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Driver Feature: Barton Mawer - Part #2 - The Hard Road
by Stefan Bartholomaeus
April 2008
Carrera Cup competitor Barton Mawer has no shortage of racing experience. Australian motorsport fans however may be forgiven for not knowing much about the New South Welshman prior to the start of the 2008 season, as he’d been largely hidden away in either Great Britain or the USA, determined to carve out a career for himself in the sport he loves.
Whilst racing high-tech Formula 3 cars at Grand Prix circuits such as Spa and Silverstone may sound glamorous, reality reveals it to be otherwise. The European experience for any young Australian driver is a tough road, a ‘school of hard knocks’ if you will. Whilst for Mawer, his international sojourn did not produce the Formula One drive many go there seeking, it has equipped him with a skill set, both physically and mentally, to achieve great things on his return home.
Like so many others, his career started locally in karts, starting in the junior divisions and working his way up. Today, he describes his karting career as “very common”, and “a very good experience for racing and general life lessons.”
With the natural desire to move up to cars, but without the corresponding money required, Mawer’s career soon took an interesting turn.
“I was able to, through my father’s business at Mawer Engineering, rebuild a written off Formula Ford, that he had actually built himself. When they introduced the historic category in Formula Ford, suddenly it had value, so we pulled this old bent chassis out of the back of the shed and rebuilt it while I was still karting, and that started me in Formula Ford.”
Rebuilding the car, under the guidance of his father, in between school, homework, and karting commitments, enabled a young Mawer to gain mechanical and technical knowledge far beyond that of most young Formula Fordsters.
Having dominated the historic scene, Mawer quickly graduated, with the help of a new car, to the NSW State and then national Formula Ford championships. After multiple low budget campaigns, his Formula Ford career culminated in a fifth place in the 2002 national championship, finishing just behind the likes of Jamie Whincup, Mark Winterbottom and Marcus Marshall.
By 2003, it was time to move on.
“I was able to get into Australian Formula 3, through the help of Bob Johns, who kindly put me in his 96 Dallara, and, with the help of a good family friend, Bruce Cary, we just missed out on winning the Australian Formula 3 Championship.”
A very well respected, former Formula One engineer, Cary would prove to have a significant influence over Mawer’s career. Amongst a field of 01 model Dallaras, Mawer and Cary managed to extract impressive speed from their older car, eventually finishing the year second to Michael Caruso.
For 2004, the step up to the British Formula 3 Championship was enormous. Although loving the experience, the young Australian could raise only the budget to compete in the Scholarship (B) class for half a season. During this time, he won two races, and scored nine consecutive podium finishes.
Whilst many rivals would simply turn up with their helmets and drive, for Mawer, it wasn’t so easy.
“When I went over in 2004 I was living in a workshop, sleeping overnights in the workshop, and working on my own cars as well as trying to raise the finances to keep racing. It was a very tough period, but it certainly didn’t go unnoticed, and a few people back home helped us sort of get through bits and pieces along with my family.”
Having spent the second half of the season working as a crew member for Carlin motorsport, Mawer returned for another Scholarship Class assault in 2005.
Unlike the previous year, he was able to complete the season, as well as the Bahrain Super Prix and the European Cup [held at Spa], with the support of a new CAMS initiative.
“[For] the second half of 2005, the Australian Motor Sport Foundation came on board, and that really helped us keep going, it would have definitely come to a halt, so they were good to finally come on board and helped us finish the season. That was the early stage of the AMSF, and there were a few small extra mentoring roles and bits and pieces, [but] without sounding blunt about it, you get to the stage where, you just need the money to keep racing, there is no point having great mentoring and a warm and fuzzy feeling while sitting on the sidelines, you just need to be racing. Over there, it’s more obvious how important it is to just keep racing year in and year out.”
Six wins and 12 podiums from 24 races netted second in the points standings.
Having exhausted all options in Europe, 2006 saw Mawer compete in four Formula Atlantic races in the USA, before, inevitably, the money again ran out. Not surprisingly, he found the American scene very different from that experienced in Europe.
“I was a bit shocked when I went to America, how different their racing culture is. Having experienced the brutality of the European racing scene, it was quite strange over there, the way they went about their racing, and some of the rules. In the first drivers briefing, they said we were not to block entering a corner; staying on the racing line and leaving the inside open for anyone to make an opportunity, which is unheard of. For the last two years if I ever left a hole open for someone to pass me, I’d certainly be apologising when I got back to the pits after. In America if you go there you play by their rules and nobody else’s rules. It was a difficult time for me also because I only raised enough money to do a few races which wasn’t enough to establish myself and so what we could do there. That was a frustrating period to be honest.”
Mawer again spent the second half of the year, in an off-track role, working as a driver coach/spotter for Eric Barchelart’s Atlantic team.
Having returned home, he spent much of 2007 off-track, working on the basis of his 2008 campaign. He ended the year by returning to Australian F3 for the final three rounds. This, he says, was “very important” in securing funding for 2008.
“At the time, I probably didn’t see it as leading to where I am now, but I had an opportunity to race in Formula 3 again, which I would grab with both hands at the best of times, and then to have the opportunity to develop a relationship with Anthony Blumberg, who has evolved to be a really great supporter of mine....
“It was a ‘cold call’, which is a bit rare in motorsport. I literally got a call saying, look, ‘can you come to Mallala and shake down a car?’. It was good to reunite with the BRM team. I ran with them at the Australian Grand Prix support race in 2005, where we cleaned up with pole position and the race wins and fastest lap, so they’ve always been pretty good guys to me, and it was just enjoyable to get back behind [the wheel of] an F3 car. You don’t have to be out of them long to forget just how good they are, and I was able to work again with Joe Sasso [now at Piccola Scuderia with Neil McFadyen], my engineer. My main role was to support [fellow BRM driver] James Winslow in the final stages of the championship, and we did that to the best of our abilities. We were also able to take the inaugural John Bowe Trophy win, which I think pleased Anthony as much as it pleased me.”
Whilst Anthony Blumberg may be no longer able to support Mawer through Opes Prime, the two remain friends. “We still keep our friendship”, says Mawer, “and I hope that he can still be involved in our racing for the rest of this year, even if it’s just keeping up to date with where we’re at.”
Although Carrera Cup is the immediate focus, Mawer isn’t afraid to look forward.
“The beauty of where I am at the moment is that I’ve got options, and yes it’s a minimum two year program for the Australian Carrera Cup, whether that can lead to some enduro drives in the V8s.... I’d be very pleased to be able to do that. I also have the capacity to step back overseas with Porsche experience under my belt, and with the international racing I’ve had already, so whether that’s a domestic Carrera Cup, or an endurance series in America or Europe, or even the pinnacle of Porsche racing which is the Supercup in Europe, I’m not discounting any of those things. What will need to happen is for me to prove my worth in Australian first, and get some international support behind us. We’re working hard on both of those.”
You can guarantee that, whatever he’s racing, Barton Mawer will be working hard, on and off the track.
- Stefan Bartholomaeus
© 321 IGNITION Pty Ltd 2008
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