Andy Priaulx: The Autobiography of the Three-time World Touring Car Champion. Andy Priaulx

only did I prove I was the quickest driver there that year, but I won the championship against all the odds – against the might and experience of BMW Schnitzer and N-Techology Alfa Romeo who were doing anything possible to win the championship. I do believe that Schnitzer are one of the best racing teams in the world. They are a top team in every way and I have a lot of respect for them. Their budget must have been double our budget. The Alfa Romeo team with their four cars were also very strong and resourced well, too. They had a great driver lineup: Gabriele Tarquini, Fabrizio Giovanardi, Augusto Farfus Jr, Thommo…all good drivers.

      I thought it was pretty impressive to go into that European series and to win there so quickly – in only my second season. In my first year, they could not even pronounce my name. I remember when I went for an interview with a local television station in Guernsey and they told me they had gone to the first race, in Valencia, and asked a load of the other drivers about me. Every one of them said, ‘Well, we sort of know who he is, but we don’t know much about him’. My BMW colleague Jörg Muller was interviewed and he said, ‘Ja, of course, we know him, and now he is in BMW – but he hasn’t proved anything’.

      I just shook my head and said to myself: ‘You know nothing.’ I have always said that my critics have helped me and being the underdog has helped me too. Those things have kept me very hungry. I could have been the racing driver who turns up with the big shades, the glamorous watch and the sun tan and just straps himself into an ultra-fast car and goes out and does the job. That would have been lovely, but it has never been like that for me.

      My work ethic has always been to roll my sleeves up and graft. It has had to be. It carries over from my ordinary life and always has done. I have the habit of wanting to do it myself and wanting to see a job done well, even if I have to help. This still spills into my non-racing life too. Not long ago, we had builders doing some work on our house in Guernsey. I got so frustrated that I actually rolled up my sleeves and got stuck in there myself. I really enjoyed it. And I’m sure I did the job pretty well! I learned to work like that early in my life and it has never left me. My family always worked hard and I hope we always do.

      There is no doubt that I have needed that kind of grit in my touring car career. Nobody really believed in me to start with and I had to overcome a lot of other people’s doubts. But when I won the 2004 European Championship everybody was clapping, all of them, up and down the pit lane. All the big teams were saying ‘Bloody hell! He’s actually won it. He has gone and done it…’ I remember them all coming out of their garages in Dubai and I was in tears. It was so emotional for me.

      In 2003, I had showed my speed and people knew that I was good, but they still did not believe it. They thought Alfa would still be the number one, but my grit would not let me give up. I never give up. After 2004, everybody predicted that the competition would be back strongly – and they were right because 2005 was tougher, 2006 was even tougher still and 2007 was even tougher than that! But I won all three times, taking the title and keeping it. The problem, for me, has been that with each passing year, more and more people did not want me to win. Not only did they want to see a change, they wanted the power structure to work. If there was going to be someone dominating that series, turning it into a private empire like Michael Schumacher seemingly did in Formula One, they certainly did not want it to be me.

      Unlike Formula One, Touring Cars is a contact sport and the politics are such that when things go in a certain kind of way you can end up being barged off the track. Yes, literally. There is also the penalty known as success ballast, reverse grids and rule changes all the time. The rules are not even necessarily the same for all the teams. At different times there has been one rule for one and something else for the others. I have always sensed that there was a huge amount of respect for me, but also that there has certainly been a big drive to stop me from winning the championship year on year. In a way, I guess it is understandable. But I have taken no notice. I have just gone out there and done my best to do my job. I have ground out the races and the results by squeezing everything I could from the package we had each year.

      It was the same grit that has worked for me all through my career. It is the grit I saw in Nigel Mansell and that I have also seen in Lance Armstrong and a few other people. Maybe it is a bit of bloody-mindedness, too. And you do need talent. Do not think it can be done without talent. But talent alone is not enough. Everything you achieve in life needs hard work and there are few, if any, people who break that rule. I have always worked to achieve everything from polishing cars for my dad, selling on the forecourt, hustling to find sponsors and teams and then improving my own racing by looking, listening and learning at every opportunity. I have also worked tremendously hard at my fitness and I am sure that it was one of the decisive factors in 2004.

      Before the Dubai decider that year, there was a little bit of time off after the Oschersleben meeting. I was 12 points behind, but I still had not given up. I had decided that I would do anything and everything to compete and stay in contention. After you have made a decision in your life to leave home and pursue your dream, like I did when I left Guernsey, it is not asking much to work your socks off to keep that dream alive.

      I trained very hard. And I trained in a way that seemed logical to me, but caused quite a stir later on when a lot of other people found out about it. I put my race suit on, I put my helmet on and I got in the sauna at Kings Club, a gym and fitness place, in Guernsey, two minutes’ drive from my house. I was doing boxing in the sauna in full race gear. It was a public club, so plenty of people would have seen me there in my race overalls and helmet, but I did not give a damn what anybody thought. I trained on a bike. I did ‘boxercise’, sit-ups, press-ups, running…I did everything I could. I stayed in the sauna for the length of two races, an hour and a half, nearly every day. I just wanted to be quick in Dubai and I would do anything I could to help myself. People said I was crazy and maybe I was, but it worked.

      I trained really hard and physically I was fit. I felt super-fit. But, more importantly than that, most importantly of all, I was mentally fit. My head was ready. My mind was clear and set. I did a lot of meditation. I knew that Dubai, in September, would be awful. I knew we were preparing for ambient air temperatures of 42 or 43 degrees Celsius. And I knew it was going to be humid. It would be even hotter in the cars and it would be desperately uncomfortable. Staying calm, clear-headed and sharp, capable of making decisions under extreme stress and pressure was going to be an important part of the weekend’s work.

      When I got off the plane, I felt sick with the heat. It was so humid that everything steamed up – my sunglasses, the car – everything! I arrived pretty early in the week because the race was on a Friday. I wanted to be ready in every way. I was collected from the airport by a driver and taken in a nice big car to the Mina A’ Salam hotel which is absolutely gorgeous.

      It smelt beautiful and I could not believe my luck. I had to take a boat to my hotel room. It was a little Abra and I was filled with a kind of excitement, a confident feeling of anticipation mixed with a few nerves. The whole place, the whole experience was just fantastic and I wanted to go out and complete the picture with a great job all weekend.

      I woke up in the morning, got out of bed and, there I was, on a beach. I could see the sea. It felt a bit like Guernsey again and I definitely drew something from that. I also had a lovely 7-Series BMW given to me for the weekend and so, for me, the whole experience felt a bit special for the first time. I had gone from living in a caravan to being treated to nice hotels and luxury cars. And, I have to say, it was great!

      Dirk may have been leading the championship and I am sure everyone expected him to win, but that takes no account of me. I am such a determined so-and-so. I never give in. And there, in that hotel room, with that car and that view, I felt so much energy. So I enjoyed myself – and I went out and won my first major international title.

      We, BMW Team GB, were a one-car team. That in itself was a disadvantage when it came to a lot of the races because we could not do the slip-streaming, by using a team-mate for tow, like others did. But it was not the end of the world. I knew how strong we could be from the year before and I was not intimidated at all by the opposition. We had finished 2003 very strongly and all through 2004 I was convinced I could achieve my goals.

      I started the season pretty competitively. I was up there, not