By Phil Huff (08/01/2004)
January 8 2004

Lucky Strike BAR Honda team principal, David Richards, is also the CEO of the motorsport and automotive company Prodrive, and manages to be Chairman of International Sportsworld Communications, the TV and commercial rights holder of the WRC. He's pretty busy then. So how does he separate these things? "The reality is that these roles all overlap," he told Top Gear's Tim Oldham. "My function is not a day-to-day operational function in any of the businesses. It's about taking the businesses forward and at that level there are many common issues."

World Rallying is on the up, with Prodrive recently winning the Driver's Championship with Petter Solberg, and viewing figures up 66%, and Prodrive is also gaining a reputation as an automotive consultant, too, but it's BAR we're really interested in. How does he respond to the fact that 2003 wasn't a great season?

"It was steady progress," he confidently answers. "Issues with tyres and reliability need to be addressed, but there's a clear trend of improvement."

Those improvements have come in the two years since David Richards took over the helm at BAR. "When I took over, we stripped everything out and started again. We've put in solid foundations and will improve from there."

And does he still enjoy cars? Too right. "This is a business and I have to treat it that way," responds David. "But I'm fortunate in that it's also a passion."