LONDON :Nick Tandy’s thirst for speed began when he was barely a teenager, driving a combine harvester around an open field on his father’s farm.
The only driver to have won every 24-hour endurance race – a grand slam of Le Mans, Nuerburgring, Spa and Daytona – the Briton was honoured on Tuesday with the Royal Automobile Club’s Segrave Trophy for outstanding exploits on land, sea or air.
Past winners include Formula One champions Lewis Hamilton, Jackie Stewart, Damon Hill and Nigel Mansell.
Speaking to Reuters at the London club, and slightly stunned to be there, the Porsche factory driver accepted his path was perhaps not the typical one.
Driving the combine had certainly made him want to go faster, though.
“You just wanted to get the job done so you could go out and play with your friends,” he said.
Tandy still helps out when he can, going from 250kph around a racetrack to the wheel of a tractor at walking pace with a harrow on the back.
“Everyone has their own back story and I’m country folk,” he said. “I enjoy going back to the countryside.
“I struggle going to places like Monaco but everyone’s different I guess.”
Tandy, now 40, took overall victory at Le Mans’ Sarthe circuit a decade ago, a 2015 victory shared with Earl Bamber of New Zealand and German F1 driver Nico Hulkenberg.
At the time it was a box ticked, a dream come true.
“But then of course you wake up the very next morning and think ‘Right. What’s next?’,” he said.
The answer came in 2018 when he won the Nuerburgring 24 Hours, again with Porsche. In 2020 he conquered the Spa 24 Hours with Bamber and Belgian Laurens Vanthoor.
That left Daytona and Tandy had won the U.S. race previously in the GT class.
“Somebody said to me ‘you do realise nobody has ever won them all, overall, and you’ve won three and you’ve got a class win at Daytona’. And I thought ‘Oof! Now there’s a challenge’,” he recalled.
The Briton succeeded last January with Brazilian Felipe Nasr and Vanthoor.
Tandy also won the 2015 Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta, Georgia, and 12 Hours of Sebring in Florida last March – becoming the first driver to win endurance racing’s ‘Big Six’.
In a world where the car is more often the star, Tandy said he had been taken aback by the amount of interest suddenly penetrating his “little bubble”.
“I drive my little car in my little races around and around and kind of finish where we started up,” he said. “I haven’t been on water and driven a boat faster than anybody’s ever done. I haven’t won a world championship in a plane. I haven’t circumnavigated the globe.
“It makes you realise that what you’ve done actually is probably bigger than I ever thought.”
Comparisons have been made to double Formula One champion and Indianapolis 500 winner Jim Clark, an all-time great who came from a Scottish farming family and died in 1968.
Tandy said being mentioned in the same breath as Clark was unbelievable but the background similarity was not such a surprise.
“There’s so many more other good drivers that come from farming,” he said. “There’s something about having the land available and growing up and driving machines, working on machines as well, and understanding mechanics.
“I’m a professional racing driver… but when I come home, I can switch off and I go back to family life and working in my workshop, helping my dad on the farm. Just being a normal person.”
