In his lengthy motorsport career which has spanned “so many eras”, Trevor Foster has filled almost every conceivable role in racing organisations. Working his way through the ranks from a humble mechanic to becoming a race engineer, he has taken the plunge of running his own single-seater outfit, been a team manager, managing director of a plucky sportscar underdog responsible for engine/chassis development and even dabbled as a driver manager to future DTM ace Jamie Green during his rise up the single-seater ladder.
Two spells in Formula 1 with Jordan, stints at Shadow, Tyrrell and Lotus, along with success at Le Mans, in Formula Ford and historics means there is little that Foster has not encountered. Yet even at the age of 72, concentrating on his Pegasus Classic Engineering venture that he began upon departing United Autosports at the end of 2021, Foster remains conscious of areas for improvement.
“Even after the number of years you've been in it, you have to come to work with a view that 'I don't know everything, I'm still learning' and I explain that to my guys,” he reflects. “You have to be willing to learn and be open. You can't be too fixed on your ideas.”
It was motorcycle racing that first captured Foster’s interest in motorsport. Born in Leicester, he indulged in spectating at his local Mallory Park circuit before cutting his teeth working on John Whale’s racing Minis as an apprentice while working at a local garage.
“The racing fraternity was minuscule in those days, 1969-70, compared to what it is now as regards the size of the teams and the number of job opportunities,” reflects Foster. “There's much bigger opportunities in certain respects than when I started.”
After a spell with Bob Gerard’s outfit came an opportunity to work for Tom Wheatcroft, whose rising star Roger Williamson appeared on the cusp of great things in grand prix racing. But the allegiance was tragically cut short when Williamson was trapped in his flaming March following a crash at Zandvoort in 1973. Woefully ill-equipped marshals did not join David Purley in his valiant efforts to save him.
Foster subsequently joined Shadow in F1 and credits its chief mechanic Peter Kerr with giving him his best pieces of advice. Kerr, a Kiwi who had previously worked at March, drilled into him the importance of critically diagnosing problems rather than shrugging them off as ‘just one of those things’. Even if he lacked the expertise to effect repairs, “I just wanted to understand,” so that future instances could be avoided.
Foster also learned from Kerr an important mantra: “The more attention, the more detail you put into your car preparation, then the better chance you have of success. I've often referred to that as I've gone through my career.”
The environment in which Foster started out was a world away from the sophistication of today. Not only were period DFV-powered F1 cars “quite simplistic to run” compared with their hybrid-powered ground effect modern counterparts, but component analysis and team infrastructure were nowhere near as developed, with very few sensors to work from. Mechanics had to be accomplished across multiple areas of the car. “You did your gearbox, rebuilt your uprights, you knew every inch of the car,” reflects Foster.
After trading Shadow for Tyrrell and then March’s works F2 squad, starting his own operation was the product of happy coincidence rather than the culmination of an ambition for Foster. He had even stepped back from racing and accepted a job at leading historic Ferrari specialists Graypaul Motors, which counted JCB’s Anthony Bamford as a prominent customer.
"I applied the same sort of disciplines that I'd always done and been taught to do. We won quite a lot of Formula Ford races and championships in the first year" Trevor Foster
“I'd only been there a few months,” says Foster, before he was assigned to head up the build of a fleet of three 246 F1 car replicas for Bamford, subsequently raced by Willie Green and Stirling Moss. The project involved stripping down an original example of F1’s last front-engined race winner and manufacturing parts. Now he had a taste for the bug again, it was difficult to turn down an approach from knitwear magnate Brian De ZiIle to start a team to run his son Graham. Thus, Pegasus Motorsport was born.
“I applied the same sort of disciplines that I'd always done and been taught to do,” Foster says. “We won quite a lot of Formula Ford races and championships in the first year.”
He humbly neglects to mention that among the races in question during that glittering 1983 campaign was the prestigious Formula Ford Festival, captured by Andrew Gilbert-Scott in a Reynard. Gilbert-Scott also won the Townsend Thoresen and RAC championships for FF1600, while de Zille secured the BP Superfind Junior title.
The graduation to Formula Ford 2000 for 1984 was not as strong for Pegasus, despite the undoubted driving talents of Mauricio Gugelmin. Foster believes this was “because we started off with a Van Diemen and had to switch chassis”. Undeterred, he again progressed for 1985 into British F3 and Pegasus won three times with a Ralt driven by the late Gerrit Van Kouwen.
Obituary: Formula Ford Festival and British F3 winner Gerrit van Kouwen dies aged 60
“A fundamental disagreement with my other business partners” prompted Foster to step away during 1986 and join the Tim Stakes-run Swallow Racing team that was “15 minutes from my house”. But giving up team ownership wasn’t a great hardship, Foster concedes. He learned following a disheartening sponsorship rejection by the local Bostik adhesive company, which he had believed would be a sure thing, that continually chasing deals wasn’t for him. It came as a relief to be able to focus fully on engineering.
“I don't think I've ever been so deflated as coming away from that [Bostik pitch],” admits Foster. “I realised I hadn't got that ability to keep going back to try another sponsor. I took it too personally. It convinced me that I was right to walk away from that side of the business.”
