Colbert’s career in the fast lane has come full circle

SOME are able to pinpoint their ‘Sliding Doors’ moment.

That occasion when a decision was made to propel your life in a certain direction, down a route it very well may not have ventured without it.

For Dungannon native, Stephen Colbert, that moment occurred on a Thurday night 26 years ago when his dad, Ken took him to Nutts Corner where he drove Drew Stewart’s kart for the first time.

From that fateful evening almost three decades ago, Stephen has forged a career in motorsport. He has competed alongside future Formula 1 drivers in the British F3 Championship, has won races at some of the best known tracks in Britain and has gone on to work as an engineer for some top teams in England and Europe where he helps develop the next generation of single seat racing talent.

And while that first spin behind the wheel of a kart at Nutts Corner set the ball rolling, it’s perhaps not surprising that, even at the relatively late age of 17, Colbert took to driving quickly like a duck to water.

His dad, Ken is well-known in Irish motorsport circles, from decades spent rallying and sprinting – the pair competed alongside each other in the Northern Ireland Sprint Championship this year, with Stephen winning the class 6B title in their Talbot Sunbeam.

It’s an enduring passion for both of the Colbert men and one that ‘opened the door’ for Stephen’s career.

After that first taste behind the wheel, Stephen started competing and winning races, which led to the chase of challenges further from home.

“We won a few races the first year, we won the Irish title in the second year and were quite close to a second one and we won things like the Gary Ireland Memorial Race on the very first year it came up,” Stephen explained.

“And alongside that we did England, in the Super One Series, which we qualified for.

“I think we qualified eighth in what was called National B and in the championship I think we finished seventh or eighth after around three and a half years of karting, which was quite the rise.

“When you look back, you don’t appreciate it. It was fantastic going across with the van, driving through the night, getting the ferry. Those were good times.”

After the karts came a stint in Formula Ford, starting in Ireland. The family run team, with a car set up by dad Ken, brought success, including the Irish title at the turn of the millenium, before a move back to England and the British Formula Ford Junior 3 Championship.

From there he moved into Formula 3 in the Britain National Class with Meritus Racing in 2002, competing in their Dallara F399 Mugen Honda against the likes of eventual champion Adam Carroll, who would go on to race in Indy Car, and he finished two places above Karun Chandhok, who would make it all the way to F1, a superb fourth in the overall standings at the end of the season. And at Knockhill that year he sealed the biggest result of his career with a victory, which brought as much relief as it did joy.

“That was a good relief because I had been front row at Croft and I was leading the race and it rained,” Stephen explained with a wry chuckle. Obviously we were all on slicks, but this isn’t a claim to fame, but I spun behind the safety car in the rain on slicks. So that was me with the head buried because when you spun then you couldn’t rejoin and take up your position and I think I finished fifth or sixth, which was the best I could do.

“That was my first opportunity and I squandered it, it was thrown away. So it was a big relief at Knockhill and Adam [Carroll] was right behind me that day, just a couple of tenths behind me, so you knew you had done a good race when Adam was that close behind you.”

He also diced with other future F1 drivers, Anthony Davidson and Takumo Sato, as well as Indy Car star, Danica Patrick. And it was the level of preparation they could afford to undertake that left Stephen wondering how he could possibly compete.

“While we did all that [competed in F3], you didn’t have the spare budget to go and test,” he noted.

“When I did the scholarship class, Anthony Davidson was doing the main A class alongside Takumo Sato. Sato won the championship and used 495 sets of new slicks on his Carlin. Honda paid for him and there was a certain budget that needed spent and they spent it!

“He went testing most weeks to Penbury and they’d have thrown on eight, nine, ten sets of new slicks and he was deadly! He was a good driver but that just polished it. That was the sort of thing that you didn’t appreciate, you felt hard done by that these guys were doing so many tests that you felt ‘how could you compete?’.

“But the days you out qualified someone, you have to be happy!”

While his budget would never allow for progression beyond F3, Colbert did enjoy other opportunities through contacts made in the paddock.

“I never thought about going any further than F3 because that was already too much money and we probably shouldn’t have done it in hindsight,” he explained.

“We probably should have gone to GTs and tried to get a foothold in there because to get in with a manufacturer then was difficult but it wasn’t impossible. So that probably would have been a better option rather than throwing everything at red or black. But then, the way I look at it, it gave me an engineering background and the foothold to go on and do what I’m doing now so I am glad that I did it that way.

“And it was a great experience and it allowed me to be a test driver for lots of other stuff. There was a lot of test work with Lola on some of their LMP2 stuff, which was good to get driving cars with that level of power and that level of downforce.”

