mum did not really feature in the decision-making at all. She was just happy doing her church work and playing her music, and making sure there was dinner on the table. She did not want to be involved that much. But I knew she would miss me as I would her. We had always been close. And, of course, there was Jo. My life had changed after meeting her. I just felt sure, with Jo, I could achieve my dreams.
There was no welcome party and no tears when I arrived in England. As I drove off the ferry at Portsmouth I was excited at the prospect of the adventure that lay ahead, even though I had no idea how it would turn out. There I was, in the old Volvo, pulling the old caravan, and heading north away from the coast. It was a bit of a heart-tugging moment. I was hardly driving a fast car and looked like anything but a racing driver as I drove towards Silverstone. And I did not know, after Jo had sold the little house we had bought in Guernsey, how much we would struggle desperately for money and find it difficult to survive at times.
I feared it might be difficult, but I was confident that I had it in me to succeed. I had to make it work. I had to believe in my talent, secure deals, get sponsors and build my career. There were debts from the previous year but – little did I know then – there were to be much bigger and more daunting financial worries ahead of me as I struggled to find my way up the motor racing ladder. People would perhaps laugh at me, but I was determined to prove myself, just as I had done at school when I was the victim of bullying. Then I had to learn to defend myself and survive. This was going to require the same mindset, but quite different skills.
I knew I had a lot to learn and a lot to prove. I had taken such a big risk but I had convinced myself it was a calculated gamble. After all, how many young men of my age – I was then only 23 – would leave a place as isolated and remote as Guernsey to live in a caravan on another island without a confirmed job or any source of income? And all because I reckoned I had enough speed and skill as a racing driver to make it. Looking back, I am not sure I would have done it if I knew then what I know now.
And I was a Guernsey lad. That meant I was used to living in a place where everyone, in general, trusted one another and where we never really locked up our homes; we always left doors and windows open because we knew it was relatively safe. It was the same with cars and car windows. You just did not believe, let alone expect, that anyone would ever think of stealing from you, your home or your car. Crime like that was so rare as to be exceptional in Guernsey.
It was very different as I drove up the A34 looking for somewhere to rest, eat and stretch my legs. It was busy, crowded, and just not as easy-going. I was wet behind the ears all right. I was new to all this, and had to adjust and learn a few things fast. Living in England was going to be very different from staying in Guernsey. The people were different. The way of life was different. And attitudes were very different. It was not as friendly and certainly nothing like as laid-back as I had been used to.
I was just a lad from Guernsey, in an old car, who was driving up the road chasing a dream. Had it not been for my family and some very important friends who had backed me, however, I would not have even been there. Like any other aspiring racing driver, I owed a lot of people a lot of favours and, in many cases, quite a lot of money. But, like me, they believed in my talent – or at least they believed I had enough to stand a chance of making the big time and repaying my debts.
I have always been someone inspired by facing adversity. That is when I am at my strongest. I dig deep, and can find inner strengths to fight back and win. I was not one of the biggest of kids, but I was pretty wiry and tough, and have always been strong for my size. I am tough mentally, too. That’s another byproduct of being bullied at school and learning to look after myself. I don’t let things defeat me in advance – instead I will work out my own way of winning, making sure I know what I am going to do. I can visualise things and use that technique to help me succeed.
Back then, though, as I drove up through the English counties, I could not even visualise where I was going to park the caravan that first night. Or if it would be safe. Or how I would get to sleep. Did I know how to park up easily and legally? Did I have enough food? How was I going to get started on the job? The motor racing season was about to start. I had some contacts and plenty of ideas but nothing in this business is definite…I knew that. Yet I had so much enthusiasm, belief and desire that I knew I would get there somehow, one way or another. If I am honest, I don’t think I even cared how I would do it. I just knew I would succeed, whatever it took…
‘As the applause went up all around me, I thought back to when I first went to England, alone and penniless, but hungry for success. It seemed like an age ago…’
SEVEN YEARS AND A FEW MONTHS LATER, I went to Heathrow and I boarded a plane to Dubai. For me, it was another flight to meet my destiny. So much had happened in my life, since that drive from home to Silverstone and I felt everything was finally coming together for me. It was my time. Mind you, not many other people felt or thought that way. I was 12 points behind Dirk Muller at the top of the European Touring Car Championship and, as far as I could tell, I was the only man in the world who knew I was on the brink of winning my first international motor racing championship with BMW Team GB. It was my secret. I had prepared for it. I was dreaming of it. I had locked my mind on to that ambition. I just knew it was going to be me who took that title.
In those intervening years, I had answered a lot of my own questions. I had proved to myself, and a lot of other people, that I was a fast and potentially excellent racing driver. I had grown up, too. I was married. I was a family man with two children. We were back in Guernsey, living on the island. Life had given me some encouraging signs and I had survived a few warning shots that reminded me of the fragility of it all. Jo, now my wife, had been very ill when she gave birth to our second child Danniella in November 2003. Little Dannii was five weeks premature when she arrived at The Princess Elizabeth Hospital in Guernsey. I was absent. I was away again, chasing my dream of the moment, on the other side of the world in Macau. Like her older brother Seb, she had a fight on her hands, but she came through. She was a fighter and a survivor: a true Priaulx…
All these thoughts drifted through my mind as I flew across Europe and down to the Persian Gulf. Blue skies, clear cloudless atmosphere and dry land masses passed below – and then the shimmering blue sea. It was not green, not like Guernsey. But it was a water-lapped coastline with sunshine – and, yes, there were a few boats! – and it was evocative of my home. I liked what I saw as I looked out of the window. On that plane, out to Dubai, I remember thinking to myself that I deserved to be champion – and whether I won it or not, I was going to prove to everybody that I was the best driver out there that weekend. This was going to be the conclusion of my extended rite de passage.
I had found out, on my journey to Dubai, that the Schnitzer team, the BMW outfit with a fantastic record of 30 years of great success in motor racing, had been there the previous week, driving in the race ‘taxi car’ (a race car tuned up to be used for giving passenger rides). As a driver in with a mathematical chance to win the championship, and as a BMW driver who was therefore part of ‘the family’, doing the taxi rides for the sponsors gave us vital experience of a circuit I had never seen before, albeit from the data and, perhaps just as important, the demands of a climate with high temperatures, colossal heat and heavy humidity.
This kind of thing – the taxi-rides for sponsors and guests – is something that goes on quite a lot, particularly at new events and circuits. In this case, it was a brand new circuit. Nobody had ever been there before. So, any laps you can get in are a great advantage. I knew it was going to be a great struggle to match BMW Team Germany – who are always the team to beat in the series –
