Sean Walkinshaw: “I would like to win the 24 Hours of Spa one day, for my father”

Hello Sean Walkinshaw. Thank you for welcoming us while you are in full preparation for the 24 Hours of Spa. Is this an important event in your sporting calendar?

It is even THE important meeting, as this ordeal occupies a special place in family history. My father won them twice, with Pierre Dieudonné in 1981 at the controls of a Mazda RX-7 as well as in 1984 in a Jaguar XJS HE ​​with Win Percy and Hans Heyer. This ordeal means a lot to me. I would like to win the 24 Hours of Spa one day, for him. It's my dream and I'm clinging to it. When I started motorsport, my father had already passed away (Tom Walkinshaw died of lung cancer on December 12, 2010, at the age of 64.. Editor's note), and it was on my own, through books and press cuttings that I really discovered his career as a pilot. We still have at home the car he met my mother in, a Ford Capri. It's in the garage, in England. Next year it will undergo a restoration and I hope we can enter it in historic races.

Is your first memory of motorsport also linked to your father?

Yes, in 2000, when our family owned the Orange Arrows team in F1. I must have been around seven years old (Sean was born on November 3, 1993. Editor's note), and I attended a few Grands Prix per year. I watched the racing a bit, but to be honest, I spent more time playing in the motorhome. My parents took me with them, but it wasn't much fun for a child. I was bored during these weekends. I wasn't very interested in the vo