Nor was John’s mood improved any when Steve “buggered him about” at Bridge to allow Harvey back past them both. It was a masterful piece of racecraft, which went totally unappreciated by John. He had other things on his mind. Taking a wider, faster line through the left-hander at Priory, the Cavalier Scot lunged down the inside of Steve at Brooklands. John didn’t have to pass Harvey to win the title but he did have to finish glued to his bumper.
JC: “Everything on that last lap was about the championship. I wouldn’t say my move was snow white, but I needed to be past Steve. I knew there was enough room to get through, but when I got there the gap had perhaps narrowed. I leaned on the [inside] kerb and that flicked the car up on two wheels. By trying to avoid contact I’d made it look more dramatic than it actually was. There was no real damage to the right hand side of my car, or the left side of his.”
SS: “There was a bit. You leant on me hard.”
JC: “I think you were surprised. You thought when you’d passed me that that was that. But with a championship at stake, I was never, ever going to lie down.”
SS: “I was surprised because I didn’t think I’d left enough room. And I hadn’t! But, to be fair, John could have gone straight into my rear quarter and spun me off.”
JC: “Had I known how brutal the whole thing was going to become in the next hundred yards, I would have nerfed you off onto the infield and that would have been the end of it.”
He didn’t, though. And it wasn’t. Having been shouldered to the edge of the concrete apron, Steve attempted to immediately repass at Luffield – at that time two 90 rights linked by a short straight. Despite hooking a wheel over the kerb, he whacked the Vauxhall in its driver’s door. Both cars spun out. The title was Harvey’s. It was ugly. It looked blatant.
SS: “The TV coverage made it look horrific from a sporting aspect. True, I didn’t want to take any prisoners, but my objective was not to wipe John out at the next corner. My objective was to get my position back. If I’d wanted to eliminate John I could have just held back and tapped him going into Copse, or any number of places. That way I wouldn’t have taken myself out either.”
JC: “The main hit was a really hard one. I could hear he never came off the throttle. That BMW was going flat chat. I knew he was there but I couldn’t see him. And then round we went.”
SS: “I’ve looked at it over and over again, and I think John thought I’d gone. I don’t know where he’d thought I’d gone but, because he’d lost his door mirror during his acrobatics, he didn’t see me. I didn’t expect him to give me a bloody car’s room, but I suppose I half thought he would give me some room. Unfortunately, he didn’t.”
JC: “Steve didn’t say much after the accident, mainly because I had his Adam’s apple in my left hand. The thing is, had he just tapped me on the chest I would have fallen over…”
SS: “You’d bust your ribs? In the shunt?”
JC: “No, I’d crashed testing at Donington and broken my sternum. That was something else which made it look even more dramatic. I had foam padding tucked inside my overalls to ease the pain when I tightened the belts. I looked like an American footballer when I got out of the car. It looked like I intended to kill him.”
Marshals intervened and cameramen descended gleefully. John won the subsequent soundbite squabble, labelling his rival “an animal” and accusing him of DTM-type tactics. The good burghers of the RAC and BRDC bristled at the very thought.
JC: “That crash was the point when you realised that touring cars was hugely important to win, at any cost. Whether it was BMW or the team – I doubt very much it was BMW – that team went to the end of the earth to win that title. That’s what surprised me most, that someone would go to those lengths. I’m no angel when it comes to pushing and shoving, but from then on it went from ‘After you’ to ‘No, that’s my piece of track and I’m going for it at any cost.’”
SS: “Yes, BMW wanted to win the title, and my job was to help Tim achieve that. My role was to take points off everybody else. But there was never a situation whereby BMW GB, Munich, or anybody in the team said, ‘We are here to win at all costs.’ There were no last-minute orders. DTM wasn’t any more brutal than the BTCC, but it was very open about team orders – not eliminating rivals, but messing them about. I was used to that sort of thing. If I’d had an argument with John about what had happened at Bridge I would have felt quite happy and relaxed about it. I wasn’t happy about eliminating him. I was the spoiler, not a hitman.”
