Of the four British Formula 3 races at Thruxton he entered across the 1994 and 1995 seasons, Warren Hughes started every one of them from pole position. Not a bad accolade considering his opposition included Jan Magnussen, Dario Franchitti, Oliver Gavin, Ralph Firman and Helio Castroneves.
Hughes had several magic moments at the Hampshire speedbowl, billed as the UK’s fastest circuit, during a lengthy British F3 career that aptly concluded with a Thruxton podium in 1999. On that day, he’d shaded champion elect Marc Hynes and soon-to-be Williams Formula 1 racer Jenson Button to score a result he acknowledges might not have been possible at a venue other than his favourite track.
By then Hughes was long since established as an expert at the 2.356-mile circuit, having won a Formula Vauxhall Lotus race at Thruxton back in 1991.
“It’s a nice part of the world and it’s got more of a relaxed atmosphere about the place as well,” says the Geordie. “But the track itself is obviously the main bit and I have always gone well there. There was definitely signs that I clicked with the place and that continued to some degree when I went there in F3.”
Hughes attributes his prowess at Thruxton to his late-braking style, which gave him confidence into the circuit’s two heavy braking zones at Campbell and the Club chicane where most laptime can be found, and what he calls “an understanding of how to structure” the right-left-right complex comprising Campbell, Cobb and Segrave.
“You had two very big braking areas there from very high-speed into low-speed and I always felt very strong on the brakes,” says Hughes, who encourages the drivers he coaches to treat the flat-out blast through Noble, Goodwood, Village and Church as though they’re driving on an oval and minimising steering inputs that scrub off speed.
Hughes explains that he put most emphasis on a good exit from Cobb. This involved compromising the exit of Campbell “to make a massive gain at Turn 3, which then gave me a slingshot into Turn 4 and then you’d be flat until the chicane”.
“At Turn 2 the track is hugely wide and a lot of people just get drawn into carrying a lot of speed through Turn 2, which massively compromises the exit of Turn 3,” he says. “That changes a little bit as rubber goes down over the course of a race weekend and you can probably take a little bit more speed through Turn 2; because you’ve got a bit more grip to work with through Turn 3, the exit naturally becomes better.
“But when the grip is not fully there, you’ve got to think about where you need to be quick and that’s always an area that I felt I really understood and I felt not many other people did.”
"To do that certainly showed what the car was capable of and it aligned with my understanding of Thruxton, it was the perfect storm" Warren Hughes
It served him well in his second season of F3 in 1993 when Hughes charged to sixth from a lowly 21st on the grid after third and fourth gears on his untested Richard Arnold Developments Dallara were fitted the wrong way around. “Qualifying was a disaster, we just couldn’t show any potential,” he recalls. But the race was a different story as Hughes came breezing through the pack, setting the fastest lap by 0.4s to ram home the superiority of Dallara’s F393 over Ralt and Reynard’s offerings.
By the end of the season, the opposition had switched camps in their droves.
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“To do that certainly showed what the car was capable of and it aligned with my understanding of Thruxton, it was the perfect storm,” Hughes reflects. “Mr [Giampaolo] Dallara still remembers me as an important part of that jigsaw in establishing Dallara into the UK.”
Joining the works March team for 1994 didn’t yield the hoped-for results and its abrupt withdrawal of the disastrous 94C-Toyotas left Hughes twiddling his thumbs on the sidelines. But another impressive performance at Thruxton, in a one-off outing with Roly Vincini’s P-1 Engineering Dallara-Fiat, got tongues wagging and resurrected his F3 career.
Replacing Dino Morelli after shining in a test at Snetterton, Hughes took a stunning pole and nailed the start. Victory appeared there for the taking, but was ripped from his grasp when West Surrey Racing’s Vincent Radermecker clattered into him on the opening lap.
“I was furious about that,” says Hughes. But he’d make his mark – he was signed up for the second half of 1994 in Japanese F3 with the HKS Mitsubishi project, and when it came to the UK for 1995 with Alan Docking Racing Hughes found himself back on the grid for a full season.
The union quickly gelled and Hughes snared pole for both races in April’s Thruxton double-header that followed an encouraging opening round at Silverstone. Had it not been for catching dawdling backmarker Daoud Abou Daya at “completely the wrong moment” in the Club chicane, costing him momentum which allowed James Matthews to move ahead, Hughes believes “there was no way Matthews would have caught me”. As it was, the race ended with a final lap clash at Club as Hughes attempted to pass Matthews around the outside, dropping him to fifth.
