Inside line: Nick Whale

With historic rally and race cars on hand, he has the best of both worlds

What events have you done this season?
Two rounds of the British Historic Rally Championship, one forest and one Tarmac, five races in the E-type, including Goodwood, and I shared a Lotus Cortina with Chris Sanders in the FIA Historic series. I’m very privileged to have such a choice of cars.

What’s the history of the E-type?
Dick Protheroe had three E-types, all registered as CUT 7. This was his first car, which was built as a race car by the factory. Ian Guest and I jointly own it. It has a standard steel shell and was chassis number 4, so it’s one of the earliest racing E-types.

What’s your connection with Damon Hill?
We own Audi and BMW dealerships together. I’m still working on him to race one of the cars and I haven’t given up yet! To race with him would be very special.

What comes next?
I’ll finish the year doing the Killarney Historic Rally in December in the Porsche. I’ll probably get blown away by Dessie Nutt, but everyone says you’ve got to do the event once! I hope to do several rallies again next year and we’re going to do the Historic Le Mans in the E-type.

Do you prefer racing or rallying?
I love rallying more than anything else. This year I did the Robin Hood Stages on gravel and the Manx on Tarmac with the Porsche; I’ll try some of the other BHRC rounds next year. It took a while to get back into the swing of it on the Manx, but we were setting good times towards the end of the rally.