In the 80’s Steve tuned and turbocharged AC, Scimitar and TVR sports cars, he also raced motocross bikes with the AMCA organisation and won his group championship on a Yamaha YZ 490cc.
He moved to TWR in 1988 and it was in the engineering department where he developed his test driving skills, primarily on Jaguar and Aston Martin test programmes. He executed high speed validation tests for V-max thermal stability to 176mph safely and successfully over many years on various programmes. As a vehicle proving engineer he ran the performance tests, ride and handling tests and data acquisition equipment for speed measurement and analysis. Steve conducted Engineering ride and drive’s and production launch programmes globally.
He has spent more than 11,000 hours testing on tracks with more than 12 hours at speeds from 140mph to 170mph+. Steve has completed tests in the
Whilst at TWR he raced 250cc Superkarts and gained many top three places including wins. He was 9th in the British Championship in 1997 after having missed some of the rounds due to work commitments. He built and tuned his own engines and used his test driving skills to develop the Kart. These race Karts are quick and demand the ultimate in driver response, 0-60mph in 3.5secs, 0-100 in 9 secs and up to 140mph at Silverstone and Snetterton.
Steve has driven on more than 20 test and race tracks around the world, he has tested an F1 Tyrrel and he even won a snowmobile race in Minnessota.
He has conducted ride and handling development work in
In addition to the considerable track driving that Steve conducts he has taken and passed many advanced driving tests including the Institute of Advanced motorists test, high performance course’s and General Motors 150mph track driving assessment in Arizona. At TWR Steve was approved to test to unlimited speeds, as a Principal Development Engineer he structured and conducted the track driver training courses as well as co-ordinating the test track risk assessment processes.
Steve has moved in to engineering consultancy and works with the manufacturers to test and develop world class cars, a recent contract was with Pininfarina. He is also an ARDS licenced Race Track instructor for Palmersport and Silverstone and coaches individual clients. Steve’s ability and experience on the track is considerable and he uses his race, engineering test driving and established track instruction technique to train drivers of all levels achieve more in the shortest time, safely.