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Unlike Damon (Hill) who raced
road bikes, I started on the mud.”
There are so many paths into
the upper echelons of motorsport
these days and most people go
down the karting route, but Blun-
dell is happy with how he got into
single seater racing. He says:
“Karting is a great feeder, but
I think bikes give you a better
understanding of competition,
especially when you’re handle-
bar-to-handlebar with 40 oth-
er guys and you come into the
first corner and all fall off! It’s a
shock, but it makes you appreci-
ate close racing.”
Blundell started in Formula Ford
1600 after seeing it at the Motor-
sport Show at Alexandra Palace.
This is where he began to under-
stand the motorsport scene below
F1. While Blundell doesn’t be-
lieve he took a generic route into
the sport, he did take the same
path as a lot of other big names.
He says: “A lot of us came from
Group C, (Michael) Schumacher
and (Alexander) Wurz, to name
just two.”
Just like the nineties, the path
to F1 still isn’t clear today, as
Blundell explains: “I don’t think
there’s a tried and tested route,
there are just too many formulas
and too much choice. There are
two levels of motorsport: clubman
level where you go racing every
weekend and enjoy yourself, and
another level where you see if you
can cut the mustard to make it to
the top.
“I think there should be more
of a clear-cut choice and if you
reduced some of the formulas
perhaps we’d have packed grids
and more competition across those
feeder series.”
You can’t deny Blundell had a
successful career and it’s for this
reason he wouldn’t change how he
moved through the ranks of mot-
orsport to Formula One. He says:
“I’d take the same route, but when
I started, Formula Ford was the en-
try level into motorsport and there
wasn’t anything below it other
than karting. Looking back, it was
still the most competitive and you
learnt so much about your own
racecraft racing wheel-to-wheel,
as well as the mechanics of the
cars and working with people.”
In Blundell’s career, he’s raced
with some of the greats and found
it so important to keep the right