This weeks Motorsport News features the following piece about Bill written by Racing Editor Matt James:

“It’s always refreshing to spend a couple of minutes in Bill Richards’ company. The Mini racer is more dedicated to the marque than anyone I can think of and is constantly deriving ways of extracting silly amounts of power from the pocket rockets. The 57-year-old seems to enjoy
flinging them round circuits with just as much enthusiasm as he spanners them.

Richards became obsessed with the 50-year-old model when he worked at BMC’s Special Tuning Division in Abingdon as a teenager. He began his racing career in 1976 and has since collected 22 titles in various versions of Alec Issigonis’s design in Special Saloon guise. He has latterly tamed a fearsome Cosworth-engined Metro too (a reworked version of which he is hoping to use to capture the Fastest Mini in the World crown at the race at Lydden Hill in June). He runs an engineering firm in Ashford, Kent, where he tends a number of cars for customers and tunes engines. But you get the impression that this is merely a means to an end so that he can race himself. The Lydden Hill instructor, who uses his cars to develop parts for his suppliers, is immensely proud of what he does and rightly so.

I have never been much of a subscriber to the theory that it only takes two cars to make a race, but at Lydden on Saturday there were a pair of cars in the SEMSEC Sports and Saloons encounter that had the crowd on their feet. Richards, in his 1480cc Mini was up against interloper Paul Bateman, in a more powerful Lotus 2-Eleven. The Norfolk-built machine prevailed twice but Richards’ tenacious 15-lap pursuit –including a couple of audacious overtaking moves on the sportscar – were scintillating to watch. Then, Richards packed up his motorhome and trailer and headed north to Brands Hatch.

A day later, he’d collected another couple of trophies in Class D of the Dunlop Motorsport News Saloon Car Championship to keep his chase of leader Rod Birley alive. He is contesting two other championships as well in 2009… While the car is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, national racing needs to celebrate the fact that it has people like Richards involved in the sport. His dedication and pure love for what he does is at the forefront of it all. Go and find him in the paddock at a meeting. After just a couple of minutes, you will find it hard not to become a fan.”

Article used with the kind permission of Motorsport News.