Ray Mallock: the family works

But in Ray’s day, RML’s name was synonymous not only with the enduring success of the Mallocks’ eponymous racing cars, but also high-profile programmes such as the 1980s Group C Aston Martin Nimrod, Vauxhall’s ’90s British Touring Car Championship blitz, and Chevrolet’s World Touring Car Championship wins this century.

“Growing up in a household led by Arthur, life was always going to be about motor racing,” says Mallock. “He was fantastic at giving his children a long leash, and a wide range of opportunities and experiences.

“So we were left to get on with our own thing – because he was so focused on doing his own thing, which was motorsport.”

Ray Mallock was heavily influenced by his father’s passion for motorsport

For Mallock and his three siblings that meant a good degree of forbearance: “When I was 10, we were on our way back to my boarding school and dad said, ‘I’m afraid we can’t afford for you to go to boarding school any more, Raymond.’ And that was because he wanted to spend the money going racing.

“Then, when we were almost there, he said: ‘Would you mind if I ask the headmaster if you can leave now?’”

Mallock did stay on for another term, before leaving for Roade Secondary Modern School in Northamptonshire.

But it was clear his father’s passion for motorsport was hooking him in, never more so than when he watched Arthur race at Brands Hatch at around the same time.

“Dad had had trouble in practice and started on the back row of the grid in a Mk2 Mallock U2,” he recalls. “But he drove through from the back to win it. That made a real mark on me, and from that day on I wanted to be a racing driver.”

Mallock, here stood with a DBS, worked on the chassis line during his time at Aston Martin © Aston Martin Lagonda

Arthur helped fuel the fire, too.

For his 15th birthday, Ray received a 1936 Austin Seven Ruby from his father and, taking a leaf out of his book, he removed the body and started to lighten it, before rolling it in the field next to his parents’ house.

It didn’t put him off, though, and by 1969, at the age of 18, Ray was sitting on the starting grid at Silverstone in a Mk9 Mallock Formula Ford that he’d largely built himself: “My biggest fear was that I was going to be useless as a racing driver, but when I got out on to the track I could feel the grip and, although I messed up the start, I came back to finish ninth.”

That initial boost to his esteem put Mallock on a path to becoming one of the UK’s most prolific and successful racing drivers of the ’70s.

Mallock started racing in Formula Atlantic in 1973 – finishing runner-up in his first year

But initially, without any relevant qualifications from school, he realised that funding motor racing required more experience and knowledge: “I managed to get an apprenticeship with Aston Martin. I learnt how to use a lathe, how to weld, how to do electrical connections and soldering; it was a really good grounding.

“They also put me on the chassis line at Newport Pagnell, building DB6s.

“Then after a year, a vacancy came up in Sales and Distribution and I was exposed to the world of PR, taking cars down to TV shows such as The Persuaders! It was quite something, but the guys knew about my racing so trusted me.”

His recognition in motorsport continued to develop, helped by an outright win in the 1970 Clubmans Championship, driving a Mallock.

Buoyed by this success, he set up his own business, Rayce Developments, which primarily supplied wheels and exhausts to Mallock Racing, as well as building and preparing its customer cars.

Mallock behind the wheel of a Mk11 at Silverstone in 1971, during a stellar Clubmans season

Rayce funded the ’71 Clubmans season in which Mallock was once more dominant, taking 22 wins and nine lap records, before making his debut in Formula Three with the Mallock Mk11B, earning a coveted Grovewood Award.

With more powerful formulae beckoning, however, Mallock needed a more potent engine, quite literally, behind him. That opportunity came with Formula Atlantic, a feeder series to Formula One, which had become his ultimate goal.

Starting in 1973 with an ex-James Hunt March racer, sponsored by The Chequered Flag, he was on the money from the start, ending the season as a runner-up in the championship.

Over the following few years, Mallock continued with Formula Atlantic, touring Europe with his three-man crew in an ex-Saxby’s Pork Pies Transit van packed with tools and tents, with the March in tow.

“It was an amazing experience in life,” he recalls, “but we’d often only get start money, so it never really paid for itself.”

The offer of a Formula One test drive from Bernie Ecclestone never materialised after Mallock won the 1981 British Formula Atlantic Championship

The decade continued to be punctuated by racing in a wide variety of series, including graduation to Formula Two in a Chevron B40, British F1 in an Ensign and March, Formula Atlantic again in a Ralt RT1 (in which he won the ’79 championship), and a first taste of Le Mans in a de Cadenet-Lola, in which he came 20th with Simon Phillips and Martin Raymond.

Despite the tantalising offer of an F1 test drive from Bernie Ecclestone (then owner of the Brabham team) if he won the 1981 British Formula Atlantic Championship (which he did, but the test never materialised), Mallock has no regrets: “I was too tall for F1 so my legs were always bashing the steering rack and, at 30, I was too old.

“But Group C had just been launched, and I knew that Aston Martin was considering someone for the Nimrod programme, so I contacted them and ended up driving Viscount Downe’s car, managed by Richard Williams.”

Mallock had already set up Ray Mallock Atlantic Racing (the forerunner of RML) two years earlier to run his cars, but also to take on engineering development projects, and the Nimrod was a prime candidate: “Robin Hamilton created the first Nimrod with a Lola chassis, and Aston engine and gearbox. But the car had never seen a wind tunnel and the aero was poor.”

