Interviewed: Harry Ticknell

 NB: This post was first written for RichlandF1, a site I contribute to but I think Harry is a wonderful guy and he needs all the exposure he can get so I'm re-posting onto my blog. 

Devon isn’t exactly known as the motorsport capital of the world; aside from a karting circuit owned by Nigel Mansell and Wiscombe Park, a hillclimb up someone’s drive, we haven’t got much to shout about as a county aside from having the tightest corner in UK motorsport. Alas, a quick Google of ‘Racing drivers from Devon’ yields barely any results.

If you did just do that you’ll notice one name though: Harry Ticknell. Harry comes from a family who deals with oil so it isn’t much of a surprise to know he likes fast cars too.  ‘I started watching Formula One with my dad when I was about three or four, and then I was on holiday to Sardinia when I was seven and across the road from the hotel was a karting circuit and I just started going there every day, got hooked into it and then when I came back from holiday for my eight birthday I got a Cadet kart and things went from there’.

Strange how all the best drivers start out in a kart on holiday, eh? Like many other eight year olds he didn’t take it seriously at first, before graduating up to club racing and then, all of a sudden things become a bit more serious and all of a sudden the world is your oyster, as it were.

We’re lucky to have a great circuit in Devon for karting, Dunkeswell. I learnt how to drive a kart there a few years ago (and then promptly crashed it ruining a brand-new helmet and some water barriers in the process), and I’ve always seen it as a fantastic circuit. I was curious to know how it compared to other circuits around the UK: ‘Since Nigel’s been involved, he’s really made it quite nice actually. It was a perfect place to hone your skills really. Even though I went off to a national karting event, with the very high standards, I still came back to Dunkeswell and racing against the guys who were experts around it made for a really enjoyable time. I always remember it fondly; people like Ewan Hankey [Carerra Cup racer] have also come up through the ranks in single seaters and tin-tops after starting out at Dunkeswell’.

So what about Harry’s aspirations? You would imagine that him being a Euro F3 driver that his goal would be in F1 one day and you would be correct. ‘My dream is Formula One’, ‘but’, after a slight pause, ‘I’m managed by Allan McNish who is obviously a very successful sportscar driver and he has close links to that world and while I haven’t driven any sportscars or tin-tops yet, you have to keep open-minded about things’.  He’s well aware that many people in his series go onto drive in the DTM – the ‘main’ series that F3 follows around Europe – people like ‘[Robert] Wickens have done it and I’d be very interested in it’. It is worth noting that current Force India driver, Paul Di Resta, drove in the DTM for a few years and then made the leap into Formula One, so while it isn’t a conventional route into the crème de la crème of single seater racing, but it has been done in the past.

‘We’ve had a fairly solid year; Monza was pretty solid with three top sixes and obviously a win and double pole and win at Silverstone was really good, and Brands was back to where we should be’ [Ticknell had a worse weekend at Hockenheim, a track he never visited before] was how he summed up the season so far. ‘I think the aim is to always be consistently in the top three or four and scoring good points in the races; in Formula Three qualifying is vital so I think we’ve got a good package so if I can keep picking up the wins when they’re possible, but scoring consistently is going to put you up there in the championship at the end of the year’.


Harry is  a BRDC Rising Star, but what exactly does the latter do for him? Allow Harry to explain all: ‘They can’t help financially with the budget as there’s about 40 rising stars now, but I get invited along to all of the BRDC events which is great for networking and they do four or five rising star days a year where we’ll have a question and answer session with someone high up in motorsport which gives us a chance to ask us questions and to basically broaden my knowledge of motorsport and connect us with motorsport. We also get media training as well which is a huge help’. Sounds like a fantastic programme to be a part of then and as a bonus he gets tickets to Silverstone’s entire major events to watch them from the BRDC Clubhouse too, ‘which is a brilliant opportunity to entertain the sponsors’.

As an aspiring Formula One driver, I was keen to ask Harry  what he thinks of next year’s regulations. My reasoning was that as an aspiring driver, he’s more than likely to drive the cars under these regulations so was curious to hear his thoughts of them. As it turned out, it doesn’t affect him as much as you would think. ‘If I was racing in GP2 next year I’d be racing on the Formula One package, but in terms of the car performance changes, it doesn’t affect me that much, but I think it’s good for the championship as a whole to spice it up again and it’ll be interesting to see who develops the car over the off-season well and also with Honda coming back in it’ll be interesting to see how they get on, so it’s quite an exciting time’.

Harry then goes onto the rather contentious subject of tyres in Formula one. ‘I think they need to sort them out; in Formula Three the tyres stay pretty constant then you learn that and you get to GP2 or Formula One and it is completely different. I understand what they [Pirelli] have done with the tyres but I think it’s gone a little bit too far, and they need to bring back proper racing and not just a time-trial’.

And finally, the future for the South West’s brightest young talent? ‘GP3 and F3 are on a similar level so certainly the World Series would be a really nice step up and Carlin [his current team] has a World Series team and a GP3 team but there have been some good drivers who have gone from F3 into GP2 and done well straight away so that would be the ideal step up in terms of single seaters. I just need to make sure I get good result this year and hopefully everything will come into place for next year’.

Thanks to Harry for taking the time out to do this interview with me. Hopefully I'll be able to revisit him over the coming months and years and keep track of him as he comes up through the ranks. You can visit his website here and follow him on Twitter.