Tin-top tales with Alain Menu

Though the why and the how were hard to fathom, the where and the when were easily pinpointed: Geneva University’s auditorium in 1983. For it was after only a fortnight’s studying that the ‘what’ became clear to him – if to few others: Alain Menu wanted to be a racing driver, not a vet. No matter that Switzerland had forbade circuit racing since 1955, or that his hard-working farming family had neither interest nor connections in motor sport.

“I remember sitting there thinking, ‘What are you doing here?’” says the two-time BTCC champion, who today swaps paint in the decorating business. “There is more competition in that field! Motor racing was easier. OK, not for the first seven or eight years of my career perhaps.

“I was worried – about Dad’s reaction mainly – when I told my parents that I needed to find a job, to pay for the Elf Winfield competition, which I just knew I was going to win. I had this self-belief, based on nothing! And that Elf would then pay for my first season of Formula Renault.”

This reads like a Michel Vaillant plotline for good reason. The French comic book motor sports hero was the formative Menu’s inspiration. Yes, young Alain once persuaded his mum to drive him to Geneva to meet national hero Jo Siffert – at a department store, not a circuit – only to be thwarted by a huge crowd. And although talk of his going karting was persistent, it was also airy and distinctly one-sided. Hence his living the dream via Vaillant.

“Our family was not involved with cars at all. Not a salesman. Not a mechanic in a garage”

“Dad knew how interested I was in racing,” says Menu. “But, having been denied his opportunity to become a vet, he kept telling friends that I was going to be one. Actually, he was great when I told him my ‘plan’: ‘Are you sure? OK, if that’s what you want to do.’ Yet our family was not involved with cars at all. Not a salesman in a dealership. Not a mechanic in a garage.”

That changed – a bit – when Menu found work chauffeuring for the Permanent Mission of the United States in Geneva. Stately progress enlivened by blasts through the night in a Mercedes-Benz ‘borrowed’ from the father of best friend and future Formula 1 driver Jean-Denis Delétraz. This ‘arrangement’ ended when Menu drowned the car in a flooded underpass. He and Delétraz were reconnoitering the 1982 Elf Winfield competition, and rushing on a promise from jury member Patrick Tambay of a fast lap in the Merc, when the fateful turn was taken en route to Le Castellet’s nearby petrol station. It would be another two years before Menu himself was a contestant: he finished runner-up to Érik Comas. Close, but no Formula Renault.

“Anybody could enter,” he says. “But it was expensive. If you were successful, you had to keep going back: a day learning theory; driving, with limited revs; the quarter-finals; and semi-finals. Only the top six reached the final. I must have driven down there five times. And I was camping. I had no money… and no chance against a guy like Comas. He was doing the Renault 5 Championship, which was very competitive, and had done years of karting before that. Plus it was wet for the final. It had been dry until then. We got perhaps five extra laps to adapt. I had zero experience. My best time was two-tenths slower than Comas’s best. But his worst to my worst was about 1.5sec different. I had no consistency. All I got was a few handshakes: ‘Well done. Good luck.’ Thanks. OK, what now?” Formula Ford in France was the cheapest option for 1985. A deal was struck with Swiss-German preparer Alois Schnellmann to run a Van Diemen.

“We missed the first race,” says Menu. “No money. I was still chauffeuring. The second race was at Magny-Cours. I qualified sixth. Not bad. And I was a bit lucky in the race: two guys ahead of me collided; another had an engine issue; I overtook another; and I won. I cried. It meant so much.

“The next race was at Lédenon. I was on the front row, with Eric Chéli on pole. I was so busy looking in my mirrors that I missed my braking for the third corner. I hit poor Chéli, and we both retired. I had lots to learn. I won another race, at Montlhéry, and finished fourth in the championship.”

For 1986, and for the only time in his single-seater career, Menu would benefit from a full budget thanks to the patronage of Jean-Charles Roguet, Alain Prost’s Swiss lawyer. A new Van Diemen and Minister engine were delivered to Faster, based west of Paris and run by ex-Ligier mechanics Dominique Copin and Maurice Sartiaux.

“I needed to win that championship,” says Menu. “It started well. Jacques Goudchaux, who had the Marlboro money, and I were leading the championship when we went to Pau at Easter. I put it on pole by a long way. Leading with three laps to go, thinking about the champagne already, I lost concentration and shunted. It took me two race weekends to properly get over it.

