Dad's 'fighting spirit' fuels Beaton's fire
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FEW embodied fighting spirit like Peter Beaton.
Despite battling multiple sclerosis and bowel cancer, he refused to take illness lying down and continued to prove people wrong.
It is that which inspires his son Paul every time he gets in a rally car. His father was one of the biggest influences on his career and was the one who believed he had a gift for rallying.
So when Paul picked up the Snowman Rally victory earlier this year, navigating for close friend Euan Thorburn, there was only one man he was dedicating it to — one who
had given him his first taste of motorsport.
"He gave me a Table Topps set to play on the dining room table, where the main aim was to navigate round a course while picking up as few penalties as possible," said Beaton, who lost his father last year. "I used to do that most weekends."
A gifted navigator in his day, Beaton senior gave up the sport aged 29 after being diagnosed with MS. He passed his love of racing on to Paul and his brother Kier and they have not looked back since.
After leaving Caley Thistle’s youth team and flitting about in the amateur football ranks, Paul Beaton was on the verge of giving up on motorsport altogether — until some wise words from his brother changed his mind.
"Dad was never one to give praise lightly. But when my brother said to me ‘Dad thinks you’ve got a real gift for rallying’, that really drove me on," he said.
"It was always effortless for me to go out and race. I never really thought about it. It wasn’t until I knew what my dad thought that I decided to push it further."
The 33-year-old is now Scottish Rally Champion and recently competed in the World Rally Championships, entering Rally GB in the penultimate race of the season.
He got his first racing experience at 14, co-driving for David Munro, before football intervened.
Once the racing bug was picked up again he reached out to Ford, who advised him to do as many races as he could to build up his experience. Local racer Donnie Macdonald brought him on-board as a co-driver for the 205 Challenge series in 2009, which is where he met Thorburn. The pair hit it off and have been climbing up the motorsport ladder ever since.
The pair are still chasing their WRC dream and are on the hunt for sponsorship to enable them to enter more races next season. It is a struggle, however, with interest very limited within the United Kingdom. Beaton, from Drakies in Inverness, concedes that they may have to look for help in order to reach their goal.
"A lot of guys have management teams that find sponsors. Whatever angle we seem to try at the moment isn’t working. I prefer to do things myself but we might need to go to someone who has the contacts," he said.
"The best teams have wealthy businessman backing them, who will put all their money into a driver for a season. If he fails, you never hear of them again. Most of them look to Scandinavia to try and find the next talent.
"It’s finding someone who understands the drivers and that they’ll get the return on their investment once they make it."
The Rally GB experience was hectic and stressful for Beaton and Thorburn. Regulations, jointly enforced by International Association of Motorsport and the Motor Sports Association, gave the impression that teams were being made to "jump through hoops" in order to compete.
One such instance involved the duo having to remove a sponsorship decal from their sun visor because it measured 118mm, when the permitted allowance is 100mm.
Despite numerous car problems, including a throttle misfire and a complete breakdown on the Saturday, the pair finished the National category of the rally in 25th out of 53 competitors, a figure Beaton believes would be significantly higher if it was not for car issues.
"One of the most pleasing things was how many people were talking about us and congratulating us," Beaton added. "That shows we’re going somewhere."
The journey to the top would not have been started without his father, however, and Beaton can vividly recall the struggles he went through.
"He had battled MS for a while and by the time the cancer struck, he was in a wheelchair and was struggling to use his arms. He told the doctors he’d had enough," he said.
"But what I really admired about him was that he wouldn’t just sit around. He wanted to beat it and prove to everyone how strong his work ethic was."
Peter Beaton died a week before the Snowman Rally last year — an event which was cancelled after the death of a female spectator on the Glenurquhart stages.
His son, accompanied by Thorburn, returned for the 2014 event and won the title.
"I wanted to do that for my dad," said Beaton. "He was undoubtedly the biggest influence on me."
