Hugh Chamberlain’s name will remain synonymous with sportscar racing in perpetuity. His plucky and sometimes highly-successful efforts as an underfunded privateer made him a fan favourite, while his admirers also included the organiser of the Le Mans 24 Hours, a race at which he was on the pitwall every year from 1987 to 2008. The Automobile Club de l’Ouest keenly acknowledged his contribution to the event and the wider world of endurance.
Chamberlain, who has died aged 82, was in his pomp as a team owner in the Group C2 category in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. His little Chamberlain Engineering team twice claimed world championship honours with machinery built by Spice and with a Cosworth V8 in the back.
The team from Buntingford in Hertfordshire took the 1989 World Sports-Prototype Championship class title with Fermin Velez and Nick Adams driving a Spice-Cosworth SE89C and then repeated the trick in the 1992 Sportscar World Championship’s FIA Cup class, C2 in all but name, with Ferdinand de Lesseps and one of the British constructor’s chassis of the same vintage. Both successes were achieved with meagre funds that belied the team’s professionalism.
“Hugh was a master of making things happen on very little money,” remembers long-time Chamberlain driver Adams. “Our car looked well sponsored in ’89, but I later found out that it didn’t add up to a lot of money. With Hugh every pound always went to the right place.”
If Chamberlain didn’t have a lot of money, what he did have was a committed band of mechanics, “the lads” as he called them. They were loyal to him, he to them. It helped that going racing with Chamberlain Engineering was fun. That was how it was meant to be, he insisted, though he always got the balance between humour and professionalism just about right.
“If there were any problems with money, and there often were, Hugh would always say, ‘I’ll look after the lads’,” says Adams. “He made sure they got paid. Hugh was a very loyal man, which made people want to do their best for him.”
Chamberlain wasn’t happy at Monza ’92. Funds were short: he’d begged and borrowed to get there and reckoned he did the race on £8,000. He had to ration his lads to one beer a night, hence his unhappiness even if the team did win its class and finished on the overall podium.
Your author’s favourite story about the lack of resources with which Chamberlain regularly struggled, but rarely showed out on track, came at the Global Endurance GT Series finale in ’95 on the streets of Zhuhai in China. The Jaguar XJ220 he was running completed a good lap and a half straight after the start with smoke billowing from its rear before rolling to a halt in flames.
It seemed obvious to my younger self to ask why he hadn’t radioed the driver to tell him of his predicament. The question got the reply it deserved.
Hugh rocked up and down on his toes like the former policeman he was, struggling to get the words out through his rage. He called me the c-word at least twice and then blurted out, “Do you think if we could afford radios we wouldn’t have them!”
Chamberlain ended up a sportscar racing folk hero by a route both circuitous and accidental: he was born on a croft in Scotland and became a Metropolitan Police officer. He started racing in early 1960s while still a copper aboard a Jaguar XK120, which was replaced by a Cooper-Jaguar T38 before a move into the Clubmans ranks with a Mallock U2 Mk6B. A self-taught engineer, his prowess rebuilding engines won him customers in the paddock.
He’d often joke about his modest talents behind the wheel, that he was often lapped by competitors using an engine he’d supplied. It was the pace of another driver aboard one of a line of Mallocks he owned that set Chamberlain on the road to team ownership — and then on to Le Mans and sportscar racing success. He was always quick to acknowledge that his skills as a team owner and manager surpassed those as a driver.
Chamberlain and Will Hoy played together at the same rugby club in Royston. The future British Touring Car Championship title winner raced gearbox karts and wanted to progress to cars. After much persuasion, he got a drunken promise in the clubhouse out of Chamberlain that they would go to Silverstone and test each other’s machinery.
Hoy was the quicker driver in the Mallock pretty much straight off the bat. When Chamberlain told the story more than 20 years ago, the younger man got his better after a dozen or so laps. Over time the tale was embellished: Hoy beat Chamberlain’s time on his second flying lap, according to later renditions. Whatever, that test was a pivotal moment in Chamberlain’s story.
Hoy had a sponsor, Chamberlain had a car, Mk20B Mallock, so a proper race team was born. Four championships in three seasons followed in 1982-84. The move into sportscars came as a result of a link-up with another member of the Clubmans fraternity, Creighton Brown, a director of the McLaren Formula 1 team.
A beefed-up Tiga Sports 2000 known as the TS85 was purchased and fitted with modified version of the 1.5-litre Hart F1 turbo engine for use in the domestic run-what-you-brung Thundersports series. Putting a roof on the often recalcitrant machine allowed a move up to world championship level the following season.
Chamberlain quickly switched to Spice chassis but persevered with the Hart into 1987. “He knew he wasn’t going to beat the works Spice team with the same equipment, so he reckoned he had to go a different route,” recalls Adams. But when the factory stepped up to the WSPC’s top class in the first transitional year on the road to the 3.5-litre Group C formula, and with Velez on board with a modicum of sponsorship, Chamberlain sensed and seized his chance.
“Hugh recognised there was an opportunity to do something special,” explains Adams. “He took all the right decisions and brought in Wiet Huidekoper as an engineer. We’d never had a race engineer before; it made a tremendous difference.”
Adams and Velez wrapped up the C2 title with a round to go at Spa after a cautious run to second place. That was despite a fuel leak on the grid, which resulted in a start from the pitlane and, more worryingly, the loss of some of the car’s precious fuel allocation for the race.
The Anglo-Spanish pairing won their class four times that season. Three years later, Chamberlain Engineering, de Lesseps and a revolving cast of second drivers, Adams and Hoy included, won the FIA Cup every time out.
After the demise of the world series and Group C, Chamberlain ran a works-backed GT programme for Lotus with the Esprit Sport 300 in 1993-94 and then developed its own race version of the XJ220 before buying off-the-peg Chrysler Viper GTS-Rs. The big break for Chamberlain came when he landed a deal to run the new Lola-developed MG EX257 LMP675 contender at Le Mans in 2001-02.
The team was now known as Chamberlain Motorsport (sometimes referred to as CMS) after the arrival of a new partner, Jack Cunningham, who would later run the Malaysia A1 Grand Prix squad. They would go their separate ways following the end of the MG programme.
Chamberlain, with most of “the lads” still at this side, briefly ran a Dome-Judd S101 LMP under the Kondo Racing banner before lending his name to an operation set up by Bob Berridge and known as Chamberlain-Synergy - the veteran team boss was effectively its sporting director.
He remained in demand with wannabe Le Mans entrants, his links with the ACO smoothing their way onto the entry list. Chamberlain donned the headphones at French enduro for the last time in 2008 with American entrant Autocon, which had linked up with the British Creation team. He subsequently worked in the British GT Championship paddock and made a brief return to top-line sportscar racing with the Murphy Prototypes squad in 2016 European Le Mans Series.
Chamberlain remained a regular visitor to Le Mans after ’08, more often than not finding time to make a cameo in the Radio Le Mans commentary booth. He was a natural raconteur and had deep seam of stories to mine from three decades of sportscar racing — more often than not on a shoestring.