“Goudchaux, who won in Pau, won the championship and then did French Formula 3 with ORECA. I finished third. Though I had won the support race at the French GP – huge crowd, all the big teams present – I could not raise the budget for F3. Disappointed, not sure what to do, Roguet asked [ORECA boss] Hugues de Chaunac, the big cheese in France, to meet me. We talked. Then Jean-Charles joined us. Right in front of me, de Chaunac told him that I was not ready for F3, that I needed another year of French Formula Ford and that I must win it. He cut the grass under my feet! Jean-Charles was demotivated suddenly.\

“But it was a blessing in disguise: ‘OK, I’ll go to England.’ It was one of the best decisions of my career.” Although Menu won his maiden UK Formula Ford race for David Sears’ team, he wearied of his boss’s absences: Sears was busy racing in Japan. Now or never, he switched to Chris Smith’s Christal Racing.

“I knew Chris from French Formula Ford. We met, and I told him that I didn’t want to drive a Quest.” Menu has always known his own mind, and has never been afraid to speak it. Nor is he averse to risk: Reynard had hardly set this formula alight. “We did a deal with them. The car was good. The team was good. Another fine decision.”

Eddie Irvine’s works Van Diemen won both British championships in ’87. Menu, however, might have snatched the Esso series but for a poor start from a damp pole at the Silverstone finale. Falling into the clutches of Irvine’s team-mate, he got no further than the Copse gravel. Irvine would beat him at the Brands Hatch Festival too.

“It was a good season,” says Menu. “I was happy. But then it was back to square one: finding F3 money. A full budget was £200k. I raised enough to start the season because one of my uncles had a property developer friend who gave me £50k. The rest? I was scraping by. I didn’t do the whole season – I ran out of money. We ran out of trust, too. I was blaming the [Toyota] engine and the team [Anglia Cars] was blaming me.” Cue another mid-season switch.

“I had spoken with Mike Baker about Formula Ford. My English wasn’t great then, and he spoke very quickly so I didn’t understand everything he was saying. So I went with Sears. But Mike ended up becoming one of my best friends.” Menu, who has never had an agent, would sometimes run contracts by Baker. He had no ambition to head a team either, yet would help Baker set up Menu Motorsport in 1996.

“Mike asked me, ‘How much money have you?’ I said, ‘None!’ We decided to do the next race”

“We had been chatting from time to time in the [F3] paddock,” continues Menu. “His Racefax team was splitting with its driver, too. So Mike asked me, ‘How much money have you? I told him, ‘None!’ We decided to do the next race, to see what happens. From being nowhere, I qualified sixth at Oulton Park. Our next race was at Brands Hatch. I finished fourth. ‘OK, we need to find the budget for 1989.’

“Again, I could only raise £50k. Mike wanted £160k. Again, we decided to go ahead in the hope results would help us find the rest. It started well.” Menu finished third and second in the first races, setting fastest lap both times, to lead the standings. “Then it went pear-shaped. I finished sixth at Monaco [three places ahead of eventual British F3 champion David Brabham]. Holger Spiess, our engine tuner, was impressed: ‘We’ll look after you for the rest of the season.’ OK. Great. We went slower! I had finished less than 1sec behind Brabham at the second race; we had the same chassis and engine. Now, at the same track, Silverstone Grand Prix, suddenly he was 1.5sec a lap faster than me.

“I had some crashes. Probably trying too hard to prove myself. I was dreaming of Formula 1 again”

“We missed some races, too, because of our budget. And I had some crashes. Probably trying too hard to prove myself. But I was dreaming of Formula 1 again. Before Racefax called, I had thought about stopping. No money. No chance. No point.

“Now, Mike organised a Formula 3000 test with Roni Motorsport. Brabham was there, too, having his first run. I don’t remember which team he was with but the track was damp and I was faster than him on slicks at the end. But again, no money.

“I began 1990 with Mike in F3 using a Mazda engine that was free. But it was uncompetitive. So we stopped after a few races. Having kept in touch with Roni, we did a deal for the Easter races of the British Formula 3000 Championship. I qualified second at Oulton Park. Made a better start than Rickard Rydell. Pulled away. And won. That was Friday. On Monday, I was leading at Thruxton but tangled with a backmarker. I finished third in a 1989 Reynard.” Menu used it to win at Snetterton in May too.

“I was leading at Brands Hatch [from pole] when the gearbox broke near the end. Roni had found a driver with more money, so I was with CoBRa by now. Another shoestring budget, there had been no money to fit new gears. So I finished second in the championship. Another nearly.”

Enter Marc Surer. The ex-F1 driver had created a foundation to help young Swiss drivers. Twentysomething Menu was hardly its karting kids clientele, but his mum suggested that he make contact nevertheless. A mooted European F3000 programme with Barclays (cigarette) money would fall through when Eddie Jordan ‘cut the grass’.