Alongside the chance to test the Lola machinery, Colbert also had the opportunity to run in a few British Touring Cars during a fairly frustrating spell in the Clio Cup race series.

“I did the Clio Cup and a Heritage Series with Jackie Cochrane, who runs V8 Nascar engines in Sunbeam Tigers, so I did that with him as a dual driver entry and we won a lot of races and we won the championship in it as well,” he added.

“It was good but the Clio Cup not so much. I didn’t enjoy it as I probably over-drove the car. I expected too much from it and no matter how much I broguht it back I didn’t bring it back enough.

“That was frustrating because P2 or P3 was my maximum, I was always missing a few tenths to get a P1 and that never clicked.

“But it was good to be racing and it was on a good calendar with the BTCC [British Touring Car Championship].

“I tested a lot, I got to do the shakedowns with the Mardi Gras team I was with, who ran Touring Cars.”

Following that period of his racing career, Stephen moved into the engineering side of things and he is currently involved with German outfit Motopark Academy, with whom he is guiding the next generation of young talent, including McLaren’s new rising star, Ugo Ugochukwo. And he believes the kind of racing he now does in the Northern Ireland Sprint Championship on his weekends off can teach younger drivers a lot.

“Doing that [the Sprint Championship], you can’t be 90 per cent for the first two corners because you’ve already lost half a second,” Stephen observed.

“It’s nearly the purest form of motorsport left and any of the kids I coach at the minute – I’m on a coaching and training and engineering programme with McLaren’s new superstar, Ugo Ugochukwo.

“He’s a 14 year-od kid who is world karting champion, and he’s turned out to be a good driver and McLaren have asked Motopark to take him on for 30 test days.

“But I’d say the same thing to him, that this kind of motorsport, that you need to be leaving the line on cold tyres, you have no idea what to expect when you turn into the first corner but you can’t do 90 per cent, it has to be 150 for the two laps and as the day goes on you’re trying desperately to shave of two tenths. It’s invaluable.”

And Stephen’s experience is seen as ‘invaluable’ to his fellow competitors in the NI Sprint Championship where Dungiven’s Gerard O’Connell was keen to pick his brain. He asked the Maghery man to help him set up his new Dallara World Series machine and the best way for Colbert to help was behind the wheel. And while driving a single seater again took a bit of getting used to, he was soon able to improve O’Connell’s machine to the point where it won the last meeting of the season last weekend.

“The first run [in the Dallara], I forgot to breathe when I took off from the line!”, Stephen exclaimed.

“It has to be 15 years since the last time I drove a single seater. It was when I was engineering a Formula Ford 1600 at the Walter Hayes Trophy at Silverstone and the driver got sick, and I had to take it to scrub some tyres and bed in some brake pads for him.

“That was the last I drove a single seater, so at the start, I forgot to breathe and you kind of scream to yourself as you go up through the gears!

“It was rediculous, not even in the same hemisphere as the Talbot, it’s an animal! So we did that and then I started making set-up changes the week after, and I think we’re up nearly 13 mph through Fishermans for example.”

It’s not only O’Connell’s car that Colbert has helped fine tune this year as hiis racing career went full circle. Just like that night at Nutts Corner 26 years ago, when his Dad also drove Drew Stewart’s kart, the pair are again sharing driving duties.

He and Ken have tweaked their Talbot Sunbeam to the point that he has gone from disliking it to winning the class crown, which certainly wasn’t the aim at the start of the season.

“I asked Dad if it would be possible to do a dual drive because he came back a couple of years before me in what was basically a pure rally car. We started doing some things with it in the garage but we’ve had to pull it back otherwise we’d never stop!,” he laughed.

“I was surprised how well it’s gone because when I first drove it, I really didn’t like it.

“The body roll in the car took time to get used to because it’s not a single seater, not even close!

“It’s old and it’s back to Formula Ford days with no rev limiter so it’s up to you to manage it.

“After the first six laps I thought ‘this isn’t going to be easy’, but after about 15 laps, yeah, absolutely spot on, brilliant, best thing ever!”

Alongside his racing and engineering, Stephen also runs a sideline in bicycle aerodynamics, having previously designed and manufactured bikes for his own Colbert Cycles company while in England.

And while he still dabbles in that sport, it remains to be seen if his sons, Max (10) and Louie (7) will take the Colbert name forward on two or four wheels, or even a different sport altogether as Louie is a dab hand with a ball at his feet for Loughgall FC.