One team owner whose zeal for a deal could not be faulted was the “absolutely tireless” Eddie Jordan. That he successfully lured Foster from Swallow for the 1988 Formula 3000 season owed much to the engineer’s admiration for Johnny Herbert.
This dated back the 1985 Festival, when a spectating Foster had been dazzled by the victorious driver aboard an unfancied Quest, and Herbert captured the 1987 British F3 title with Eddie Jordan Racing before stepping up to F3000 with Reynard. The combination proved a hit, winning first time out at Jerez, and Foster is convinced it would have yielded the title without Herbert’s terrifying accident at Brands Hatch which could have curtailed his career as well as his season.
Foster remained with EJR for its graduation to F1 in 1991, combining team manager duties with race engineering. Gary Anderson’s sleek 191 design is regarded as one of F1’s most attractive cars, but for the engineer, the highlight of the year came during Jordan’s brief tenure running rookie Schumacher. His affiliation with the future seven-time world champion, brought in as the incarcerated Bertrand Gachot’s replacement, is one that Foster feels “very proud and at the same time, very privileged” to have had.
Yet Foster recalls that before his debut at Spa, there was not widespread conviction that the Mercedes Group C ace would take instantly to grand prix racing. One unnamed individual went as far as to inform Eddie Jordan of his view that he should instead have signed Heinz-Harald Frentzen, who had proven erratic for EJR during the 1990 F3000 season. But Foster, who had paid a few visits to Japan with Martin Donnelly in 1989 when subcontracted to the Kygnus Reynard team, says Schumacher’s impressive Japanese Formula 3000 cameo at Sugo in 1991 when he finished second in a Team Le Mans Reynard was the clincher.
“I knew how difficult it was for a European driver to go there and perform,” explains Foster. “That sold him to me. We had a conversation between myself, Gary and Eddie. Gary and I were very positive about Michael and that's how the deal swung.”
Foster recalls being struck by Schumacher’s immediate confidence to push the car on his first run at Silverstone’s south circuit – “within three laps, you were thinking ‘he's driven this car all his life’” – and his calmness in the car extended to debriefs. “The information he gave you as an engineer was phenomenal, because he wasn't just asking you to fix every problem,” adds Foster. Although Schumacher was poached by Benetton for the next race at Monza, Foster admits the experience of working with the German left an impression on him.
Foster remained with Jordan until 1993. Recognising that he was overburdened and could no longer fulfil engineering duties to his personal satisfaction alongside team management, his switch to Team Lotus as director of racing – to reunite with Herbert – allowed him to focus purely on one role. For Foster, it was important to honour his word having committed to relocating and working for the storied Hethel squad even after Jordan belatedly agreed to acquiesce.
But it wasn’t long before Foster was on the move again. “I just couldn't see how it could sustain itself long term,” he says of what proved to be a terminal decline in fortunes for Lotus. Foster trusted his gut and departed in March 1994, which proved the team’s last year in F1.
"At Jordan, we wanted to be punching above our weight. For the budget we generated as a little privateer team, we were doing a very good job" Trevor Foster
Foster ultimately rejoined Jordan later in the decade and as managing director was at the heart of a valiant effort to take on McLaren and Ferrari in 1999. Frentzen won twice, but ultimately tailed off in the closing stages and finished third in the standings behind Mika Hakkinen and Eddie Irvine, another driver engineered by Foster in F3000. Frentzen was “a bit more of a complex character than Michael”, Foster remembers, his performances prone to fluctuating.
“You had to give him the car that he could drive and if you gave him that, he could do the job,” considers Foster, a hint of frustration in his voice. “He had one style of driving, and you had to adapt to his way of doing it. If that happened to suit the circuit and the car to be quick on that day, absolutely fine. But if it wasn't, then results were harder to come by.”
Jordan would never again scale such highs and Foster departed in 2002, but after seeing out a 12-month contract at BAR there would be no more moves within F1. He vividly remembers feeling “almost aghast” following a meeting with Jaguar by an expression of contentment at its mid-grid efforts being on par with its given budget.
“I thought, ‘maybe that sums up the philosophy,’” says Foster. “At Jordan, we wanted to be punching above our weight. For the budget we generated as a little privateer team, we were doing a very good job.”
Instead, he became managing director of Zytek Racing, tasked with overseeing development of its adapted Reynard chassis and in-house engine. Giant-killing victories with its works-run 04S at Spa and Nurburgring against Audi and Pescarolo in the 2005 Le Mans Endurance Series, and in the American Le Mans Series finale at Laguna Seca, gave Foster “a good sense of achievement”. But he recognised that Zytek boss Bill Gibson’s priority was to demonstrate the quality of his engine for use in one-make series rather than ramping up construction of customer cars.
“I don't think he ever saw himself as a major chassis manufacturer,” says Foster. “At that time, it was a means to display his engine. We never really went up to the next level.”
