'Everyone wanted to be in Dave Price's gang': the man at racing's core — MPH

“He was at his very finest running his own team,” says Brundle. “With his own name over the door. Everyone knew who was running the show and he was such a natural leader. Everyone wanted to be in Pricey’s gang. I think Patrick Head once offered him the job of running the Williams team, but I don’t think that would have fitted him very well. The razzamatazz of F1 wasn’t him.”

Brundle’s introduction came through Les Thacker of BP, who was charged with co-ordinating the petrol company’s motorsport activities. Brundle had raced alongside Stirling Moss in the 1981 British Touring Car Championship in a BP-backed Audi team and it was Thacker who reckoned Brundle probably deserved a shot at F3 – in the BP-backed Dave Price Racing Team.

“I first walked into Pricey’s office, a Norfolk boy. He looked me up and down and said, ‘Marty, you need to get some smart pumps and f**kin’ jeans son,’ because he obviously thought I looked like the Toyota salesman I was. If it wasn’t for Pricey I reckon I’d still be selling Toyotas for a living now.”

For all that he was “the most unthreatening, friendly guy imaginable,” Price was a tough taskmaster. Brundle found this out to his cost after crashing the F3 car at Dijon. “It was a round of the French F3 championship and was supposed to be preparation for the Monaco F3 race,” he recalls. “We would stop by at Dijon, then go on to Monaco. It was on an in-lap after qualifying and I tripped over one of the French boys who hadn’t taken kindly to us showing up and being quick. I ended up with the car in the wall, very heavily damaged and that meant I couldn’t do Monaco. There wasn’t time to rebuild it. But they had another car to run there so we still went. Pricey had me as the team gofer all that weekend. So I’d have to collect the mechanics at 5am every morning in the mini bus, go off to collect the food, bring the mechanics back. He had me doing everything. That was my penance.”

Brundle set four consecutive poles at the end of the ’82 British F3 season but difficulties getting the VW Judd engine off the line meant he won only two of them and didn’t figure in the title battle. BP replaced him with Calvin Fish for ’83. “The plan had been to do European F3 with Pricey in ’83, then it was only British, then it was neither. Calvin had done well against Senna in FF2000 in ’82 and so Les wanted him in the F3 car. I came into Pricey’s office and I can still picture it now where we were both sat and he said, ‘Marty, I’ve got nothing for you. But I think I might know someone who has’ and he made a phone call. That was Eddie Jordan. So he sent me over to Eddie’s with my cheque for winning the Grovewood Award and that was the beginning of my ’83 season with EJ and fighting Senna. That’s how Pricey and I remained firm friends despite everything. He was such a class act.

“EJ’s team at that time was just a fledgling compared to Pricey’s. He was only just getting going. Pricey’s cars were immaculate and so would he be, always with an Armani jacket and smart shirt. EJ’s was a bit more free-wheeling. But he had a good car and good Toyota motors.

“At the time it felt like a disaster being dropped. But with Pricey’s help it ended up being a brilliant break.”