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birthday my parents got me an
indoor karting course that con-
sisted of half an hour a week over
six weeks. I started doing that
and loved it,” Clucas says. “I got
better and better and eventually
progressed to outdoor karts. We
bought our own kart and started
at the back of the grid.
“At first, I didn’t even take the
racing line, so we paid someone
to teach me by standing on the
corners and putting his foot where
he wanted me to be because I was
wasting so much track.”
From there Clucas was hooked
and he improved quickly. He went
on to win the British Champi-
onships and Junior TKM before
progressing to cars when he was
16. He says: “I went to Silverstone
as they had an intensive Formula
Ford course. At 17 I went into it
full time.”
After winning the Formula Ford
Championship in 2002, Clucas
was signed by Toyota F1 and was
a finalist in the McLaren BRDC
Young Driver competition. This
funded his season in Formula
Renault, where he finished fifth.
He says: “That was a really good
year, racing alongside my team
mate, Kamui Kobayashi, as well as
others such as Pastor Maldonado,
who was in the championship at
the time too. If you look at the top
10 in 2003, they’ve all gone on to
do pretty amazing things.”
The tough championship taught
Clucas a lot in the close-running
field, and from there he went on to
win the Australian F3 Champion-
ship, before moving to GT racing
in 2007. It’s the GT cars that really
stand out to him, he says: “The
most fun car I have driven is the
Porsche 997 cup car I raced in
Spain in 2007.”
As well as being a racing driver,
Clucas is also an ARDS-qualified
race coach and in the last five
years has managed to deliver 16
championships, from Ginettas to
seventh overall, but if you look
at the race times we were there
during the first half but genuine-
ly struggled in the second half of
each race because we were using
up the tyres on the front-wheel
drive Kia.”
This full season’s drive is a
perfect example of how network-
ing and persistence, along with
results, can get you somewhere.
Clucas spent a lot of time con-
necting with teams and making
the effort to nurture important
relationships. He explains: “It
came about thanks to Nick John-
son who part-owns Kinetic Mot-
orsport along with Russell Smith
and Ed Hall. In 2011 he gave me
the chance to race with Kinetic in
the BMW series having never even
seen me drive.
“I qualified third in the race then
went on to do the rest of the year
with them. Nick is a professional
driver himself; he’s done Le Mans
10 times and competed in NAS-
CAR, Indycar and BTCC too. When
I heard he was stepping down, I
kept calling him and fortunately
when the decision came around I
got the call for the Pirelli drive.”
Despite Clucas’s calm de-
meanour, he reacted how we all
would to that call. He says: “After
fist-pumping around the room for
five minutes I calmed down and
thought I’d better get on with it!”
As with a lot of drivers, Clucas’
love for motorsport started at an
early age with karting. “When I
was eight, my dad got a karting
present for his birthday. I heard
about it and thought it sounded
like fun so I moaned and moaned
to my mum and dad to get me
a similar present. On my ninth
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