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Living life tothe Maxi

Photographs: Michael Bailie
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Internationally acclaimed musician and DJ, part-time racing driver and full-on Subaru Impreza P1 owner Maxi Jazz crams a lot into life
rom his laid-back manner, youd never guess Maxi Jazz is a man constantly in demand and on the move. From performing as part of the internationally successful band Faithless to DJ-ing around the world, his work commitments keep him on the hop. Then theres Maxis hobby of motor racing, which is hardly a sport you can slot in whenever you fancy like gardening or knitting. Maxi takes his pastime just as seriously as his work, though. He says with a smile: Ive tried to book gigs around the motor racing calendar because I dont get as much time in the car as I need to test and be as fast as possible. The team and I have a plan to put this right for next year and I want to compete in more GT races in 2009.
For this year and next, Maxi is racing with the Promotorsport team and sharing the driving with Derek Palmer in a Nissan 350 GTZ. To reach this level has taken a while and 51-year old Maxi admits he didnt even have a driving licence till he was 28. I was always into motor racing, he says. I used to go up to Brands Hatch to watch a mate and I said to myself that if I ever made enough money Id go motor racing. The foundations of Maxis music career that has allowed him to go racing stretch back to his school days. There comes a moment for most people at school when they have an idea of what they want to do. I realised playing the clarinet or banging a drum was more interesting than playing football, reflects Maxi. After that, music took over and I discovered hip-hop in 1983. It was fresh, like nothing anyone had ever heard before. We used to run to the shops to get the latest records. It was an amazing time and I wanted to represent it from a south London perspective. I was working with five or six different groups, anything that paid money, though it was always about getting to perform music rather than earning a fortune. It was an accident that I ended up with Faithless. I met Rollo Armstrong (one of the founders of the band and brother of singer and songwriter Dido) and he asked me to write a lyric about frustration. This was something I knew about, and I explained I was a Buddhist and looked
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He says: I met Rae Claydon at a racing school day at Brands Hatch. I was standing on Paddock Hill bend and my name came over the tannoy to call me back. I ran back and went to the car. Rae said he was thinking Please God, not my car as I must have looked particularly delightful with cap pulled low, sunglasses on and climbing boots around my neck. All I saw was this really friendly guy asking what I wanted to do. I said I wanted to get my race licence and do a bit of racing. It was Rae who suggested I try the Ford Fiesta Championship. Up to then, Id always driven powerful rear-wheel drive cars, so the front-drive Fiesta was alien to me. But the racing in that championship was hard and close, so if you did well, you knew you were getting there. Rae helped set up Maxi Jazz Racing for 2000 and we ran up to six cars. In 2001, we got more professional with a trailer and awning to service

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LOWRIDE JOY Tom with his beloved 1984 Pontiac Parisienne Station Wagon
The Impreza p1 just went zipping round corners and Ive never been out of it since
at the world differently from the hands in the air and wave music that was about at the time. It turned out Maxi was exactly what Faithless had been looking for and Rollo soon asked him to make an album with the band, not just a single. However, success didnt arrive overnight, as Maxi explains: It was more than a year later that the album started to fly up the charts across Europe. Then the fireworks started and we set off on a three-week tour that lasted two and a half years. We never thought wed make any more albums, but now I look back and see our lyrics convey a message. I dont want to sound pompous, but Im convinced people take something from our songs, even if its something they dont realise at first. After that, success flowed and hits such as Insomnia, God is a DJ and We Come 1 topped the charts. It was after Insomnia was released that Maxi became more involved with motor racing.

the cars under, but work commitments with recording and performing meant I could only race occasionally. When the championship was downgraded, we disbanded the team and I looked for other racing opportunities. After this, Maxi tried various different cars and series, including a Ginetta and a Porsche 911 in the Carrera Cup in 2007. For 2008, Maxi switched to the Nissan, but throughout his racing career his road cars have remained constant. A Subaru Impreza P1 is a permanent fixture in his garage, alongside a classic Ford Escort Mk2, a pair of Ford Cosworths and two Marcos Mantis supercars. It was 2001 and a mate arrived at my house in an Impreza P1. Instead of giving me a lift, he waved the keys and I took it for a drive. After I came back, I thought This is a good car. It just went zipping round corners and I bought one a few weeks later. Ive never been out of it since.

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With two such different passions, does Maxi find anything in common between music and motor racing? Theyre both about concentration, but with music I can relax in a performance and enjoy it, but when Im racing I cannot relax because thats when you spin off. I get a real sense of enjoyment afterwards, especially when you see other cars flying past the pit lane and you think I was doing that only a few minutes ago. Theres also a rhythm to driving a racing car thats like dancing. You get into the rhythm and your body learns how to do it so it doesnt feel fast. Brake for the corner, change down two gears, make the apex, on the power and push, push. Its only when you make a mistake that you realise how fast you can go in a car round a race track. This sense of rhythm helps Maxi to evolve his music and it fires his passion for motor racing. No wonder he manages to live life to the max.
we set off for a three week tour that went on two and a half years