1,000 Greatest Drivers: Chris Hodgetts
The only driver to win Britain's most prestigious touring car and sports car titles.
I finally just finished entering the results from every series on TouringCarRacing.net on my master driver list, which pretty much covers every touring car race of relevance through the year 1993 (except for Stock Car Brasil and the Argentina series, where I found the results elsewhere). That leaves only five more sites I need to extract data from until I consider the driver list complete aside from updates to current seasons: the Super Touring Register (which provides better coverage for the rest of the ‘90s, although I’ll probably ignore all the amateur/historic racing series this site includes featuring decade-plus old cars), World Sports Racing Prototypes, Racing Sports Cars, the Formula 2 Register (which has a lot of old Formula 3 races on it that I haven’t added yet), and Will White’s Auto Racing Records. After I’ve finished archiving everything from those sites, I’m going to call it complete. I hope to finish that by the end of the year, and some of these will take much less time. I honestly think I’ve already entered almost everything that is on the Super Touring Register already.
I mentioned White by name because he is a member of Auto Racing Research Associates, who I just mentioned a couple days ago in my Ray Hendrick article (because that was the site I used to get the most accurate estimate for his actual win total, which is better than what I found on The Third Turn). I just emailed Fred Voorhees, who runs the group and asked if I could join. He expressed interest and even potentially expresed interest with me helping with the site. That would be cool.
I decided to do Hodgetts today because his birthday is on December 6 and by that point in the year, I will want to be focusing on my top 200 list. I didn’t have any lock drivers who were born on April 4 although Richard Attwood, Robert Colciago, and Björn Wirdheim could all make it, so I went with Hodgetts since this was the day he won his first BSCC race. I don’t have much to say on Hodgetts since he was a great driver who isn’t really that interesting to talk about because he kind of had a boring career due to the lack of competition he faced in his heyday. One interesting thing is that his son Stefan actually has a far higher rating in his touring car model (.315), but I can’t really justify listing him because he never won anything outside of minor league series and never even won a minor league title. This is comparable to the fact I previously revealed that Eddie Cheever’s obscure brother Ross actually has a far higher open wheel rating than Eddie does, but I think Ross Cheever definitely has more substance than Stefan Hodgetts.
CHRIS HODGETTS…………………….UK
Born: December 6, 1950
Best year: 1987
Best drive: 1986 BSCC Race #9 at Silverstone Circuit
A transitional figure who won both the last British Saloon Car Championship and the first after it was renamed the British Touring Car Championship, Hodgetts was one of the most dominant drivers of the ‘80s with 39 class wins, but that dominance has a bunch of asterisks. Because he raced in the era when the championship went to whoever dominated their class the most, he intentionally raced in weaker classes to maximize his championship chances at a time when the series had arguably its weakest competition in general. Nonetheless, he had too many wins to ignore.
Although Hodgetts didn’t start racing until 1979, he debuted in the BSCC the next season and was immediately fast, winning his second race at Oulton Park overall in a Toyota Celica, then adding two class wins at Silverstone to win his first class championship. In 1981, he again won his class with six class wins including his last two overall wins and he scored more points than fellow Class B drivers Martin Brundle and Stirling Moss combined, but admittedly, Brundle was 21-22 and Moss was 51-52, so they weren’t exactly in their prime. After being unable to find a full-time ride in 1982, he drove a Ford Escort for Brooklyn Motorsport from 1983-1985, collecting 12 class wins including 7 in 1985 when he won his third class championship.
In 1986, Hodgetts returned to Toyota and started his own team where he delivered two of the most dominant seasons in series history by earning 8 of 9 class wins in 1986 then 10 of 11 in 1987. Having already clinched the 1986 championship, his car failed to start at the season finale at Silverstone, yet he recovered to take the win in a 25-minute race; granted, he only needed to pass four cars. In 1987, he clinched the title three races early and even flew back and forth to simultaneously compete in a BTCC race at Snetterton and the 24 Hours of Spa. In his title seasons, he also scored two class wins in both the World Touring Car Championship and European Touring Car Championship, including back-to-back RAC Tourist Trophy class wins. However, he inexplicably fell off afterward and only scored a single BTCC class podium afterward. He scored two late career highlights: a Le Mans class win in 1989 and a British GT title in 1995, making him the only driver to win both England’s most prestigious touring car and sports car championships.
It’s difficult to evaluate Hodgetts because few BTCC drivers hit such a high peak but he also didn’t sustain it and faced terrible competition. While his 24-3 teammate record is the third-best of any champion behind only Jim Clark and Tom Ingram, his competition was significantly worse and nearly all his teammates were obscure, thereby explaining why his rating is much worse than his record. Nonetheless, he still outranks several champions in my model, even legends like John Fitzpatrick and Matt Neal. Ultimately, Hodgetts’s dominance still overrode his lack of competition.
Touring car model: #344 of 1676 (.123)
Teammate head-to-heads: 24-3 (0-2 vs. John Cleland, 1-0 vs. Tony Dron, 1-0 vs. Will Hoy, 1-0 vs. Vic Lee, 2-0 vs. Paul Longfield, 1-0 vs. Gordon Mayers, 4-0 vs. Alan Minshaw, 6-0 vs. John Morris, 6-0 vs. Alex Moss, 1-0 vs. Chuck Nicholson, 1-0 vs. Barry Sheene, 0-1 vs. Patrick Watts)
Year-by-year: 1980: C+, 1981: E-, 1983: C+, 1984: C, 1985: E-, 1986: E, 1987: E, 1995: C-