeing where he was driving when he was night track testing for Le Mans — and the excuse his mechanics came up with to explain his difficulty. But you will have to tune into the podcast to hear that!
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