Pollock is enjoying his new life in the pit lane

Adrian Pollock is enjoying life in the pit lane after spending the last 35 years on the grid.

The Omagh man is best known as a racer, who graduated through the Northern Irish kart scene to Formula Ford and Formula Opel racing before enjoying a dominant three year spell when he won a hat-trick of Northern Ireland Sprint Championship titles.

Since 2021, however, he has been seen less on the grid and behind the wheel and more in the pit lane and paddock as he took up a job for RLR Msport in the European and Asian Le Mans Series.

The opportunity to work in motorsport, after a couple of decades in car sales, came at the right time for Adrian who was only too happy to accept the invitation from team boss, Alan McGarrity, who looked after Pollock’s Formula Ford machine back in 2011-2013.

His job within the team is that of fueler, which he admits isn’t the most difficult of jobs, but it is one that has its own pressures, particularly towards the end of this year’s European Le Mans Series season when his team were fighting for the LMP3 title, which they ultimately won.

“I do fuel on the car. On race day, it involves me fuelling the car during the race, but there’s an awful lot of testing goes on.,” he explained.

“It’s not a very difficult job and it can be tedious but it gets you away and it’s interesting [to be behind the scenes with a team during a high-profile race meeting].

“The biggest pressure of it is in the pit stop when the car comes in and there’s no driver change and no tyres going on it, the only thing being done is fuel, you feel the pressure then.

“It’s all on you and while it’s the only time you feel pressure, there’s quite a bit of it. That last round, which was to win the Championship, when the car was coming in you were thinking ‘if I don’t get this hose on properly or I don’t time it right I’ll be getting lynched!’

“But that’s when all the practice and tests come into play. It’s all second nature and it all happens in slow motion but at the same time you have a car coming down the pit lane at you and it has to stop in its box. If it stops short or stops long, the hose won’t reach – things can go wrong but you’re just hoping they don’t on your watch.”

During the European leg of the season, Pollock gets to travel to the likes of France, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Portugal and when the action moves to the Asian Series, you will find him in Malaysia, Abu Dhabi and Dubai for race weeks.

And while he admits the heat of a European summer and the soaring temperatures of an Arabian winter don’t bother him too much, even when he’s decked out in fire proof safety gear, any ‘suffering’ is worth it for the experience of being involved in a professional motorsport arena and the things you get to witness on the back of that.

“It’s interesting, it’s a competitive atmosphere and the team won the European Championship this year, which was great to be part of,” he beamed.

“I go more for the nice weather and the guys I work with, it’s a good laugh, it’s enjoyable. That’s what I go for, the motorsport is sort of secondary.

“ [The heat] seems to bother everyone else in the team but it doesn’t particularly bother me. Don’t get me wrong, you’re warm and sweating but it’s not the end of the world at the same time.

“ Heat doesn’t seem to bother me the same as other people. But there were times during the season when we were in Italy, for example and it was 34 or 35 degrees, which was uncomfortable.

“But you’re getting to go to all the Grand Prix tracks and it’s nice to be there and sometimes some random things happen.

“For example, there was one day we were at Monza on a Tuesday to set up and in the garage next door to us, your man Oscar Piastri was there for a private test day. So, while we were setting up there was a Formula 1 team working away beside us all day with their four lorries and 60 staff to run one car!”

While not on the same level as a Formula 1 team, Pollock’s current squad which includes two cars, two massive lorries and 32 staff, is a long way from where his motorsport career began with himself and dad Rob, who enjoyed a varied career behind the wheel in sprints, rallycross, hillclimbing and racing, attending Northern Ireland Kart Championship races.

Despite being essentially a ‘lad and dad’ set-up, Adrian showed immediate promise and after winning the 1991 Northern Ireland Junior Championship he made his first step into the Formula Ford ranks at the age of just 15.

And while he admits the move from karts to Formula Ford was difficult at start, he soon found his feet in Ireland before competing in England and enjoying some European level racing. However, like so many before and after him discovered, he ran out of cash rather than talent.

“Moving from karts to Formula Ford was a massive jump, the only thing you can carry over is race craft,” he admitted.

“But the move worked out. I was in an older class B car and by the end of the season I led a race outright and that led to getting a new car for the following year to race in the A class.

“I raced in Formula Ford for two years in Ireland during which time I won rounds of the Northern Ireland Championship and I was third at the Irish Formula Ford Festival, which was a big thing back then.

