Rowbottom’s slow burn

“Jules Bianchi, Will Stevens, Max Chilton. James Calado was probably my nemesis. Then there’s Adam Christodoulou, a great friend who has gone on to have a GT3 career. Also there was Jamie Green, Gary Paffett… and Lewis Hamilton, who was a few years older than me, but part of that era. My younger brother used to play in the mud with his brother, Nic, at Larkhall when Lewis and I were racing, and now Nic and I are on the same BTCC grid together. It’s gone full circle.”

You might consider Dan Rowbottom a relative newcomer, but as we can see from his list of old karting rivals the opposite is true. It’s just taken him a long time to catch a break, from an unlikely second wind long after he’d given up on a racing life. Now 34, Rowbottom was a rising star in karts, but the 2008 credit crunch led to a stalled climb. He then retreated to the family garage business in his early 20s, seemingly for good after missing out on a lead that might have pushed him through what was then GP3 and GP2 towards Formula 1. “I got a bit annoyed with the sport,” he says. “I bought a house with my girlfriend, now wife, but about six months later I flicked on the TV and I saw young Ashley Sutton winning in Renault Clios. I thought, I must have another crack at this.”

The Clios were Rowbottom’s re-entry point and since 2019, with support from fuel additive specialist Cataclean, he’s established himself as a new-generation BTCC racer. Now after two years with Team Dynamics he’s part of a Napa Racing super-team beside three-time champion Sutton and another old karting mucker, Dan Cammish. “Fun fact: Ash used to have a poster of me on his bedroom wall!” Rowbottom quips with a big grin. “You know what they say, when you are not looking things happen. I’m 34, but only just getting started.”