A desire to secure orders for a new car before committing to building one proved flawed. Although Zytek had plenty of joy from continual tinkering, its Z11SN winning the LMP2 class at Le Mans in 2011 (Greaves) and 2014 (Jota), Gibson would not budge from a plan that ultimately yielded significant success as his company (now renamed after its founder) has been the sole LMP2 engine supplier since 2017.
“I felt I needed to do more,” says Foster, who via a spell running Fortec’s Mercedes GT3 team landed at United Autosports as Richard Dean and Zak Brown’s squad eyed a graduation from LMP3 to LMP2 for the 2017 European Le Mans Series. The collaboration proved immediately successful, winning on debut at Silverstone despite – rather than because of – its choice of chassis.
The Ligier JS P217 quickly proved inferior to the ORECA 07, which is today the only real choice for a team wanting to go racing in LMP2. But by the time it had switched between the French brands in 2019, United had uncovered a level of detail that allowed it to hit the ground running upon entering the World Endurance Championship for the pandemic-afflicted 2019-20 campaign. A run of four straight victories that included the 2020 Le Mans 24 Hours netted the WEC P2 title at the first time of asking, while its first full year running the ORECA in the ELMS netted first and second in points.
“The Ligier was not the easiest of cars to work with, but even on difficult cars you learn things,” he says. “And because of all the stuff we did to try and make the Ligier competitive, in the tiny details, when we then got the ORECA which is a very good car in its standard form and were able to apply what we’d learned on the Ligier, it paid dividends and we got results.”
Foster enjoyed working with the engineering group led by Dave Greenwood and Gary Robertshaw, but the regular commuting between Loughborough and the team’s Wakefield HQ amounted to 700 miles a week.
“At the end of '21 with United, I felt I'd achieved everything I wanted to do,” he says. “It was coming up to 50 years in motorsports since my first professional role and I thought 'maybe now's the time'. My role had changed because the organisation had got so much bigger, I was doing less with the actual engineering on the cars and more to do with the organisation side, which wasn't as fulfilling.”
At the end of his contract, he departed and went about reviving the Pegasus name in historic motorsport. “I'd met several people over the years who'd said to me, 'Look, I've got some classic cars and would really love you to work on our cars if you ever do decide to do your own thing’,” says Foster.
PCE is a project driven by enjoyment. “I don’t want to build an empire,” he says. The intent is rather to manage spectacular cars – with a Lola T70 and Chevron B16 among its stable – for a select number of customers and go racing in a non-pressured environment, working with drivers of varying experience levels has proven to be a learning curve.
The new pursuit has already given Foster some considerable highs. His most prized memory so far came at the Paul Ricard 2 Tours D’Horloge 24-hour race last year, taking victory with a Tiga SC 83 Sports 2000 chassis
“Although the attention to detail is still there and you're trying to extract performance from cars, I had to acknowledge that the format had changed slightly,” he says. “While some of our drivers are extremely competitive, if one driver gets out of the car at the end of the weekend and says, 'I really enjoyed that, car ran well’ and they finished 10th, that's fantastic.
“Some drivers just want to enjoy it. They don't want to be dragged over or a data system for an hour and a half. Also, you've got to be very mindful not to push people into an area of driving they're uncomfortable with.”
The new pursuit has already given Foster some considerable highs. His most prized memory so far came at the Paul Ricard 2 Tours D’Horloge 24-hour race last year, taking victory with a Tiga SC 83 Sports 2000 chassis.
“You’re taking a car that was designed in the mid-eighties for doing 30-minute races at a club level and taking it to a 24-hour race, there's so many things that can go wrong,” he says proudly. “You can't redesign the thing, and to run with just basically fuel, tyres and anything else to keep it going, it's not an easy thing to do.”
But historic racing to Foster isn’t purely an opportunity to indulge in nostalgia. He recognises that as a discipline it has benefits for younger generations too, as it grants opportunities “to understand fundamentally how to diagnose a problem with a car”. These, he observes, are profoundly lacking in bigger organisations where roles are far more prescribed.
“If a historic car comes in with a misfire, you can't just plug a laptop in and it comes up and says 'error code 37, change the distributor pick-up,’” he reasons. “You've got to do your own self-diagnosis of what the problems are. You need a far more analytical brain in a lot of the stuff we do, because you don't have the resource and the infrastructure.”
With working in a smaller operation comes responsibility too. Foster adds: “There's not 50 people in the chain, or 20 people or 10. You're having to make the decision as to whether this part gets changed, or it doesn't get changed. It's a very different situation generally. If you want to understand how a racing car works, historic racing isn’t a bad format to go through.”
Advice for engineers from Trevor Foster
- Very few people are involved in understanding the whole package and do everything. But that shouldn't stop you trying to understand why something has stopped working. You don’t learn as much by saying ‘buy me a new one’.
- Sometimes there's a lot of smoke and mirrors, which you have to dissect yourself and dismiss. I'm quite a logical person in my own mind and it helps when you're working through problems to do so logically.
- In anything I've done, even if you win from pole position and have fastest lap, you should still come away thinking, ‘What could we have done better?’ It’s important to keep questioning and not think ‘We did those three things, so everything was perfect’. It never is!