“In 1995 I did a bit of British Formula Vauxhall, but that sort of petered out due to money so I came back and did two seasons of the Irish Formula Opel, which was a big championship in Ireland.

“I was fortunate enough to race with the likes of Cliff Dempsey and PJ Fallon over the years, who would have been two of the biggest teams in Ireland, which was enjoyable.

“There were a couple of European races in the middle of all that, which were good experiences. The European races were a different challenge all together. They were the same cars, but you were up against full-time professionals – the teams and the drivers – young Brazilians and others from across the world, who would then go on to become sportscar drivers, Formula 1 drivers, professional drivers. It was that sort of level.

“But again, the money ran out but that’s the way it goes. For example, today, if someone wants to make it to Formula 1, they would literally need to have £100,000,000 backing behind them to have any chance.

“That’s how stupid it is. But that is the reality of it. No matter how much talent you have, you need a massive amount of financial backing behind you.”

With age and a lack of financial backing proving stumbling blocks in his racing career by the end of the last millennium, Adrian decided to give rallying a go in 2004, but after discovering that particular discipline wasn’t for him he returned to single seater action.

“I had a couple of rally cars and I dabbled about in that for a couple of years, but I didn’t really take to it. It wasn’t for me,” he confirmed

“A single seater and a rally car are totally different things, totally different disciplines.

“So, in 2007 I decided to buy a Formula Ford again and I did that from ‘07 to 2015.”

Unfortunately for Adrian, his racing career looked to be over in 2015 when he suffered a massive crash at Kirkistown when battling for the Northern Ireland Formula Ford Championship.

“At that stage I was still in with a chance of winning the Northern Ireland Championship,” he explained. “Me and the other guy were pushing, we were in the lead and we came up to lap another guy and I felt I had to go for it otherwise I’d have lost the lead, but the backmarker decided to spin right in front of me. So, I hit him side on at about 100 miles per hour.

“[After] I had the accident I decided to retire and everything was sold again.”

But as the old saying goes, ‘you can’t keep a good man down’ and with Adrian’s competitive edge being sharper than the memory of the crash that forced his premature retirement, he was back behind the wheel just months later in 2016.

He purchased a Formula 3 car with the intention of competing in the NI Sprint and Hillclimb Championships and that decision proved a match made in heaven as for three years – 2018, 2019 and 2020 – he won a hat-trick of Sprint titles doing a discipline of motorsport he thoroughly enjoyed.

“I decided to retire but it was the following year I bought a Formula 3 car and I decided to do some sprints and hillclimbs,” he added.

“I enjoy motorsport and I enjoy being competitive so that never left me.

“In the Sprints I won three Northern Ireland Championships in a row, which hasn’t been done since. I certainly enjoyed it and the car was fantastic. It was a fantastic experience, especially when things were so close and you were winning events by a 10th of a second and you were losing them by a 10th of a second too.

“It’s so, so intense. The focus and concentration is on a different level to racing because there is only a minute and a half you’re actually on the track.

“It has to be perfection, every corner has to be perfect otherwise you’re not going to win.”

After his third consecutive NI Sprint title, Pollock became a little disillusioned with the sport as some of his rivals began throwing ‘stupid’ money at cars to claw back some lost ground.

“I did some [Sprints] in 2021 but that was the stage when people were spending £100,000 on cars, which is just stupid. And there were days I was still beating them!,” he said.

And while he hasn’t been seen much around the paddock since then, he did appear on several occasions last season when his wife, Jenny convinced him to buy a car she could race.

“I did about four rounds and Jenny did five last year,” Adrian said. “She wanted to do it and she was the reason I bought the car, and when we were there I thought I’d have a go too!”

He also raced in one Formula Ford race in 2024, behind the wheel of a car he didn’t even have the chance to test, and it would appear the racing bug is still crawling under Adrian’s skin as he has since purchased a Formula 3 car that could be seen more regularly on track next year.

“I did one Formula Ford race down in Mondello this year, which was the first time I raced in a few years,” he explained.

“I bought a car for it eight days before the event, so I spent the eight days getting it ready and I didn’t even get testing it. The first time I sat in the car was qualifying.

“But I ended up with a sixth and two sevenths, out of 24 cars, so it wasn’t too bad. I have since sold that car, but I’ve bought a Formula 3 car again, which I’ll probably use for a while but I don’t know what in. I haven’t got that far with it.”