Danny Watts

Watts competing for A1 Team Great Britain at the 2008–09 A1 Grand Prix of Nations, South Africa.

Danny Watts (born 31 December 1979) is a British professional racing driver.

Career

He was born in Aylesbury, and started racing in 1993, when he began karting. After five seasons of karting, he stepped up to single seater racing in 1998 in the UK Formula First championship, in which he dominated with 12 wins. He also competed in the Formula Palmer Audi Winter Series, in preparation for running the main Formula Palmer Audi championship the following year.

2000 saw a step up to the British Formula Renault Championship, when he was team mate to Kimi Räikkönen. In his third year of Formula Renault, he won the championship with 6 wins.

Watts ascended another tier in 2003, stepping up to the British Formula 3 Championship, with HiTech Racing. He took his first win in the series the same year in the second race at Castle Combe, having crashed out of the lead in race one. In 2004 he became the first driver for eleven years to win a round of the British Formula 3 Championship whilst not driving a car from the Dallara company.

2005 saw a mixed year for Watts. Unable to remain in Formula Three, he contested a handful of races in various disciplines. The same occurred in 2006, though he did make a brief return to F3 for the penultimate race of the season, at Thruxton, for champions Räikkönen Robertson Racing (co-owned by former British FRenault teammate, and now F1 star Kimi Räikkönen). In that race, Watts led the field and dominated proceedings with a convincing win.

In 2006 he raced in the Porsche Carrera Cup for the Redline Racing team. Initially he shared this drive with Richard Westbrook, only contesting races which clash with Westbrook's Porsche Carrera Cup racing, but after a run of 8 successive victories in the races he started, Richard conceded the drive full-time.

For 2007 Watts drove for Team LNT in the Le Mans Series in a Panoz Esperante GT-LM. He was also invited to join A1 Team Great Britain for the 4th season of the 2007/8 season held in Shanghai, China and took part in the rookie sessions.

In 2008 he signed to the SAS Lechner Racing team with team mate Damien Faulkner for the F1-supporting Porsche Supercup series.

A1 Team Great Britain announced that Watts would race for A1 Team Great Britain in Chengdu; he came 3rd in both the sprint and feature race.

For 2009 he raced for Strakka Racing in the Le Mans Series and the 24 Hours of Le Mans driving a Ginetta-Zytek GZ09S. In the opening round of the Le Mans Series at Barcelona he claimed overall pole on the teams LMP1 debut.

In 2010 he retained his seat for Strakka Racing in the Le Mans Series however the team moved down to the LMP2 category now using a HPD ARX-01c. The car took the class victory at Le Mans finishing 5th overall.

The 2011 Le Mans season was good for Watts, once again being the strongest link in the team constantly qualifying the Strakka car high up the LMP2 field.

In 2012 Strakka retained Watts, who went on to put in a hero's drive at the World Endurance Championship round at Silverstone England, by doing a double stint of three-and-a-half hours to finish within 0.6 secs of 4th place.

Personal life

He is married to ex-BTCC driver Fiona Leggate, and they have a son, Josh.

Helmet

Watts' helmet colour is in honour of Oxford United Football Club, whom he supports.

Racing record

Complete Formula Renault 3.5 Series results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Complete Porsche Supercup results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position – 2 points awarded 2008 onwards in all races) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

† – Did not finish the race, but was classified as he completed over 90% of the race distance. ‡ – Guest driver – Not eligible for points.

24 Hours of Le Mans results

Year	Team	Co-Drivers	Car	Class	Laps	Pos.	Class Pos.
2007	Team LNT	Tom Kimber-Smith Tom Milner, Jr.	Panoz Esperante GT-LM	GT2	60	DNF	DNF
2009	Strakka Racing	Nick Leventis Peter Hardman	Ginetta-Zytek GZ09S	LMP1	325	21st	14th
2010	Strakka Racing	Jonny Kane Nick Leventis	HPD ARX-01C	LMP2	367	5th	1st
2011	Strakka Racing	Jonny Kane Nick Leventis	HPD ARX-01d	LMP2	144	DNF	DNF
2012	Strakka Racing	Jonny Kane Nick Leventis	HPD ARX-03a	LMP1	303	30th	8th
2013	Strakka Racing	Jonny Kane Nick Leventis	HPD ARX-03c	LMP1	332	6th	6th
2015	Strakka Racing	Jonny Kane Nick Leventis	Strakka Dome S103-Nissan	LMP2	264	DNF	DNF
2016	Strakka Racing	Jonny Kane Nick Leventis	Gibson 015S-Nissan	LMP2	351	8th	4th

Complete A1 Grand Prix results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Complete FIA World Endurance Championship results

External links

• danny-watts.com
• Danny Watts career statistics at Driver Database