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HIS VOICE is educated andpolite Oxbridge, the sound of the BBC 50 years ago. Another English invader from the south, you might think, but Anthony Reid is Scottish, and proud of it. Indeed, he is determined to replicate the feat of his hero, Scots racing legend Jim Clark, by winning the British Touring Car Championship for Ford.
While Clark sandwiched his 1964 touring car title at the wheel of a Cortina with Formula 1 World Championships in 1963 and 1965, 41- year-old Reid - at Knockhill this weekend for the latest rounds of the touring cars - knows his dreams of grand prix racing have passed. "Like every boy who wants to be a racing driver, I wanted to make it to F1," he said, "but it didn't work out. Apart from having the talent and the motivation, you often have to have very good personal sponsorship."
Testimony to the crucial role played by money in F1 lies in a drawer at Reid's home. "I still have a letter from Eddie Jordan who told me: 'You can drive for us if you can raise 2.5m.'"
The cash didn't arise, and Reid's career took a different route. His road to the premier league of paid works drivers has been anything but straightforward, and involved years driving on the other side of the world from the village of Dunlop in Ayrshire.
His early years were heavily influenced by motorsport; schooling was at Craigflower prep school, five miles from Knockhill at Torryburn, before moving in 1970 to spend five years at Loretto in Musselburgh, the school which educated Clark, whose plaque outside the chapel Reid passed each day, fuelling his racing desire.
He cut his competitive teeth by winning a scholarship to the Jim Russell Racing School at Snetteron in 1977, and 12 months later drove one of the school's...