Despite his championship successes in sports cars and the Porsche Carrera Cup GB, Tim Harvey is known first and foremost as a touring car racer. But it’s only his commitments in that domain that have prevented him broadening his Le Mans CV.

“I first raced there in 1988,” he says, “with Charles Ivey’s Tiga-Porsche. As well as my commitments in the BTCC and sports cars at home, I also did a few World Sports Car Championship events that year.

“I was completely blown away by the circuit and its whole heritage. I was lucky to race there in 1988, one of the last races before the chicanes were added to the Mulsanne Straight – we were hitting 235mph. It was also the final year for the old pit lane. I know working conditions were absolutely horrible and felt sorry for the team, but what an atmosphere…

“As a driver I found it an absolutely fantastic event. And because I’d put the sponsorship programme together, I qualified the car, I started the race, did the dusk and dawn stints and took the finish, so I savoured all the best bits. I crossed the line with a massive lump in my throat and there are very few times that I’ve been anywhere close to that emotional in a racing car. If memory serves, we led the class for a while during the night until being delayed by a halfshaft failure.”

Sharing with Chris Hodgetts and John Sheldon, he eventually finished 20th overall and third in the C2 category.

He contested the race for the following three seasons, recording just one more finish (18th, in a C1 Spice in 1990), but that would be all. “After that,” he says, “touring car racing began to become a more serious business, with endless testing and so forth, and I just didn’t have time.”