Paul O'Neill

Nationality: British Born: 31st December 1979 Status: Single Championship: BTCC Team: Tech-Speed Car: Honda Integra

My Dad, Dennis, worked as a Truck Driver for a local firm and every last Friday in the Month he took me in his truck with him all around the country and let me change gear all the way there and back! My mum Joan, worked for the NHS as a Secretary up the Road and at the weekends they formed a band called T-Junction, which they still are in. My Dad is on the Bass Guitar and my mum is the Lead Singer with a Drummer, Keyboard Player and a Guitarist. I still go and watch when they are on local Pubs with my mates. I have been watching them now for 14 years and they seem to get better with age! (I hope they don't read this!).

In early January 1985, my Dad and I were driving back from visiting some of his Friends, when on a notorious bend somebody misjudged the corner and hit our car head-on. In the days of no seat belts in the back, I was launched into the windscreen resulting in a 2 inch scar across my forehead but surprisingly no broken bones and a couple of days in Hospital. My Dad wasn't so lucky, he was trapped in the car for several hours as Emergency Crews tried to cut him out as the steering wheel and engine had wedged him in. He lost all his front teeth and broke his ribs. He was in intensive care for a week and we were very lucky to get out alive. After the car accident I was fascinated even more by four wheels, constantly glued to the T.V on a Sunday afternoon to watch the Grand Prix, while my mates played footie in the park.

In School I was well known as being a car nerd, as it was all I ever talked about. I even used to list Car Registration Numbers, Makes and Models, then put them in a file. Any projects at school that you were allowed to pick the theme, it was always on cars. When I moved up to Senior School nothing changed in the way of what I liked most, even though girls challenged, they still come in a distant second. While I was doing my paper round and reading about Nigel Mansell sailing towards his first and only World Championship in '92, I was dreaming of passing my driving test in five years time.

I never had any ambitions of being a Racing Driver as I was told by my Dad you needed mega money to get into it, how right he was. I had decided when I was 13 I wanted a Career in the Police Force, so I worked towards getting the best results in my GCSE's to graduate to College and study A Levels. I got the results I wanted at Secondary School and that enabled me to go straight on to College for the new term. I chose to study (I don't know why!), Politics, Geography and Business Studies. It was hard enough studying these subjects but when a certain Girl group called the Spice Girls came on the scene, life at College became a bit harder. My work suffered as some of the people gave me a hard time but the final straw came in a Geography lesson when I was singing along to "Wiggle Wiggle" by the Outhere Brothers, my teacher took offence and sent me to her office. I didn't go and walked home and never went back, it was my own fault but I don't regret it.

I wanted to work full-time and earn some money, I wasn't going to do that by struggling in College and working weekends washing dishes at the local Hotel. So after a couple of weeks looking for a job, my Mum's Guitarist offered me work building specialist home entertainment systems in a unit in Warrington. It was now the middle of March 1997 and I had just passed my driving test and things were looking up. Full time work, Fiesta 1.1 and going out at the weekends for some fun.

It was a wet Thursday morning in August that changed my career path to what I do now. The day before, my "newish" Corsa GSI had trouble with its brakes, so I had booked it into the garage to be fixed. I had to get to work so I borrowed my Sisters new Mercedes SLK, which somehow I had been insured on two weeks previous when it was delivered. I had driven around a lot in it while I was getting my new Corsa, so it wasn't as though it was a new car to me. I set off to work not knowing this was going to be a really bad day that changed my life for the better. I got down the Motorway and took the turn off for my works, to get to my part of the Industrial estate you have to go through a set of roundabouts. With it being an Industrial Estate there is a lot of Trucks spilling Diesel on the road making it very slippy. Well, that's my excuse anyway. As I drove through the first roundabout, I was going a little bit too fast for the weather condtions, promptly lost control and hit the only lamppost on the road. The Car was a complete writeoff and I was lucky to of not hit anybody and also escape with just a cut head and bruises.

I was the laughing stock of the whole Country and life was not great at this moment in time. I was on a complete downer after this as the tabloid's made fun of me as and when they could. This spurred me on and I enquired about the Jim Russell Race School to try and gain a Race Licence, which I did towards the end of 1998. I was granted my National B Licence and started looking at a series to race in and through a friend of a friend, I was guided to the MGF Cup. This was a very high profile One Make Series consisting of Ex-Formula 3, and Touring Car drivers along with young drivers trying to make a name for themselves.

In 1999 I raced for a team run by Ex-Touring Car race winner, John Bintcliffe. It was my first taste of racing cars competitively and it was very hard. Out of 25 cars, I usually qualified about 16th or 17th, which apparently wasn't bad. It was a great learning year for me but, it wasn't without incident. I had crashed heavily in a qualifying session in which the car was unable to be repaired for the race meeting I was attending and the following meeting the week after. The team I raced for also run a Saloon Car in the NSCC for another driver, but that meeting he was away with work. I was asked if I would like to drive the car, but I needed a licence upgrade. It was a chance not worth losing so after much scurrying around, I was belted up and ready to go and qualified the car to mine, and everybody else's amazement in 5th place. I had qualified ahead of the Championship leader and other illustrious names which was great. The race was a different story and finished eight after climbing to fourth in the early stages. I had proved a point to myself that weekend and that made the last two races in the MGF Cup more enjoyable, as I got my best results of the year.

For the year 2000 it was my second year in motorsport and proved to be a steep learning curve. I stayed in the competitive MGF Cup fold for my second year and had moved on from Bintcliffe Sport, to Tech-Speed Motorsport. This proved to be a shrewd move by myself as the team headed by Marvin Humphries guided me to a podium finish at Brands Hatch and a front row start at Silverstone. I finished 8th in the series by finishing only six times out of the twelve races, due to mechanical failure or race incidents. Overall it was a mega Season in which I raced at the famous Spa circuit in Belgium, and was usually up at the front, which was an amazing feeling.

In 2001, Tech-Speed entered a team in the Production class in the British Touring Car Championship with me driving a Peugeot 306 alongside Annie Templeton. At the start of the season, I recall looking at the list of BTC-P entries and seeing the many prestigious drivers I was competing against in my class. I could have picked at least ten race winners from it. All I wanted to do was break into that top ten and anything else would have been a bonus. By the end of the season, I'd had a pole position, three podium places and finished 8th in the Production Class. There were highs and there were lows but the highs far outweighed the lows last season. I'd achieved everything I wanted to and more. All in all, it was a very successful year.