Paul Luti
Lives: Callander
Age : 25
Occupation: ARDS Racing Instructor, Technician and Racing Driver!
Nick name: Luti
D.O.B: 29/08/82
Hobbies: Motor racing, cycling, water and snow skiing, anything with an engine and women.
Love: Close racing
Hate: Nasty people
Favourite food: Indian curries, Chinese crispy aromatic duck and proper Italian food
Favourite drink: I'm quite into my Robinsons summer fruits at the mo
Favourite movie: It has to be the Italian job with Michael Cane
Favourite colour: Impossible to answer, changes every day
Worst moment: Being told I needed open heart surgery
Hero: Sir Isaac Newton and his theories. (very useful)
Keep reading below, Paul explains how he got started in Motorsport and the challenges he has had to overcome:
“Born in Stirling, Scotland, I grew up in a motorsport orientated family. Well, not so much my mother Anne, but I have got her genes (as she keeps telling me).
When I was 4, I was given my 1st petrol powered flying machine, a 70cc Honda trike which I named Herbie after the famous VW Beetle film. This poor little trike must've done hundreds of miles up and down the garden to our neighbours disgust and in fact I still have it to this day.
A year later at the age of 5, my father Brian decided that it was time to try 2 wheels instead of 3. The 50cc honda bike was the answer. Unfortunately, both my sister and I out grew the little fella which was a shame because it had taught us a lot about throttle control and balance.
At the age of 7, I was asked if I would like to try karting at Knockhill. As you can imagine, I jumped at the chance and blasted around the newly built track, imagining I was in Formula 1, when really I was barely hitting 15mph. A month later and I had my own Helmet, Gloves, Race suit and of course Cadet Kart. My sister Claire had also taken up Cadet Karts so it was head to head between the two of us. Gutted I found myself being slaughtered by my own sister. Not something any younger brother would want to admit to. I just put it down to her being 3 years older hence she must be better at everything. My Karting career was cut short when I decided screaming parents and crying kids took the fun out of the racing. My father just took us there for some fun but others had different ideas.
I had just turned 10 when a little white Trials bike appeared. It was a Yamaha TY80. Unlike the other bike, this one had gears and more worrying, a clutch! This was definitely going to be a challenge. Less than a year later, I was competing on the bike and soon began winning repeatedly. This started getting a bit more serious, so a bigger bike was required, a Gas Gas 160cc. This bike enabled me to win more events in my class then was replaced by a Gas Gas 200cc for a harder class which I began to win until I moved up to my biggest bike, a Gas Gas 280cc which took me to win the hardest adult class championship in the Trials Club. Things were at an all time high. I was nineteen and looking towards a semi works ride with Montesa Honda when I fell ill. Two months later I was in hospital with bacterial endocarditis and another two months later I had open heart surgery to replace my mitral valve, which had been damaged by the infection. All is well now but due to being on warfarin, the risk of falling off a trials bike in the middle of nowhere is too dangerous, so I was forced to quit.
As you can imagine I was gutted. My father however had other plans. It was decided that motor racing would be a safer option as there is an ambulance on standby should anything bad happen. At 20 I had bought my first racing car. A 1.8 Rover Metro. My sister had been racing a 1.4 160hp metro for a while, so we thought that the standard 1.8 in mine would make for some fun close racing.
I caught the racing bug badly and soon had a 223hp 1.8 engine fitted to mine which helped me catch some of the quicker cars in the Scottish Sports and Saloons Championship. At one of the SMRC events, the Northern Saloons and Sports car championship turned up and talked us into joining their club also. This proved a great move and to this day, I still race in this championship.
The little metro did me proud for two years but we decided that we should build something new, different, quick and above all, it had to sound good. A V8 was on the cards. Luckily for us, MG had been building the MG ZT260 with the Ford Mustang V8 fitted as standard. This meant we had found exactly what we were looking for. A few weeks later we were on the phone to Mr Rod Ramsey, Head of Marketing at MGROVER discussing the project and asking if we could have some form of sponsorship. This ended up being way more than I had bargained for, with MGROVER building us the light weight chassis, seam welded, fitted with a full FIA rollcage and painted in their racing colours. To top it off, MGROVER also gave us one of their older prototype MG ZT385s to provide all the bits that were missing on the new chassis. This car was declared the last official works MGROVER Racing car ever built. It wasn't too long before we had fitted all the bits required to race a car, including squeezing in our 5.0 litre power plant with 520hp supplied by Sean Hyland in Canada. All we needed to do now was race it.
The ZT520 (as we named it) had its first outing at the 2005 Britcar 24hour at Silverstone. Obviously, this is not an ideal way to break the car in but we had faith in the MG and new it would finish, which it did. A few glitches on the way slowed us down but we still came to finish half way up the results in a new car and on road legal Toyo tyres unlike every other car out there.
Since the 24hour race, I've raced the car in the Scottish Saloon Car championship (SMRC) and the Northern Saloon Car Championship (NSSCC). As time has gone by, the car has become more and more competitive but now seems to be struggling with a weight problem. The car weighs 1528 KGs. That is about 400KGs more than the average car in my class. This obviously has a huge affect on braking, cornering and acceleration, resulting in overheating tyres during a race. This means the car is competitive for 3 laps then is really struggling to stay in front. Despite this problem the car has been great. Its outrageous size and awesome exhaust note make it a very entertaining car which is exactly what we had intended when the project first started.
In the last year I've also had the pleasure of driving 'Rocky' the 1380cc MG Metro built by Chris and Fred Hughes. I have been racing Rocky in the Drayton Manor Metro Championship and with the help of Chris, Fred and my father, have won numerous races and set 5 lap records”
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