At the age of 11, Oliver Gavin took his first steps in karting. Thanks to his father, who wanted to do something with Oliver and his brother Marcus in the weekends. When Olly was 14, he did the British Junior Kart Championship and raced there against David Coulthard. When he did the racing school at Brands Hatch, he came in contact with Graeme Glew who ran Team Touraco. He entered Gavin in the Formula First Winter series. That resulted in a full season ( pay to drive) in Formula First with Fortec in 1991. Gavin won 11 out of 12 races! He also did a Formula Renault race (P3) and some Vauxhall Lotus races with David Sears Racing with a P2 as best result. At the end of the year, he was one of the six finalists for the McLaren Autosport award. He won the trophy and got a 20.000 pounds cheque presented to him by Ayrton Senna.
For 1992 Oliver Gavin moved to Formula Vauxhall with John Village. There he learned a lot about setting up a car and racing abroad. And he finished second in the championship. Then off to F3 with Edenbridge racing first with a Ralt chassis and later in the year a Dallara. Again second in the final standings. Then he felt that he had to move to F3000. Keith Wiggins’Pacific Racing had run Coulthard in F3000 and had done well. Keith started his own F1 team, so Gavin would be their F3000 driver and also a F1 test driver. Too good to be true. The team did not actually had the money to run a F1 team, let alone keep the F3000 team. So Gavin had to look for another drive and he found one at Omegaland with Roger Orgee. He did reasonably good, but had a big crash at Pau.
The only thing Oliver could do for 1995 was back to F3 with Edenbridge and try to win the title. It was a battle between Helio Castroneves and Ralph Fireman from Paul Stewart Racing and Gavin. It all came down at the last race in Thruxton. Warren Hughes won the race, Gavin was third in front of the JS Racing boys. Job done, F3 title (and a superlicence, but no F1 with Pacific).
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