STEVE SOPER: THE UNCROWNED BRITISH TOURING CAR SUPERSTAR
OK, so maybe that headline is a bit unfair. Steve Soper did win the Japanese Touring Car Championship in 1995 for BMW but, for a man rated by his fellow drivers as one of tin-top racing’s finest ever exponents, that barely scratches the surface of a fabulous career.
The Englishman worked his way through the one-make ranks before being picked up by the Austin Rover Group in the early 1980s. If not for a courtroom battle, he would have been the outright British Saloon Car title winner in 1983 in a Rover Vitesse, just his second year in the top-flight. As you can read, he still regards it as the one that got away.
What followed was a two-decade professional career at the forefront of tin-top racing around the globe, including a memorable stint in the British Touring Car Championship. And, now 30 years have elapsed and the dust has settled, Soper has an interesting take on who was responsible for that clash in the 1992 BTCC showdown between John Cleland and Tim Harvey, when Cleland and Soper ended up in the gravel at Luffield. Who, exactly, was to blame? Read on and find out more.
He signed off his career with prototype outings at Le Mans in the fearsome BMW V12 LM before a disastrous return to the BTCC in 2001 with Peugeot, when a crash ruled him out of racing for a decade. But, even at the age of 70, he is now back behind the wheel showing off his skills with numerous outings in historic racing.
Thanks to our readers for the questions and to Steve Soper for his generous time and expansive answers. We are thinking of getting him back again: there is so much more to ask, but this first slice is intriguing.
Question: Was it your father’s influence that sparked your interest in motorsport, or do you think you would have found the passion anyway?
Russell Scobbie Via email
Steve Soper: “It was all to do with my father, I am sure. As a kid I was dragged along to rallies, races and autotests with either him competing or he and his friends were going there to watch. Dad’s name was Harford Richmond Soper, but he was known as Joss. He had a small garage in Kenton [in London] which did minor repairs on cars and sold tyres, batteries and that sort of thing. So I was always around cars.
“Dad was an out-and-out enthusiast and did sprints and rallies. He never really did much circuit racing, unless there was a sprint around Brands Hatch or something like that. Dad was OK at competing, but he didn’t start early. He had to wait until he had the finances to do it. He was married with two kids and that all had to be sorted first.
“Once I had got to about seven years old, I was going racing all the time and once I got to 10, I actually wanted to go because the bug had bitten me too. I started doing autotests with his licence when I was about 14 or 15 years old. The organisers knew, but they turned a blind eye to it. Dad would do a run and then I would take over the car and go and line up again as him!”
MN: Did you beat him?
SS: “I can’t remember, but probably not. I didn’t have much finesse at that point. For me, it was all about loads of revs and wheelspin! It was all bravado and no feeling.”
MN: There is a bit of a journey from doing that to getting on to a race track and tackling the one-make series, which were the foundations of your early career…
“I started with a Ford Escort in 1971. It was a Mk1 which started off as a road car and I turned it into a race car. I turned up to an 8 Clubs race meeting at Silverstone. In my first race, I crashed on my first competitive lap at the first corner. I got to Copse and it fell over [rolled]. It was destroyed. When I got back home, I had the wreck on the back of the trailer and dad walked out, walked around it, didn’t look at me and then just walked back inside. He muttered a four-letter swear word under his breath, and that was me
