As someone who had several star team-mates, particularly during the British Touring Car Championship’s Super Touring heyday, double champion John Cleland finds it tough to select a favourite.
The 72-year-old Scot immediately runs through the colleagues he had at Vauxhall between 1991 and 1999, during which time he took 17 wins and the 1995 crown. That also encompassed Dave Cook Racing, RML and Triple Eight, who all ran the factory programme at different points.
“Jeff Allam was my first real team-mate, we were about the same age and we were both car dealers – we never had a bad word,” says Cleland of his 1991-94 colleague. “We got on brilliantly well.”
The highlight for the duo was perhaps the 1992 manufacturers’ title, notwithstanding Cleland’s disappointment at losing the drivers’ crown in the controversial Silverstone finale.
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But his next team-mate, who was half Cleland’s age, was rather more tricky in 1995-96.
“James Thompson as a team-mate was different – he was a new kid and left-foot braked, which I never did,” says Cleland. “I did try but I stuck with what I knew. He was annoyingly fast and we had words, but he was always destined to win the championship.
“I had been driving the Cavalier for years and I’d do the set-up. He’d just jump in and do things his way.
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“Derek Warwick was a mate, but him being a team-mate and the team owner was a concern because I wasn’t sure I was getting fair treatment. I think I was, but the Vectra didn’t move along very much during that time [1997-98].”
And in the final year of his BTCC career, Cleland faced one of the quickest drivers of the era: “Yvan Muller was an astounding talent. He was something else and probably worried me more when I heard that he was going to be my team-mate.
"He’d driven in enduros and had success in them; he knew how to look after a car"
John Cleland
“But we went to Kyalami for aero and tyre testing over several days and we were split by hundredths of a second on a track that probably suited his style because he could live with a lively rear end and we never really got that sorted on the Vectra.”
So, how to separate these drivers? It’s perhaps a slightly different question but which one would he pick if he had to share a car with them in the same race?
“Probably Jeff because he’d driven in enduros and had success in them; he knew how to look after a car.”
That’s nice and neat, because Allam selected Cleland as one of his top team-mates when we chatted to him in 2023.