Mallock (middle) had a crash course in aerodynamics while preparing a quarter-scale Aston Martin Nimrod for wind-tunnel testing © Maurice Lowe, Motor

“I persuaded Victor Gauntlett and Viscount Downe to fund a quarter-scale wind-tunnel model to test at MIRA,” Mallock recalls.

“I’m not a trained engineer, so I had to learn fast and sought advice from Bill Britton – a senior British Aerospace aerodynamicist, who’d worked on Concorde – which was a great education for me.”

For Le Mans in ’82, the two works Nimrods and Viscount Downe’s private car competed together, and the race was captured brilliantly in the documentary Nimrod the Mighty Warrior.

It’s a real David-and-Goliath nail-biter, with both works cars failing to finish, then the privateer car driven by Mallock, Simon Phillips and Mike Salmon having engine problems, losing a hard-fought third position that had split the Porsche entry.

The car finally crossed the line in a highly creditable seventh, but its success was short-lived: “The programme finished in 1984 when a marshal was killed. We ran two cars, both were involved in the same tragic accident. That was the end of Nimrod.”

‘Mallock’s ability to bring together the best engineering talents in the business under the RML banner gave the company firm foundations for the 21st century’

By the turn of the decade, Mallock had started a gradual transformation from racer and development driver to engineering and business manager: “It wasn’t until 1989 and the [Aston Martin] AMR1 programme that I felt I could give up that development-driver role.

“Up until then, I was all over the driving as well as the managing and engineering, but I had enough confidence in [F3 and sports-racing driver] David Leslie at the time to take a step back.”

Alas, a major Group C regulation change quashed Mallock’s AMR1 ambitions and he reformed RML from scratch after it had previously been subsumed by Gauntlett’s Proteus Technologies to develop the AMR1.

Following a brief flirtation with Nissan Performance at the 1990 Le Mans, running one of five R90CP/CK cars – “We should have won there, but the fuel tank cracked, which was a known fault no one had told us about” – Mallock needed a new direction.

“BTCC was taking off,” he recalls, “and I could see that a manufacturer-backed contract was the right thing to do.”

“Vauxhall Dealer Sport knew of our reputation, and I persuaded them to lend us two ’91 Cavaliers for the ’92 season. We produced our own cars the following year, and by the end of ’93 we’d impressed Vauxhall enough to be awarded the works contract.”

An engine issue resulted in a DNF on Mallock’s final outing in the Aston Martin AMR1 at Le Mans in 1989 © Getty

With RML’s chassis and aerodynamics expertise, the Cavaliers had more grip than any other car on the track: “John Cleland came in after his first lap of testing at Brands and said, ‘There’s something wrong with the dash. It says I’ve just done a 46.2 – that’s ridiculous!’

“It was a second quicker than he’d ever gone there.”

Despite Cleland’s continued success, taking the championship in the RML-run Cavalier in 1995, Mallock felt that the Scot’s role was overpowering: “John wasn’t a good development driver; if you compare him with David Leslie they were chalk-and-cheese.

“In the end, Nissan came to me with the opportunity of running its cars and choosing my drivers, and that’s why we moved there for the following three seasons, with David and Anthony Reid.”

Mallock’s ability to bring together the best engineering talents in the business under the RML banner gave the company firm foundations for the 21st century, with notable success in running the Chevrolet works team in World Touring Cars up to 2014.

Mallock still uses the firm’s older machinery for historic racing outings

That the organisation has now diversified with son Michael at the helm, with less emphasis on motorsport, is no disappointment to its founder. “I no longer have the itch to scratch,” he says with a smile.

Nowadays, that itch extends only to racing older Mallock machinery – including one car that originally belonged to his father – in historic racing, from which Mallock gets a real kick.

He has also developed a passion for cycling, and is currently undertaking a Lands End to John O’Groats trip in four week-long sections during the course of a year: “50 miles a day is just right for me…”

It comes as no real surprise: whether as a racing driver, development guru or team manager, Ray Mallock’s success has always been about going the extra mile.

Images: Max Edleston; Maurice Lowe, Motor; Getty; Aston Martin Lagonda

Mallock’s first racing generation

Pictured here is Mallock’s father, Arthur who started building affordable front-engined race cars after serving in WW2

Ray Mallock’s father, Arthur, was described by biographer Paul Lawrence as ‘the man most responsible for making motor racing accessible to the man in the street,’ with his Mallock U2s, which he began to produce commercially from 1958 and, in modern form, are still being built today.

Arthur’s intimate knowledge of chassis dynamics was first demonstrated when he started to build Austin Seven Specials in ’39, before serving in the forces during WW2.

Post-war, Arthur was a pivotal member of the 750 Motor Club, campaigning his well-known Seven Special on circuits, in trials and at hillclimbs.

His first U2 used a spaceframe design, to which customers could fit their own standard equipment, driving down the price of competing in what even then was a rich man’s sport.

Keeping the engine and gearbox in front of the driver also reduced costs and removed transmission losses, while its live rear axle meant no camber changes.

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