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FEATURE<br />
Soap star to track titan<br />
J’AIME’S RESIDENT RACING DRIVER AND MOTORING EXPERT MARTIN PLOWMAN CHATS TO HIS<br />
ACTOR-TURNED-RACE ACE TEAM-MATE KELVIN FLETCHER ABOUT LIFE ON AND OFF THE TRACK<br />
BIRMINGHAM’S KELVIN HAS MADE CANALS THE MOVE<br />
PROVIDE FROM SMALL A SETTING SCREEN FOR STAR<br />
HELEN’S TO RACE NOVELS ACE<br />
Kelvin Fletcher, or Andy Sugden from Emmerdale<br />
as many of you may know him, has graced our<br />
TV screens for the last 20 years, but there’s a lot<br />
more to this talented lad then just being ‘that bloke<br />
on the telly’. This year he was my team-mate and<br />
racing co-driver in the British GT Championship<br />
that sees professional and amateur drivers pair up in<br />
endurance races and do battle to claim the British<br />
Championship. The dust has finally settled on the<br />
<strong>2018</strong> season, where we came painfully short of<br />
claiming the championship in only Kelvin’s fourth<br />
year of racing. We sat down to talk about his passion<br />
for racing and where he sees this journey going.<br />
MP: When did you first develop the racing<br />
bug and how did you get involved in<br />
motorsport?<br />
KF: I wouldn’t say that I ever had the racing bug<br />
growing up, I was definitely into cars and was always<br />
around people who worked on cars. My dad was<br />
a diesel fitter, so I always took an interest in what<br />
he was doing as a kid, and would often go to bed<br />
holding onto spanners. My parents bought me an<br />
old Mini when I was 13 and I always loved watching<br />
motorsport as a spectator, but I didn’t actually get<br />
the bug to race myself until much later when I was<br />
28, my dad and I went to the Autosport Show in<br />
Birmingham where I saw an advert for a classic Mini<br />
racing car and we both decided to buy it for a bit<br />
of fun. We started out going to local club races as a<br />
family and quickly realised that we were in the deep<br />
end as these guys were constantly tweaking their cars<br />
to make them faster, whereas we thought all you had<br />
to do was make sure the wheels were fixed on and<br />
away you go!<br />
MP: So did you win your first race?<br />
KF: Somehow I actually managed to put it on pole<br />
position for my first race! Back then, it wasn’t as<br />
professional or scientific as it is today with computer<br />
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