Andy
Wallace needs few introductions to sportscar
enthusiasts. His name has been top of the league
ever since he helped Jaguar to a memorable outright
victory in the 1988 Le Mans 24 Hours, co-driving
with Jan Lammers and Johnny Dumfries. Since
then he’s made a total of twenty appearances
at Le Mans, finished on the podium another three
times, taken four further class wins, and played
a central role in Bentley’s historic return
in 2001 and 2002.
One of the most respected names in sportscar
racing, British-born Wallace is the only professional
racing driver to have won all the major contemporary
classics. In an impressive career he has finished
on the podium in more than 70 top-ranking events,
winning more than thirty, including the Le Mans
24 Hours (1988), the Daytona 24 Hours (1990,
1997, 1999), Sebring 12 Hours (1992, 1993),
Silverstone 4 Hours (1995, 1996) and Petit Le
Mans (1999). Before all that he was also a star
in single-seaters, winning the British Formula
3 title in 1986 with an unprecedented 11 victories.
In
recent years Andy Wallace has been one of the
dominant performers in American sportscar racing,
not only being a regular in the American Le
Mans Series, but also contesting Grand Am, often
in the Daytona Prototype classes.
One
of his longest-standing relationships has been
with Dyson Racing, and he was a key component
in that team's successful period in the early
"noughties", competing in the ALMS
with the MG Lola EX257 (right) . His
knowledge of a car so essentially similar to
the MG EX264 meant he felt instantly at home
in the similar RML machine when he joined Mike
and Tommy at Le Mans for the first time in 2006,
and his contribution to the team's dominant
win in the LMP2 category at Le Mans in June
2006 was invaluable.
Another
achievement that was tucked neatly under Andy's
belt (for almost seven years) was that of having
held the speed record for a production-based
road car. In March 1998 he achieved 240.14 miles-per-hour
(386.5 kph) in a McLaren F1 along the 9 km straight
at Volkswagen's Ehra-Lessien test track in Wolfsburg,
Germany. (The SSC Ultimate Aero's 257 mph currently
holds the record, although the Bugatti Veyron's
production car record of 253.2 mph (407.5 km/h)
is considered by some as more legitimate. The
RML-designed Saleen S7-R Twin Turbo is third,
with 248 mph.)
Andy
remained with Dyson Racing in the American Le
Mans Series for the 2007 season, when Dyson
briefly abandoned loyalty to Lola to became
the first customer team in the United States
to employ the all-dominant Porsche RS Spyder.
Andy shared the #16 Spyder with Butch Leitzinger
(below), and secured third in the LMP2
category for the season, just behind the two
works-entered Penske Porsches.
For
the past two seasons Andy's regular drive has
been in the Grand Am Rolex Series in the States.
In 2008 he joined Richard Childress and Childress
Howard Motorsports to race Grand Am in
a Pontiac-Crawford DP08 Daytona Prototype (right),
although the team only contested the Daytona
24 Hours and a handful of the year's scheduled
races that first year. In 2009 the programme
was extended to a full season, including all
eleven rounds of the Grand Am Rolex series and
the Daytona 24 Hours.
Aside
from his strengthening relationship with RML,
Andy has also started to revisit the podium
in other classes of motorsport. He is now regularly
commissioned to race priceless historic sportscars
on behalf of their proud owners on both sides
of the Atlantic, and has the added delight of
being able to re-visit some of the cars that
brought him such enormous success in the past.
He competes in Historic Group C racing in Europe
from the cockpit of a Jaguar XJR-9 (a sister-car
to the one that took him to Le Mans victory
in 1988) and in America he has been racing an
Audi R8 LMP1 in the Daytona Historic Sportscar
Racing (HSR) Series - the same car he raced
to second at Sebring in 2002.
In
amongst these major achievements, Andy continues
to appear in one-off events, such as the
Britcar 24 Hours, Walter Hayes Trophy FF1600
and Lamborghini Super Trofeo, as well as
carrying out testing and driver training
duties. Despite a lengthy parallel career,
often as competitors on track, he and Thomas
Erdos had never actually shared a car until
Le Mans in 2006, but they have since repeated
the experience with three further appearances
at Le Mans (2007, 2008 and 2010). Andy became
the team's regular "third" driver for the
first half of the 2010 season, joining RML
AD Group for the longer Le Mans Series
events at Paul Ricard and Spa, as well as
the Le Mans 24 Hours, where they finished
third in LMP2.
Andy
is married with two children and lives near
Buckingham.