“Marc continued to try to help me,” says Menu. “Heini Mader agreed to provide engines for free. The proviso was that I sign a £150k contract, to be repaid over 10 years – if I made it as a professional. They were taking a chance on me. Mum and Dad took out a mortgage too: about £60k. And I lied. Which is unlike me. I told Colin Bennett [CoBRa’s boss] I had £150k, plus the engines.

“Again, it started quite well: sixths at Vallelunga and Pau. But again it went downhill. Your car gets slower because you can’t afford new parts. You run the engine a little longer than you should. And I had my biggest shunt. The last corner at Enna-Pergusa was kind of a hairpin, but long, long, long: flat in fifth, pretty much. My left-front exploded just before its exit and I hit the Armco at 170mph. Sideways, otherwise I would have been dead for sure. The final nail in the coffin, however, came at Hockenheim [three weeks later].”

Meanwhile, Surer, who was also in charge of BMW’s DTM driving squad, invited Menu to a two-day shoot-out at Val de Vienne, France. Its winner was to be offered a paid drive, somewhere, in 1992. “I had never thought about touring cars,” admits Menu. “My knee was still sore. And there were some good guys there – Michael Bartels, ‘Dindo’ Capello, Matt Neal – seven or eight of us, in a DTM car. I won!”

Just one more single-seater outing lay in Menu’s locker. “Shell had a special fuel [in F3000], which only a few cars had,” he says. “Through Marc, we got hold of a drum. Suddenly, I was fourth-fastest on a track I didn’t know: the old Hockenheim. But I overshot a chicane in the second session, drove too fast on the side road, and a stone pierced the monocoque. That was the end of my weekend.”

Having made his tin-top debut in September as a late replacement at the DTM Linder team – “I didn’t set the world on fire” – Menu waited anxiously for Surer’s call. The good news was delivered just before Christmas: BTCC, with Prodrive.

Menu quickly established himself as a category standout. In the 22 years between his first and final BTCC podiums, he set 35 poles and 27 fastest laps in winning 36 races – excluding a brace of consecutive RAC Tourist Trophies – and two titles: the first, in 1997, in a Renault Laguna built and run by Williams, and the second in 2000, the final season of Super Touring, in a Ford Mondeo built and run by Prodrive.

Three years with Opel’s underperforming three-team DTM effort from 2001 brought only frustration and a two-year deal driving a Ford for Prodrive’s V8 Supercars arm Down Under was being given serious consideration when Chevrolet made its WTCC approach. Eight consecutive seasons with Ray Mallock’s Chevy team from 2005 resulted in 23 more victories, and likely Menu would have added a world title to his résumé but for a clumsy nudge from a team-mate at the penultimate round of 2012.

“I had a nice career,” he says. “I won some races and I got paid. I can’t complain. And I don’t. There are loads of drivers like me who could have been more than decent in F1 but who didn’t get their opportunity.”

He did, however, drive two key F1 cars of the mid-90s: Williams’ FW15C and FW17. The former “was understeering like a pig into [Silverstone’s] slow corners”. The latter caused him to dare to dream again. Briefly.

“Williams had signed Jacques Villeneuve for 1996,” he says. “He had tested for them on the Silverstone GP circuit [in August]. A few weeks later the team needed a driver. Its tester was unavailable. Frank paid me £250 for the day. I was quick straight away but my neck was gone after the third run.”

Ostensibly gathering data on revised gearbox software, Menu was third-fastest on the day – four-tenths up on Alain Prost in a McLaren MP4/10B. His best was better than Villeneuve had managed initially.

“Alain, can you drive more slowly? Because you’re making Frank and Patrick look silly”

“[Race engineer] Jock Clear radioed: ‘Alain, can you drive more slowly?’ Why? ‘Because you’re making Frank and Patrick look silly!’ He also told me that they had extra tyres, which had not been planned: ‘Because Patrick is interested to know what you can do.’ I was spent. I went slower.

“I asked to see Patrick the following week. ‘Ah, Alain. I’ve got a feeling that you are not here to talk about the touring car.’ I wasn’t.” Another Silverstone test was meant as a prelude to Menu’s presence at an official winter-sun F1 test.

Silverstone went well. A stop-start circuit kinder to his neck, Menu lapped more quickly than Rubens Barrichello’s Jordan. “But the big test never happened,” he says. “They never mentioned it again. I was a bit frustrated about it for a few days. But I had a two-year touring car contract with them. And also Frank was paying me much more to drive his Laguna.”

All the better to keep a roof over a young and growing family’s head.