“The fury and probably the psychological hangover of that is what caused me to make a mistake in the second, wet, race later in the day,” he reflects. “I didn’t really resettle after that, which is down to me obviously, but for me that was devastating. It was pole position, I was going to win the race, I felt so confident because I knew I had an edge over everybody at Thruxton.”
But Hughes made amends later in the year, breezing to a fourth pole in a row at the circuit – “I remember doing my fastest lap in qualifying literally on the first flying lap, it was super-abrasive on tyres at Thruxton so the tyres came in really quick” – before seeing off Jamie Davies on the brakes into Campbell.
“It was a good year with pretty strong drivers in ’95, so to be as dominant as I was around Thruxton, I was pretty proud of that really,” he says.
After spending 1996 in Germany’s Super Touring championship with Ford, the Schubel-run Mondeo never remotely close to resembling a podium contender, Hughes was back in F3 mid-way through 1997 with Portman Racing. The prowess of Promatecme’s Renault engine prompted Portman to ditch its Mitsubishi powerplants for 1998, which had Hughes excited for a title tilt. But in reality, “we had the rug pulled from under us” he explains.
When the engine was delivered, Hughes says, “it was a completely new design and had so many problems, it just wouldn’t run so we lost all of our pre-season testing”. Under the circumstances then, second on the grid for round two at Thruxton and third in the race, after both he and poleman Martin O’Connell had been outdragged by Enrique Bernoldi, was a fine salvage job.
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“It did flatter the package we had then,” reflects Hughes. “We managed to get a solution to get the engine running cleanly for the race weekend, but I’m sure the engine performance wasn’t at its peak, they were just trying to get reliability by that point. So to qualify on the front row was not where that car and engine deserved to be at that point.”
Hughes says his return in 1999, a season in which he’d won the single-make MG-F Cup, was “literally just to keep my license to say I’d done an international event”. And in his old ADR squad, he found a team in need of a driver after Yudai Igarashi couldn’t raise the funds to stay on. Without testing, he secured sixth on the grid before embarking on a charge to the podium that he believes was a trigger to being invited to an Italian Formula 3000 shootout with Arden that turned into a race seat and, very nearly, an F1 test opportunity with Williams.
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Hughes cleared Hynes and Button on the opening lap before passing Andrew Kirkaldy in what Autosport called “a peach of a move at the chicane” to complete the podium behind Luciano Burti and Kristian Kolby. Today he admits that “I impressed myself with that one”.
"I just felt at ease there, I knew where you could pass and I wasn’t worried about all the people in championship fights and stuff" Warren Hughes
“I’d not driven F3 all year and hadn’t tested, it was literally a one-off to jump in for the last race,” he says. “I just felt at ease there, I knew where you could pass and I wasn’t worried about all the people in championship fights and stuff.
“It was a fun outing for me but still with a point to prove, so it was pretty satisfying to get a podium from having no preparation whatsoever. Probably I wouldn’t have been able to get such a strong result on another track, but it’s only that I understood Thruxton so well.”
Results were harder to come by when Hughes joined MG in the British Touring Car Championship, although in 2003 he’d barely got through the first corner when Rob Collard’s privateer Vauxhall Astra spun in the middle of the back and a blameless Hughes became collateral damage. In any case, Hughes believes, the V6 engine’s relatively high centre of gravity in the ZS chassis wasn’t a recipe for success on a track with such long, fast corners.
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“It really put quite a lot of stress on the front tyres with the MG,” he says, although fastest lap and sixth place in 2003’s second race was some consolation. “Touring cars are such quirky things to set-up anyway because you’re trying to dial in so much rotation into them, especially with the front-wheel drive cars. You’re trying to get the rear almost steering for you, so it’s trying to get that sweetspot that doesn’t lose you confidence.
“The track has been resurfaced over the last few years, it’s probably less abrasive than it used to be. But the nature of the corners being very long and with the left-front in particular under load for such a long time, the key is to get the rear moving very subtly.
“If you can put natural rotation into the car, it means you’re not trying to do it so directly through the steering wheel and you take the emphasis off the left-front tyre a little bit. Certainly for a front-wheel drive touring car, you’re constantly trying to find that sweetspot of getting rotation but not too much where it makes you nervous of the rear.
“It’s more straightforward in single-seaters. You’re just trying to get a good balance with minimal downforce where you can play with rideheights, so you’re not going to bottom out too much through Church.”
Hughes claimed Thruxton silverware in sportscars too. He’d finished second in British GT’s GTO class aboard a Cirtek Porsche shared with John Cleland in 2000, and took second outright with a TVR Tuscan in 2005 with Patrick Pearce, the best result the unwieldy Team LNT-run machine ever scored on home soil. No wonder Hughes says he still enjoys visiting it when coaching.
