Anthony Reid was undoubtedly one of many stars of the British Touring Automobile Championship’s golden Tremendous Touring period. He was lucky sufficient to drive the Nissan Primera and Ford Mondeo – two of the interval’s most profitable automobiles – and twice completed runner-up within the standings, in 1998 and 2000.
Reid additionally had the possibility to race alongside a roll name of tin-top greats. Alain Menu and Rickard Rydell have been his team-mates at Ford, whereas he later drove for MG simply as future four-time title winner Colin Turkington was attending to grips with the collection. However it’s his Nissan team-mate from 1997-1998, the late David Leslie, who Reid picks as his favorite.
“I believe the connection I had with David was an excellent one – we labored collectively effectively,” remembers Reid. “The Nissan Primera was a really profitable automotive and we appreciated the automotive arrange actually fairly equally. Alain Menu and I needed various things from our automobiles, and the identical with Rickard, so it wasn’t such a gelling relationship.”
The Reid-and-Leslie partnership proved a fruitful one, too, because it propelled the RML-run Nissan squad to the 1998 producers’ title.
“With the Nissan Primera, being with that programme for 2 years, the automotive had my DNA in it,” Reid continues. “Working with Nissan Motorsports Europe and Ray Mallock, we created a automotive that suited my driving type. And that relationship with David was profitable in 1998.”
To attain such robust outcomes was no imply feat when the championship was filled with high-profile stars and Reid – who has been reunited along with his 1998 Primera for the previous two seasons, driving it within the Traditional Touring Automobile Racing Membership’s Tremendous Tourers collection – has fond recollections of the entire period.
Leslie arrived at Nissan from Honda in 1997 and solid a powerful partnership with Reid that he remembers fondly at this time
Photograph by: Motorsport Images
“For me, it was absolutely the zenith of British Touring Vehicles,” he says. “To be concerned within the Nineties with Tremendous Touring to not solely be racing in opposition to drivers like John Cleland, Alain Menu and Rickard Rydell however having a few of the ex-F1 drivers like Derek Warwick, Nigel Mansell, Gabriele Tarquini and Gianni Morbidelli blended in. Steve Rider was presenting on Grandstand and Murray Walker commentating. The profile the collection had at the moment was large.”
Alongside the Nissan success, Reid says he and Leslie had “fairly a little bit of enjoyable” collectively. One instance was once they have been driving in convoy to Croft and Reid admits to getting “barely misplaced”.
“I overshot a turning simply earlier than the circuit and noticed a petroleum station, which I become,” remembers Reid. “I didn’t need to go as much as the way in which out, as we have been late, so I pulled the handbrake, lower throughout the verge and showered David with grass.
“We each obtained breaks on the proper level and ended up being team-mates” Anthony Reid
“The storage proprietor turned up on the circuit and he was actually aggravated. I used to be at the back of the truck and this storage proprietor requested, ‘Who went over the grass?’ David shopped me and pointed at me at the back of the truck. We have been in similar automobiles so no-one would’ve recognized! We needed to give him free tickets for the weekend!”
However Reid says the duo have been practically team-mates years beforehand in Group C sportscars in 1990 when considered one of his common Convector Porsche 962 stablemates was unavailable and the crew initially thought-about Leslie to deputise.
Though it might not have been till 1997 that they lined up collectively, when Leslie joined from Honda, they’d recognized one another since their single-seater forays within the Nineteen Eighties.
“We did driving days for producers within the Ian Taylor [racing school] days so we obtained to know one another very well,” says Reid. “That may assist pay for our racing at weekends. We each obtained breaks on the proper level and ended up being team-mates.”
Collectively Leslie and Reid secured the producers’ title for Nissan in 1998 earlier than the latter departed for Ford
Photograph by: Gavin Lawrence