Thornton takes most wins and third overall in Caterham Roadsport Championship

Brian Thornton, Oscar’s brother-in-law, doesn’t come from a motorsport background but he’s always been into cars, his wife, Jane, says. The two of them went to Palmer Sports in 2023, where they sampled a variety of cars and when they came back, Jane said to Brian it was a pity he hadn’t started racing when he was younger, because she could see he was good at it.

“And then, that was it. I was in New York to see my sister, and when I home, he said, ‘by the way, I’m doing the Caterham Championship next year in England’. I was ‘Oh, thanks for telling me!’.

“So he took the compliment and ran with it. His first year in the Caterham Academy was 2024, and he raced last year as well, in Road Sports (the Caterham system is graded so drivers move up in terms of car performance each year).

Brian finished third in class last year, and Jane and their children, Sean, Joshua, and Lucy, regularly joined him at the tracks in England and were also at Zandvoort in the Netherlands, where one round was held, maintaining the family motorsport link.

Like Oscar, Jane has memories of being around competition cars when she was growing up. “We used to go to all the rallies, and Daddy would be outside in the evenings, and there’d be a load of boys out there working on the cars. I was more interested in Formula 1, and at that time Oscar was more interested in racing (than rallying).”

The family followed Jordan GP, owned by Eddie Jordan (RIP), the former Mullingar bank official who went on international fame in the world of motor racing. Jane added: “Nigel Mansell was the first one I liked, and then Schumacher when he was at Benetton, and I followed Schumacher in his career.”

Was she ever interested in getting behind the wheel? “I did karting for maybe two years, and then I went to college and couldn’t afford it.”

Asked if she has the family touch for driving, Jane was modest, but her father and brother reckon she has. The day she, Oscar, Brian and Dominic were at the Bedford track in England (the Palmer Sports day), she was setting lap times ahead of most of the other 15 drivers present.

“I’m too old now, but I would have liked to try it… then college came and different things happened,” she said.

What about the next generation? Joshua has taken an interest and drives on the sim at home that Brian uses for learning the UK tracks, and his grandfather says he’s competitive, whether on the sim or when he’s playing for The Downs or Mullingar Athletic.

He clearly takes after his father, who took five wins from 14 races in the 2025 Bilstein Caterham Roadsport Championship. He had more wins than anyone else, and he finished third in series after dropped scores were taken into account.

Dominic said: “Brian was excellent, he did really well putting the car on pole, and he knew himself he needed racecraft.”

Jane said the Caterham Academy includes driver coaching and Brian learned a lot in that, because he had never raced before, unlike most of his competitors. “The coach taught him the racecraft, to defend, close the door when you’re going around the corner and all the rest.”

As the cars are so mechanically even, slipstreaming is a vital component of the racing, and that was something else the coach helped Brian with.